Spat  

This little conflagration caught my eye because one of the principals is a former professor of mine (also I'm always watching for analytical approaches to the media bias question). The Groseclose/Milyo paper is here (PDF), Geoff Nunberg's critique is here, the Groseclose/Milyo response is here, and a nice little wrapup post from Mark Liberman, the moderator (!) of Language Log, is here. I don't have a lot to say about the methodology of the paper, although my gut reaction is that anybody who tries to nail down a political center for this country (a necessary first step for analyzing media bias) needs a theoretical framework for decribing how political views are formed and what the influences are -- that is, you can't just take a snapshot of political views at a moment in time and evaluate the news accordingly, since views are influenced by news and vice versa.

What I really found interesting about this exchange is the fact that all occurred on Language Log, and that Milyo (my old prof) and Groseclose don't have a web presence. When Nunberg attacked their paper, they asked that their response be posted on Language Log, and Mark Liberman agreed, even though their response is larded up with sass for Nunberg and academic bloggers generally. Why did Mark Liberman agree to post their response? Was he concerned about media bias? Had it been me, I wouldn't have given these guys the time of day -- there are plenty of other more appropriate places they could have posted a response, blogs and otherwise.