...but I ran into the same roadblock you did: Lack of detail specific enough to determine who the news media support. Back when I crunched some numbers on contributions by industry, I got as close as subtracting what seemed like the entertainment side of "media", leaving communications carriers and (presumably) news organizations. The result was 50-50.

Maybe if we approached this from the angle of demographics we'd get somewhere. A general definining characteristic of journalists is that they're graduates of journalism schools, which are generally part of the liberal arts category. There's that word "liberal" again...how do party demographics divide in the area of schooling and type of schooling? If there really is a bias, does it come about simply because of the academic prerequisites for a job in journalism?

Anecdotally, a while back I had some business dealings with a prof in the journalism school at SJ State. Seemed like she reflexively set up a trap which she could spring and portray something I'd said as evidence of deception. I'd say it's a personality trait of most journalists, especially those who fancy themselves of the "investigative" persuasion. They're on a crusade to uncover wrongdoing, which in practice a lot of the time means just stirring up trouble. Maybe what you're seeing isn't so much a matter of ideology as it is personality. Journalists see targets, especially wounded targets like Lott, and reflexively attack. They assume wrongdoing unless proven otherwise, and that's the story.

--Robert