More than four decades after the civil rights movement and the second wave of feminism delivered two new paradigms to the nation, my survey of the past 16 months of six Sunday television talk shows found them still to be dominated by men, whites and Republicans, particularly right-wing Republicans, with a geographical bias for the East and Midwest. This was true of the guests, reporters and pundits.
Moreover, the views of the left, while not wholly absent, are buried beneath a deluge of rightist, center-rightist and centrist narrative. Interviewers and roundtables are dominated by a handful of media outlets and anyone holding opinions more than a half a millimeter to the left of conventional Beltway wisdom is three times less likely to appear than someone on the far right. The folks at Politico appear multiple times but nobody from TPM. You hear from the Washington Examiner, but nothing from the Washington Independent.
None of this is news to anyone with a liberal bone in her body who has watched these shows. But the details prove just how skewed these programs remain in the 21st Century. I'll get those details in a moment.
In his eviscerating What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias in the News, Eric Alterman debuted the acronym SCLM, the "so-called liberal media." Alterman's outstanding 2003 book was not merely a response to Bernard's Goldberg's claims that the media are under the control of liberal ideologues. It was pushback for decades of right-wing success at convincing Americans that newspapers and the electronic media favor liberals and unfairly depict conservatives and conservative ideas. Alterman's skillful research iced that conclusion.
He wasn't first to dig into the matter. Kathleen Hall Jamieson's research dating back to her 1983 book, The Interplay of Influence: Media and Their Publics in News, Advertising and Politics, has long provided a good foundation for understanding just how true the "so-called" part of SCLM is. The folks at Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting have been doing surveys and analyses of the media's unliberal bias for more than two decades. Eric Boehlert has done good work as well.
While all their analyses thoroughly illustrate the steady stream of propaganda the SCLM floods us with on a daily basis, they shy away from the conclusions that Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman wrote about in Manufacturing Consent in 1988. In a nutshell, the perspective of those two was that, whatever the views of individual reporters, many of whom do identify themselves as liberal or left of center, the institutional structure of a mass media directed toward profit maximization and its subordination to external power create an editorial bias that often, though not always, makes it a willing conduit for propaganda. The run-up to the Iraq war offers a perfect example.
Even Chomsky and Herman did not, however, go so far as D, Sinclair, who said the media concoct "homeopathic dilutions of facts in a solvent of virtually pure bullshit."
Precisely when the idea that the media are overwhelmingly liberal first started getting hammered into Americans' heads is hard to pinpoint. Rick Perlstein suggests the 1968 Democratic Convention as a good candidate. But more than a decade before that, white Southerners came to despise the out-of-town media, especially the television networks, for coverage of the death throes of Jim Crow.
In fact, that coverage was a good deal more modest than it would have been had the media really been liberal. But the bus boycotts, fire-hoses and nightsticks slamming civil rights protesters, cops and shrieking white supremacists blocking black students from entering schools and lethal attacks on voter-registration activists were, from the producers' point of view, tailor-made for television. By then, the medium was penetrating 90% of American homes. The coverage ultimately helped the civil rights legislation of 1964-65 clear Congress. Some might even argue that, combined with arm-twisting by LBJ, the coverage made passage inevitable. Afterward, as the Republican Party embraced the Old Confederacy with its "Southern Strategy," it explicitly targeted the media in not-so-different a way as did Alabama Gov. George Wallace with his sneers of "pointy-headed intellectuals." Whenever this bogus conventional wisdom about the media actually began, it has now become so ingrained that even 21% of Democrats believe the media are too liberal. Only 20% say they are too conservative. Hard to take that without a major head shake.
It's not just who appears in the media, obviously. It is also very much who doesn't appear, whose opinions aren't seen at all. That, in part, is a function of the idea that all stories have only two sides, and as long as two sides are presented there's balance. Never mind that those two sides on a particular day may well be from the perspective of the right and the center or center-right. The truth is that most stories – especially political, economic and cultural stories – have more than two sides. Because the media are so subordinated to external power, the bias covers not only what gets talked about, but also what doesn't. Real socialized medicine? Carbon tax? The permanent war economy and the military-industrial-congressional complex? The economics of class? A serious discussion of racism or sexism, not to mention heterosexism? Not a chance.
The Sunday talk shows, of course, make up only a slice of what flows from the media, a once-a-week happening amid a steady daily current from these same media and others. But together, they draw about 11 million viewers each week.
For the 16-month January 2009-April 2010 survey, I chose six shows: ABC's This Week; CBS's Face the Nation; NBC's Meet the Press; Fox News Sunday; CNN's State of the Union; and CNN's Reliable Sources. I left out The Chris Matthews Show and Fareed Zakaria's GPS. I compiled lists of guests and reporters, counting the number of times each had appeared. I did not include the anchors. (You can see my lists by jumping below the fold.) I divided appearances into six categories: people now serving or who have previously served in the House or Senate, or as governors or mayors; reporters/editors/columnists and other commentators; political strategists and pollsters; members of the current administration; members of previous administrations; and other guests. In a world where media analysts run for public office and previously elected officials become media analysts, it wasn't always easy to choose the appropriate category. I did my best. I also compiled a list of media outlets represented by the reporters, editors and commentators.
The results:
Elected Politicians, Past and Present
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 Top Eleven? Mitch McConnell, 25 appearances; John McCain (21), John Kyl (18), Lindsey Graham (18), Mike Huckabee (13), Charles Schumer (13), Kent Conrad (12), Dick Durbin (12), Dianne Feinstein (12), Newt Gingrich (12), Orrin Hatch (12). So, seven Republicans accounted for 38% of the total appearances by Republicans; and four Democrats accounted for 20% of total appearances by Democrats.
Seven members of the Black Caucus, 10 members of the Progressive Caucus (five of whom are also members of the Black Caucus), and four members of the Blue Dog Caucus appeared. The West was vastly underrepresented.
The Media
All told, 245 individual reporters, editors, columnists and other pundits appeared on the six shows. Of these, 94 (38%) were women, 210 (86%) were white, 28 (11%) were African American, four were Latino (1.6%), and there was one Asian-American, one Indian-American, and one Bangladeshi-American, (0.4% each).
These 245 appeared a total of 863 times. Of these, 773 (87%) were white, 112 (11%) were African American, four were Latino (0.3%), and four were Asian or South Asian in ancestry (0.4%). While that African American figure may look fairly reasonable, Juan Williams, on Fox News Sunday, appeared 56 times, accounting for half of the total appearances by black reporters and pundits.
Women of all races made 339 appearances, 38%.
The Top Eleven? Juan Willams (56), Bill Kristol (56), Mara Liasson (51), George Will (44), Brit Hume (28), David Brooks (20), Paul Krugman (16), Cokie Roberts (16), Sam Donaldson (15), Peggy Noonan (14), and Stephen Hayes (10).
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.
In the 863 appearances in this category, only two media outlets based west of the Mississippi were included in the line-ups of these six shows. Representatives from The Hollywood Reporter and the Kansas City Star made one appearance each.
The Partisans
Twenty-seven partisan strategists and pollsters appeared on the Sunday talk shows in the past 16 months. It seems that Mary Matalin, the Republican strategist, and her husband Jim Carville, the Democratic strategist, must car-pool given how often they appear across from each other on the same show. Quite the gig if you can get it. Together the Matalin-Carville duo accounted for 30 (21%) of the total of 145 appearances by these 27 folks. The split was even: 70 Republicans and 75 Democrats. Democrat Donna Brazile appeared the most, 28 times. Ed Gillespie, with 15 appearances, was the most seen Republican.
The Obama Administration
Thirty individuals from the Obama Administration made 184 appearances. Leading the pack? David Axelrod, 25 times, followed by Larry Summers, 16; Hillary Clinton 15; Kathleen Sebelius, 15; Robert Gibbs, 12; Robert Gates, 11; Christina Romer, 9; Jim Jones, 9. Most conspicuous by their complete absence at a time when jobs and energy were much discussed: Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Energy Secretary Steven Chu. Gary Locke, Tom Vilsack and Eric Shinseki also made no appearances on the Sunday talk shows.
Previous Administrations
From previous administrations, 47 Republicans and 23 Democrats appeared. Dick Cheney (5), Dana Perino (7) and apostate David Frum (6) were the most frequently seen Republicans. With 10 appearances, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich led the Democrats.
Other Guests
And, finally, in the "other guests" category, there were 147 individuals. Of these, 15 were foreign nationals. Leaving them aside, 109 (82%) were white, 20 (14%) African American; two (1.5%) Latino, and two (1.5%) were of Middle Eastern or Indian subcontinent ancestry. Again, while the percentage of African American guests seems in line with population, six of them were basketball players, two were entertainers, and six others appeared solely to address racial issues. Only 26 in this category were women, 20% of the total.
Again, leaving out the foreign nationals, there were 185 appearances by these 132 individuals. Of these: 153 (83%) were by whites (with one by a basketball player and two by entertainers); 25 (13.5%) were by African Americans (six by basketball players, three by entertainers, and 10 by guests appearing solely to address racial issues. Latinos appeared three times (1.6%), and those of Middle Eastern or Indian subcontinent ancestry appeared four times (2%). Of the total 185 appearances, only 27 (14.5%) were by women.
While Fox News contributes greatly to the skewing of the Sunday talk shows, it is not alone in failing when it comes to minorities, particularly Latinos, who make up at least 15% of the population, women, who are slightly more than half, the Democratic Party, and the left.
Nonetheless, a multitude of conservatives continues to embed the narrative. When they say "liberal media," they never include "so-called."Says Bill O'Reilly:
There's no question the media in America is heavily liberal. Every study shows that. With the rise of the Internet, the far left now dominates the liberal agenda....
As Alterman says, the idea the media might – because of who owns them, because of economic pressures, and because of outside political pressure –actually "be more sympathetic to conservative causes than liberal ones is widely considered to be simply beyond the pale." No matter what the evidence shows, the myth lives.