The Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA) is a self-described nonpartisan and nonprofit research and educational organization that is affiliated with George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
CMPA engages in health communication research, investigating the way in which scientific issues are conveyed in the media.
[4] CMPA also engages in survey research to determine the accuracy of media's reports of scientific opinion.
[19] The research published was the result of quantitative content analysis of television, print, and radio news.
The media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) has challenged CMPA's non-partisan claim, based on the argument that much of its funding has come from conservative sources, and that its founder, Samuel Robert Lichter, once held a chair in mass communications at the American Enterprise Institute and was a Fox News contributor.