Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Media
Is still very much conservative, conservative, conservative!
From Media Matters:
Overall, there were 75 appearances by Republicans/conservatives during this time period, but only 50 by Democrats/progressives. If we remove the neutrals (a category that includes guests who are centrist or nonpartisan) to examine only those with a clearly identifiable ideology, we see that the imbalance has been, if anything, slightly more acute in 2006 than it was in the years 1997 through 2005.
There are more numbers and graphs at the site and they all show an imbalance that favors conservatives. And while I think this isn’t particularly surprising given that Republicans control the Congress, Senate and White House…maybe a little more balance would be appropriate?
This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 4th, 2006 and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
April 4th, 2006 at 10:53 pm
So you are claiming that more frequent appearances represent some kind of favorable bias?
April 4th, 2006 at 11:29 pm
With the Republicans controlling the Presidency and both houses of Congress, it would be a wonder if they were not a noticable majority of the guests. If they were running more than 2:1 over all others, that might be cause for concern. But this? Nope.
April 4th, 2006 at 11:31 pm
Yes. Also, when you have a panel with two conservative columnists, one liberal and one neutral on it…the balance is obviously off. And since this is the case, you’re more likely to hear the conservative point of view on Sunday.
April 5th, 2006 at 1:20 am
Look at the other graphs Media Matter has put up.
April 5th, 2006 at 3:44 am
Ah yes, Media Matters, whose idea of a conservative is anyone who deviates from the far left even once. Since when did Chris Matthews become a conservative?
Moreover, simply being a guest may simply mean more administration officials are being put on the spot, rather than being allowed to expoud their views.
One of the flaws is clear in Lieberman, he may be a Democrat, but he has conservative views on several key issues. The fact the study states it didn’t do an analysis of statements but rather went on loose party affiliations and considered nuetral to be persons serving in both Republican and Democratic administrations seems to be more pidgeonholing than it is study. A lot of overrepresentation occurs because of John Mccain, in a good study you generally remove the outliers because they scew the data. Its more likely to show a John Mccain bias than a Republican or Conservative one, in other words.
Your study can have all the rules for coding in the world, if the rules are not sound, the study isn’t.
April 5th, 2006 at 10:28 am
Justin,
I’m wary of any information that comes from groups like Media Matters/FAIR on the left or the Media Research Center/AIM on the right. They talk about fairness in the media, but in reality they are interested having the media pedal their viewpoint. I think the reason you see more conservatives on the Sunday talk shows is simply because they control the government at this time. When the Dems control Congress and the White House, I can bet you will see more liberals/progressives on those programs.
If this was from a group like the Annenberg School at the U of Pennsylvania, I would put more stock in this. But this isn’t a neutral group trying to do a public service, this is a partisan organization that wants to get its agenda out there and uses a “study” to do it.
While I might seem to be dumping on Media Matters and liberals, I would be just as suspicious if some kind of study came out from Media Research Center saying there weren’t enough conservatives being interviewed.
April 5th, 2006 at 10:43 am
With some exceptions, if you check out the stuff that Media Matters does it’s pretty accurate because they a) either provide audio or video clips or b) clearly define what their study is about. The only reason people don’t trust it is it’s all pointing out the right’s fouls and not the left’s. And that’s understandable. But just because an organization is decidedly partisan doesn’t mean that their information is wrong.
Like recently, some radio shock jock called that Congresswoman who punched the security guard a “ghetto slut.” And then Rush called the girls who were allegedly raped by that lacrosse team “hos.” It’s all on mp3 audio for anybody to listen to.
But again, I understand that hesitation to trust. And perhaps I’m giving them too much credit. But I think any organization can provide accurate information and these numbers are hard to ignore. Also, I’ve noticed this same trend myself on Sunday.