Prairie State Wire

It took conservative talk show host and author Larry Elder maybe one second to answer a question about which cultural institution in America would have the most impact if its leadership became conservative.

“Media,” he said as the audience applauded during the question-and-answer portion of an event to promote his new memoir, “Dear Father, Dear Son: Two Lives… Eight Hours.”

Mediating the forum was Dan Proft, host of Chicago’s Morning Answer radio program and a principal in Local Government Information Services, which owns this publication. A video of the talk was posted on May 20 on YouTube.

Although his response came quickly, Elder had the examples to back up his assertion. He cited the work of a friend, Timothy Groseclose, an economics professor at George Mason University in Virginia who wrote the book, “Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind.” In the book, Groseclose conducts quantitative analysis of left-wing media bias. 

“For the first time, he tried to quantify what you and I would call damage, what they would call effect, of the left-wing media on how people vote,” Elder explained to Proft during the segment. “And based on his research, if it weren’t for the fact that of the top 20 news sources, 18 are center left, two are center right (the Washington Times and Fox News with Bret Baier), if the media were truly fair and balanced, the average state would vote the way Texas does, which is about 8 to 10 points in favor of the Republicans. That is how much effect the left-wing media has on how people think, see issues and vote.”

While he named the news media as the primary culprit in spreading liberal views, he also acknowledged two other institutions that play a huge role in America's culture wars: Hollywood and higher education.

Academia “is overwhelmingly dominated by the left,” he said, pointing out that nearly 9 out of 10 professors in the humanities, in which he included the fields of sociology, economics and political science, were registered Democrats. The sample was taken, he said, at large and small public and private colleges in all areas of the country.

“You look at the commencement speakers, the ones that are political, it’s 10 to 1 liberal versus conservative,” he said.

Elder asserted that Hollywood is a big supporter of liberal politicians, stating that 90 percent of campaign contributions from Hollywood support left-wing candidates. But Hollywood gives support in other ways, like slanting the content of their programming, he pointed out.

“They have movies that celebrate Dan Rather, who got fired by CBS News for incompetent journalism,” he said. “They made him into a hero by doing a movie about him. So we’re fighting Hollywood, academia and the media, and Trump still won. It’s amazing.”