They start with Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), a liberal lobbying group, ratings of the voting records of Senators and Representatives. They looked at the ratings of politicians who cited any of 200 prominent think tanks positively and then looked at how various media sources quoted the same sources.
They assigned a score for the groups based on the ADA scores of legislators quoting them.

The two Think Tank/Policy Groups cited most frequently were fairly neutral (as measured by the average scores of legislators citing them):
Brookings Institution - 53, American Civil Liberties Union - 50
Other frequently cited groups:

Think Tank/Policy Group	Av. Score	Number of Citations
		Legislators	Media Outlets
Av. Republican	16
Heritage Foundation	20	369	288
Family Research Council	20	133	160
National Right to Life Committee	22	81	109
Christian Coalition	23	141	220
Cato Institute	36	224	196
American Enterprise Institute	37	154	382
House Median	41
NRA National Rifle Association	46	143	336
Center for Strategic and International Studies	46	79	432
American Civil Liberties Union	50	273	1073
World Wildlife Fund	50	130	101
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace	52	26	328
Brookings Institution	53	320	1392
Amnesty International	57	394	419
Senate Median	58
Council on Foreign Relations	60	45	403
RAND Corporation	60	352	350
AARP - American Association of Retired Persons	66	411	333
Federation of American Scientists	68	36	139
Sierra Club	69	376	393
Common Cause	69	222	287
Urban Institute	74	186	187
NAACP	75	134	559
Economic Policy Institute	80	130	138
Consumer Federation of America	82	224	256
Av. Democrat	84
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities	88	224	115
Average	53.8

See Also: Is the Media Biased?

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