April 04, 2006

The Mainstream Media

Yep, the Sunday news shows are still biased in favor of conservatives. That's not shocking, but it remains discouraging.

Posted by armand at April 4, 2006 11:19 AM | TrackBack | Posted to Media


Comments

...says a leftist monitoring group. What does Brent Bozell say? :-P

Posted by: jacflash at April 4, 2006 02:16 PM | PERMALINK

Says a "leftist" monitoring group with data.

So you know they're not merely leftists - they are obviously godless scientists too. :)

Posted by: Armand at April 4, 2006 05:06 PM | PERMALINK

Their "data" is crap, though. Their big finding is that, over the last nine years, the beltway talk shows had more Republican and conservative guests than Democrat and "progressive" guests. Given that those shows seek to interview the most influential and powerful people they can (relevant to each week's issues), and given that the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress for that entire period and the White House for over half of it, it seems reasonable that the shows would have more guests from the ruling side, as they're more often than not the newsmakers. This doesn't demonstrate "bias", it demonstrates that the shows were reflecting reality. I say that to demonstrate "bias" we'd need some data on the discussions, at minimum. Absent some substantive data, this "study" is just more partisan blathering -- a thin attempt to counter Bozell and company. (And yes, Bozell sucks too, but for different reasons.)

Posted by: jacflash at April 4, 2006 07:01 PM | PERMALINK

In terms of the issue being whether or not the shows air the views of the Right or the Left the data is not crap. The data shows that in terms of whose voices are heard on these shows, it's the voices of the Right.

Now are there reasons tied to that? Sure. For along time the DC media has existed in many ways to simply let the public know the stories being announced by whoever is in power. But if these shows exist to foster debate at all, and not simply to be dog and pony shows that allow government mouthpieces a forum for spinning their latest lies and disinformation (among other things), it's clear that they aren't doing that in a "balanced" way. And in terms of the job they are doing at providing a forum for the partisan powers that be - they are providing that forum to the Right much more often than they are providing it for the Left.

Posted by: Armand at April 5, 2006 09:27 AM | PERMALINK

The data shows that in terms of whose voices are heard on these shows, it's the voices of the Right.

No it doesn't. Where's the data on the views of the hosts? Y'know, the people who control the conversations and drive the content?

Posted by: jacflash at April 5, 2006 10:42 AM | PERMALINK

Drive the content? No politician (of any party or ideology) with any skill spends most of their time directly answering questions put to them by a news reader.

Posted by: Armand at April 5, 2006 10:59 AM | PERMALINK

I don't have time to examine the study and the data right now, but I would think a relevant question would be "how conservative versus how liberal?" In other words calling, say, David Broder a liberal (he may or may not be - I don't know how the study categorizes people; I'm just using him for an example) and then calling Grover Norquist a conservative would (in theory) be balanced: one from the right, one from the left. However, Norquist is far more "right" than Broder is "left." So, a closer look at the methodology is appropriate.

Posted by: baltar at April 5, 2006 11:19 AM | PERMALINK

And no professional TV journalist skilled enough to rate a Sunday show lets the politician's canned answers drive the conversation. Don't you ever watch these things?

Posted by: jacflash at April 5, 2006 12:08 PM | PERMALINK

Sadly I do on occasion - and pretty much everyone let's the "canned" answers go. George S. probably does the best job with relevant follow-ups. Tim R. often aggressively follows-up, but often on really odd points. He's aggressive - but toward what end it's really hard to say. But often, the anchors really don't get more out of senators (or whoever) than the senators (or whoever) was planning to say in the first place. If their staff has prepped them and they are at all skilled the interviews are so brief that it's easy to avoid what you don't want to discuss.

Posted by: Armand at April 5, 2006 01:33 PM | PERMALINK
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