If it's Sunday, it must be John McCain

If it's Sunday, it must be John McCain

It's not all in your imagination. Yes, the Sunday talk shows are all about Republicans, week after week. Peter Hart from the liberal watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has the results of eight months of monitoring four Sunday morning talk shows—ABC’s, NBC’s, CBS’sand—from June 2011 through February 2012, and a very distinct lean to the right.

Republicans dominated one-on-one interviews, appearing 70 percent of the time—166 Republicans to 70 Democrats. The gender and race imbalance was even more shocking, with men dominating by 86 percent (228 male guests compared to 36 women), and 92 percent of guests were white.

The round-table discussions were no better:



Unlike the one-on-one interviews, these roundtable segments include some voices from outside the two parties; partisan sources—who leaned Republican, 180 to 109—accounted for less than half of the guests. But the nonpartisan guests didn’t alter the right’s advantage, with Republicans and/or conservatives making 282 appearances to 164 by Democrats and progressives (categories that are less interchangeable). Middle-of-the-road Beltway journalists made 201 appearances in roundtables, which serves to buttress the argument that corporate media’s idea of a debate is conservative ideologues matched by centrist-oriented journalists. Women were just 29 percent of roundtable guests. The ethnic diversity was similarly woeful: 85 percent white and 11 percent African-American, with 3 percent Latino. Other ethnicities made up an additional 2 percent of roundtable guests.

The hotly contested Republican presidential nomination probably counts for a portion of the imbalance, but FAIR looked back at 2003-04, when Democrats were fighting it out in a primary. Hart references a Media Matters study during that period that found the shows were still skewing Republican.

Where this matters is reflected in a story Meteor Blades covered earlier this week. Another Media Matters study found that on one key issue—climate change—coverage has shrunk by 90 percent. Not only that, in 2011, the only Sunday show guests to discuss the issue were Republican politicians. No scientists. No experts.

And, increasingly, no relevance to actual life in America. The Sunday shows are a perfect representation of how Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer introduced his November 6, 2011 show: a “cross-section of Republicans.”