” Corporations and their trade associations now spend about $2.6 billion a year in reported [US] lobbying. … That … is about 34 times the total lobbying spending for all labor unions and groups representing public and consumer interests”
In view of which, I would modestly propose that left wing bias in academia and the media is a necessity, since it is the only force capable of balancing the conservative bias of corporate lobbyists
The standard rhetoric against academic and media bias tacitly assumes either that all institutions should be unbiased, or that all opinion formers should be. But the idea that all institutions should be unbiased is absurd, since you are never going to have a military that is 50% pacifist, or a business sector that is 50% anti capitalist. The idea that the business sector isnt in the opinion formation business is itself only true in that corporate lobying is a more direct means to the ultimate end of influencing policy, leapfrogging public opinion.
But if you have a variety of institutions with a variety of natural biases, then you overall balance is achieved naturally.
Pierre Philosophique on Politics 