Most of us on the left realize that despite the conventional wisdom that the media is “liberal” it generally leans to the right. It’s not unusual to see stories percolate in the right and then go straight into the mainstream media (look at “Obama’s Katrina” for a good example). Meteor Blades at Daily Kos did some number-crunching to prove the point that the media loves Republicans.
There were 137 individuals appearing on the Sunday talk shows who are now or have been governors, mayors, Representatives or Senators. Combined, they made 557 appearances. Of these, 242, or 43.3% were by Democrats and 315, or 56.6% were by Republicans. Not exactly fair and balanced even before calculating the D/R ratio in Congress. Of particular note, one independent Senator, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, made nine appearances, while the other independent, Bernie Sanders, made a single appearance.
The journalists on the panel were even more skewed to the right than politicians.
I did not sort the media representatives by where they fall on the political spectrum. There’s no doubt that Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard (56 appearances) is an ultra-conservative and David Corn of Mother Jones (two appearances) is an ultra-liberal. But in many cases, selecting was too highly subjective. The concentration of media they represent, however, is telling. Remember, this does not include the anchors:
From the Washington Post, 125 appearances; NPR (80); the Weekly Standard (70); The New York Times (63); CBS (48); ABC (42); The Wall Street Journal (25), CNBC (16), PBS (13), Time (12) NBC (12).
As regards left vs. right (excluding The Wall Street Journal), I stretched the terms a little and included the Huffington Post (10) and Slate (4) with the leftwing The Nation (7), Salon (4), Air America (5), Mother Jones (2), AmericaBlog (1) and The American Prospect (1). Total: 34.
On the right, CBN (2), National Review (8); Politico (14); the Weekly Standard (70); Washington Examiner (9) and the Washington Times (10). Total: 113, or 76% of the left-right grouping.
There are 4X more conservative journalists than liberal journalists on these panels. No wonder most of us on the left hate these shows and don’t watch them. The panels also skew heavily white and male.
I’m not sure how conservatives keep getting away with saying everyone knows the media is liberal but it seems to be accepted as a fact by the media establishment. I look at the make-up of the guests on Sunday shows and see that my viewpoint is just not represented. How is that “fair and balanced?”