S. Robert Lichter is a

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professo ...

Communication Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inqui ...

George Mason University George Mason University (George Mason, Mason, or GMU) is a public research university in Fairfax County, Virginia with an independent City of Fairfax, Virginia postal address in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area. The university was origin ...

, where he directs the Center for Media and Public Affairs, which conducts scientific studies of the news and entertainment media, and formerly directed the

Statistical Assessment Service Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) is a non-profit organization which analyzes and critiques the presentation of scientific findings and statistical evidence in the news media. Formerly associated with George Mason University and the Center ...

(STATS), which works to improve the quality of statistical and scientific information in the news.

Academia

Lichter has taught political science at

Princeton Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nin ...

, Georgetown, and

George Washington George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of ...

universities, and he was a research faculty member at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...

and

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

. He was also a

National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...

Fellow at

Smith College Smith College is a private liberal arts women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was chartered in 1871 by Sophia Smith and opened in 1875. It is the largest member of the historic Seven Sisters colleges, a group of elite women's coll ...

and held the

DeWitt Wallace William Roy DeWitt Wallace; (November 12, 1889 – March 30, 1981), publishing as DeWitt Wallace, was an American magazine publisher. Wallace co-founded ''Reader's Digest'' with his wife Lila Bell Wallace, publishing the first issue in 1922. Lif ...

Chair in Mass Communications at the

American Enterprise Institute The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, known simply as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), is a center-right Washington, D.C.–based think tank that researches government, politics, economics, and social welfare. A ...

. He received his Ph.D. in Government from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

and his B.A., summa cum laude, from the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...

Scholarly work

Lichter has authored or co-authored fourteen books and over a hundred scholarly articles and monographs on the news and entertainment media. His best-known work, '' The Media Elite,'' (written with Stanley Rothman and Linda Lichter, and funded by conservative foundations) argued that journalists, on average, held more liberal political views than the general public, and that their backgrounds and outlooks affect their coverage of the news. This claim was extended by conservative pundits as evidence for a

liberal bias Media bias is the bias of journalists and news producers within the mass media in the selection of many events and stories that are reported and how they are covered. The term "media bias" implies a pervasive or widespread bias contravening of ...

in the media. It also provoked widespread debate among journalists and their critics. ''The Media Elite'' was based on interviews with major media journalists and

content analysis Content analysis is the study of documents and communication artifacts, which might be texts of various formats, pictures, audio or video. Social scientists use content analysis to examine patterns in communication in a replicable and systematic ...

of their work. Lichter and his co-authors have also written on the social and political perspectives of popular culture, in books such as ''Prime Time'' and ''Watching America,'' as well as on news coverage of science and health issues, in ''Environmental Cancer—A Political Disease'' and ''It Ain't Necessarily So.'' His most recent books (written with Stephen Farnsworth) are ''The Nightly News Nightmare: Television Coverage of Presidential Elections'' (2006, 2nd ed.); and ''The Mediated Presidency: Television News and Presidential Governance'' (2005). These works use content analysis to examine the media's coverage of government and election campaigns. In 1986 Lichter and his late ex-wife, sociologist Linda Lichter, established the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA), a non-profit organization that sought to influence public debate on the media by publishing frequent studies of media coverage using the social scientific tool of

. This was the first time this type of academic research was used on a regular and systematic basis to affect the general public's view of the media. Since then other groups have followed suit, including the Annenberg School for Communication and the Pew Foundation's

Project for Excellence in Journalism The Project for Excellence in Journalism was a tax-exempt research organization in the United States that used empirical methods to evaluate and study the performance of the press. The organization's director was Tom Rosenstiel, a professor of ...

. In 2004 the CMPA became affiliated with the

Bibliography

Journal articles

* Reprinted on the occasion of the award by the

National Association of Scholars The National Association of Scholars (NAS) is an American non-profit politically conservative advocacy organization, with a particular interest in education. It opposes a perceived political correctness on college campuses and supports a return ...

of the Sidney Hook Memorial Award to Stanley Rothman, 22 May 2004. Originally published online i
''The Forum''
(subscription required).

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lichter, Samuel Robert Living people American political scientists Harvard University alumni University of Minnesota alumni Year of birth missing (living people) George Mason University faculty George Washington University faculty Princeton University faculty Georgetown University faculty