Samuel Robert Lichter is a professor of communication at George Mason University,[1] 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 (STATS), which works to improve the quality of statistical and scientific information in the news.
He was also a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at Smith College and held the DeWitt Wallace Chair in Mass Communications at the American Enterprise Institute.
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.
His most recent books (written with Stephen Farnsworth) are The Nightly News Nightmare: Television Coverage of Presidential Elections (2006, 2nd ed.
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.