For the populist right, blogs are the new mimeographed newsletter and AM talk radio. They built a movement on that over the last 40 years because of a general distrust of anything "mainstream". There is a natural tendency for them to believe whatever is told to them in a seemingly off the grid fashion. So blogs are the new form for this kind of conspiratorial communication. Not surprised by this in the least.

Do you mean your mother's "gardener"?

Would an objective outside observer call the right wing blogs "accurate?" C'mon, Kevin, people read things that fit their biases. It's not a surprise to find that the right wingers who think Rush is fair and objective are going to think the same thing about his blog.

It's the Fox News Syndrome. Republicans who are inclined to read right-wing blogs will believe them because they want to believe them. They are constantly looking for ways to reinforce their willfully ignorant worldview, and they lap up the "information" on these sites. I'm not saying this is the case with all Republicans, just the little-green-football types. They'd have to be more skeptical even to be called credulous.

Liberals tend to take a more skeptical view even of like-minded blogs. And certainly they have every reason to be suspicious of the mainstream media -- you know, the ones who've all been given cute nicknames by Bush and barbeque recipes by John McCain.

It's Harris Interactive. Doesn't that mean that everyone one the survey is an active user of the Internet? Seems like a highly biased sample.

Harris Interactive gets its data from volunteers who sign up online, which obviously skews the data in topics related to internet usage. Thus, these results are probably not worth the bandwidth they take up.

It means that conservatives believe what they're told to believe. I'm finding it difficult to believe that anyone who has been paying attention for the last, oh, decade doesn't understand this.

I really find it amazing that the news reporter who wrote this story didn't pick up on this self selection bias problem with his 22%.

I don't know, Kevin, but I can tell you that a lot of my activist Democratic friends are skeptical of blogs. They get a lot of their info from NPR, and often they're not very informed. I tell them to read Political Animal and Talking Points Memo. I encourage them to read your commentary, next read the news stories you link to, then make up their own minds.

I recently wrote a commentary for the newsletter for our local Democratic women's group about the good blogs out there that cover national issues. These women seem to be against blogs because political blogs focused on local politics are often like a nasty game of gossip, and far more damaging to local candidates.

Leave it to a liberal to miss the main point. The MSM has a liberal bias. I can't believe there are thinking people who do not see this.

Does Harris really expect anyone to take them seriously when they think 22% = nobody?

"But are people really reading these blogs? The answer is no..." "...just 22 percent of Americans read blogs regularly (several times a month or more)"

22% would be HUGE, if it were true.

My guess on the liberal/conservative split is that it derives from the fact that there is more diversity in liberal blogs. So a liberal blog-reader has a greater number of blogs to choose from...and conversely, a greater number of blogs to *reject*. So it may be the case that a liberal blog-reader finds her/his one or two main blogs to be extremely trustworthy, but has decided that the rest of them are worthless, leading to overall blogospher skepticism. I have no data for this, but I find it more convincing than the disingenuous "it's just because conservatives are stupid" argument.

Leave it to a liberal to miss the main point. The MSM has a liberal bias. I can't believe there are thinking people who do not see this.

Please prove this assertion. THanks in advance.

Can she tell Jerome to stop being such a damned asshole all the time?

Seriously, it's like pulling teeth to get him to say something that's not pure Obama hate.

Kevin: You said you weren't sure what it means, but you got it right on every guess:

Does it show that liberals have good sense?

Yes

Does it show that the activist liberal base (the "netroots") is actually fairly small, and most liberal blog readers are just your average NPR listeners?

Yes

Does it merely show that conservatives have hated the mainstream media longer than liberals?

Yes.

(But do independents loathe the MSM too?)

Loathe is such a strong term. Mildly dislike, yes.

Does it show that Rush Limbaugh's blog has a lot of readers?

Yes.

Or does it show that this Harris Interactive survey is useless to begin with and not worth wasting too much brainpower on?

Yes.

And 22% of the population reading political blogs is absurd.

Leave it to a liberal to miss the main point. The MSM has a liberal bias. I can't believe there are thinking people who do not see this.
Posted by: John Hansen

i can't believe there are even non-thinking people still flogging this lame idea.

your pal,
blake

Blog readership and the whole Internet "revolution" are overblown. For most people, on an intellectual level, the Internet functions like an interactive television, and is just the newest way of amusing themselves to death.

(Of course, that excludes most of the super-intelligent, thoughtful, financial successful and beautiful people who post here on a regular basis.)

Well, right now the liberal blogosphere is debating a very, very close primary, and passions are high.

ie Ask an Obama supporter how accurate liberal blogs are after they finish reading TalkLeft or Taylor Marsh, they'll probably find the mainstream media more accurate. Ditto for a Clinton supporter reading an Obama-supporting blog.

Conservatives don't look for information. Tthey look for affrimation of what they want to believe. Their blogs are pure echo chamber so of course they perceive them as more accurate than the mean old media which every now and then reports a glimmer of reality.

Liberals on the other hand are more sceptical and less credulous in general and are more likely to sek information outside of a bubble. We can recognize that liberal sources have a liberal bias. Conservatives think that their sources are revealed truth.

First off, I'd expect that conservatives tend to flock to conservative blogs, which is why they find them so comfortingly truthy. Self-selection is a natural instinct for people of all political stripes.

But I'd guess that, among that subset of conservatives who still buy the "liberal media" talking point, liberal blogs are also great because they almost always acknowledge that they're liberal, something the MSM stubbornly refuses to "admit." They can respect the other side because they're in uniform, so to speak.

My view is that conservatives prefer "truthiness" to truth, and the conservative blogs and media provide that to them.

For conservatives, the truth leaks through the mainstream media too often for their comfort, even as liberals might find that truth should make more frequent appearances in the mainstream media.

Conervatives like pleasing narratives more than true narratives. That's one reason why they love to have actors as political candidates.

"Liberals on the other hand are more sceptical and less credulous in general and are more likely to sek information outside of a bubble. We can recognize that liberal sources have a liberal bias. Conservatives think that their sources are revealed truth."

While this is delightfully self-affirming, to both the writer and to me, it doesn't fit the data. You'll note that independents -- arguably the most skeptical, least credulous bunch, rate the blogosphere as more accurate in similar numbers (36%) to Republicans (37%).

One of the ways I would expect liberals to be skeptical and non-credulous would be to examine their own self-aggrandizing, other-denigrating beliefs. Clearly, there is some work to be done on that front.

I can believe that 22% of the people online read political blogs. That sounds about right.

I know a lot of you are going to think I am disrespecting all of us, but I am not. I am just trying to think slightly out of the box.

We on the left alway seem to want to pat ourselves on the back for being superior to the folks on the right. While we might be right on far more issues, I am not sure that reality isn't an accident. How many of you take the time to read websites with a right wing bias? My guess is most of us stick the crowd that reinforces our own prejudices.

Think about how rarely you entertain any right of center thinking on any subject, even if just to reject it, the next time you "stick in an thumb, pull out a plumb and say my what a good boy am I."

The truth is both the right and the left often suffer from the same problem. None of us ever wants to examine our assumptions. Those unexamined assumptions get us into a lot of trouble because it is hard for us to see our opponents unexamined assumptions, and it is easy for them to see ours, but it is damn near impossible for either to see their own.

An online survey finds that 22% of the US population reads political blogs?!

Yeah, sure. Scientology claims to have as many members as the Mormon church too.

Ron Byers,

Speak for yourself. Anyone trained in science repeatedly examines his/her assumptions. I've read right wing blogs. I haven't commented there because I am banned once I dissent but I have read the comments.

At this time rightwing ideas are skewed heavily towards the wacky and leftwing ideas are much more sensible. I imagine this is because people like me who used to be in the center are now considered liberal because the whole spectrum has been shifted to the right.

I've said before I didn't leave the Republican party, they left me. I can even tell you when it happened. It happened at the Republican national convention in '88 or so when Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan both gave batshit crazy speeches and were met with applause.

The right wing has long felt that "fair and balanced" meant skewed to their way of thinking (Fox News is not an aberation). That's why they consider the MSM biased.

Liberals, although they may get more pleasure from reading liberal news, do not consider that balanced... and consider MSM more balanced.

Both liberal blogs and conservative blogs are skewed to their respective ways of thinking.

The inference is that conservatives consider their blogs balanced and liberals don't.

The term "accurate" when applied to commentary is an odd one, to me. I read blogs because they offer more discussion and exploration of issues than word-chary MSM stories and op-eds. (Political Animal is the best I know of in this respect, BTW, even though I only agree with Kevin about half the time.) "Accuracy," I dunno – would that mean that a link points to the right URL, or something? I would guess that Democrats tend to be living in reality already, and find that the MSM for the most part portrays it accurately enough.

I think the mainstream media are less accurate and less thoughtful the minstream media.

For example, compare Iraq news as covered by the Lehrer Report vs. Michael Yon. Lehrer mostly reports the number of Americans killed. He sometimes gives their names. Occassionally he has experts give their assessment of how things are going.

Yon gives detailed reports of specific battles and other operations, including photographs and occassional videos. He also discusses the military significance of various operations. E.g., he considers the current effort ito drive AQI out of Mosul to be the key battle in the war, as of today. Yon's reports show how Americans fight, as well as how the insurgents and Iraqi army fights.

Also, I, like many conservatives, believe that the mainstream media tilts away from conservatives. Think about the impact of Lehrer's reports from Iraq. He reports American deaths, but not insurgent or AQI deaths. He seldom reports on all the improvements that are occurring. So, someone watching onoly his shows apt to think that the Americans are dying for nothing.

Sorry, the first sentence above should be

I think the mainstream media are less accurate and less thoughtful the blogs I read, including this one.

I dunno.

More than half of Americans don't vote.

Why is this even news?

Gosh it is nice to know that there are such understanding sensitive people out there. I mean to be able to read so many people's hearts and to know how absolutely worthless their ideas, beliefs and concerns are; this is a skill to be admired. Some how I cannot find it in my heart to write off people like some here seem to be willing to do. Even those with whom I disagree have value and possess insight; but, alas I am one of the misbegotten of the right. Ah well, I wish all the best to you fine outstanding people who always are correct and never ever misstep. We of the Neanderthal Right salute you.

"Surely this number has been heavily skewed upward by the fact that this poll was conducted online, right?"

The answer is no. Survey methodologists use a process called weighting to ensure that the respondents views represent those of interest - usually the general or online population.

This can be done for the usual demographics of age, gender, education, income etc. Harris Interactive also takes this one step further to take into account people'e propensity to be online, propensity to be part of an online panel and their propensity to take part in a survey.

This means that the survey results can be changed to represent the general population of the US, rather than the online population or those who happened to respond to the survey.