Potential for Bias on Sunday Political Shows

Politics & Elections
1

Here’s a rundown on today’s lineup. It appears that there are guests from both sides of any argument. Does that make a show fair and balanced? Who are the hosts for each… the people who get to ask the questions?

•NBC’s Meet the Press: Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase; Reince Priebus, RNC Chair; Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI); Andrew Ross Sorkin; Lt. Governor of California Gavin Newsom; Al Cardenas, American Conservative Union; Kathleen Parker, Washington Post; Jonathan Capehart, Washington Post; Chris Matthews, MSNBC

•CBS’ Face the Nation: Ted Olson, conservative lawyer; Gov. Deval Patrick (D-MA); Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI); Tony Perkins, Family Research Council; Evan Wolfson, Freedom to Marry; Mark McKinnon; Anita Dunn, Democratic strategist; Bay Buchanan, Republican commentator; Melinda Henneberger, Washington Post

•ABC’s This Week: Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA); Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN); Mary Matalin, Republican strategist; Eliot Spitzer, Current TV; Ralph Reed, Faith and Freedom Coalition; Hilary Rosen, Democratic strategist; Maggie Haberman, Politico

•Fox News Sunday: Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA); Sen. John Thune, (R) South Dakota; Sen. John Thune (R-SD); Brit Hume, Fox News; Liz Marlantes, Christian Science Monitor; Paul Gigot, Wall Street Journal; Juan Williams, Fox News

•CNN’s State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL); Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX); Gov. John Hickenlooper (D-CO); Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT); Rep. Peter King (R-NY); Tony Perkins, Family Research Council

•CNN’s GPS with Fareed Zakaria: Robert Zoellick, World Bank; Larry Fink, BlackRock; Peter Mandelson; Josef Joffe, Die Zeit; Elaine Sciolino, New York Times; David Frum, Frum Forum

•CNN’s Reliable Sources with Howard Kurtz: Matt Lewis, Daily Caller; John Aravosis, AmericaBlog.com; Nia-Malika Henderson, The Washington Post; Terence Smith; Lauren Ashburn, Daily-Download.com; Mark Mazzetti, New York Times; Tom Brokaw, NBC

•NBC’s The Chris Matthews Show: Nia-Malika Henderson, Washington Post; Andrew Sullivan, Gloria Borger, CNN; Howard Fineman, Huffington Post

2

Who are the hosts for each?

Meet the Press is hosted by David Gregory, Face the Nation is hosted by Bob Schieffer, This Week is hosted by George Stephonopolis, Fox News Sunday is hosted by Chris Wallace, State of the Union with Candy Crowley is hosted by Candy Crowley, GPS with Fareed Zakaria is hosted by Fareed Zakaria, Reliable Sources with Howard Kurtz is hosted by Howard Kurtz, and the Chris Matthews Show is hosted by Chris Matthews.

3

Looks like they’re planning on a lot of conversation about gay marriage. That probably throws things off from usual. I’m pretty sure that the sorts of political and media elites that appear on these shows are overwhelmingly in favor of marriage equality, or at least know that it’s inevitable and don’t want to talk about it. You’ve got Tony Perkins doing double duty (State of the Union and Face the Nation) probably because not many other people really want to go on TV with his viewpoint. Meanwhile, you’ve got conservatives like Ted Olsen, who’s the chief lawyer behind the Perry v. Brown case to get Proposition 8 overturned.

I’m not sure how much you could read into one week’s worth of shows, even if the issue du jour was one where the party elites and base were more in synch. I seem to recall seeing data from a wider sampling of Sunday morning shows where Republicans substantially outnumbered Democrats, and men and whites were both vastly over-represented, but I don’t recall where.

4

I used to watch This Week, and there were a lot of weeks where the panel was all Republican operatives, or all but one GOP operatives. It was pretty blatant.

5

Serious people get their news from the printed word. Pseudo-serious people watch the Sunday morning talking heads. Most people skip the preceding altogether.

Incidentally, I don’t really care so much about bias. I can filter that out. What matters is factual accuracy and understanding. You can have a point of view but still present other perspectives fairly. A good article will provide the reader with maneuver to disagree with the author, yet still trust his commitment to accuracy and understanding. Some of the best noneditorial pieces in the Economist, the New Yorker and the New York Times reach this standard.

Great publishers should strive to create the best informed readership in the world. Great readers don’t fear points of view: great readers seek solid, well-reasoned and curious treatments.
ETA: Unsurprisingly I don’t see anybody from the Nation or the Green Party on that list. Most are all telegenic generalists. The 3 experts are Jamie Dimon of Chase, Robert Zoellick of the World Bank , and Larry Fink of BlackRock. Not a lot of academics, authors or professionals: that would be boring.

6

My five minutes were up. Rewrite:
ETA: Unsurprisingly I don’t see anybody from the Nation magazine or the Green Party on that list. Those who would form the center of the non-communist left in Europe are almost entirely shut out of the conversation. Hate groups such as the Family Research Council are ok though. Furthermore, most guests are telegenic generalists. The 3 experts are Jamie Dimon of Chase, Robert Zoellick of the World Bank , and Larry Fink of BlackRock. Not a lot of academics, authors or professionals: that would be boring.
That said, let’s not forget that the validity of the arguments presented turns on fact and data, neither of which can be substantiated in such a televised format. So I’m not too enthused about the question asked in the OP, as it misses the more salient points.

7

That has been a complaint on the American left for decades now, actually.

8

Hey, What, why don’tcha say somethinorother about Snopes?

9

…and is hilariously ignored by the whiny right, who can’t even handle the likes of Anderson Cooper.

Look. These media companies are big financial operations and their blow-dried reporters are highly paid professionals. It’s not surprising that they would have pronounced leanings towards the status quo. Only those with sensitive dispositions complain about liberal bias. Liberals, OTOH, generally have a different argument which is 1) Fox News gets their facts wrong, 2) yes, there are complaints about bigotry at Fox News and 3) whole non-communist but leftist perspectives are routinely ignored altogether in the mainstream media.

Conservative clowns even complain about the New York Times, which has one of the largest business reporting staff in the world: this shows how far they reside off the deep end. The NYT editorial page basically never takes the side of labor during a strike. And they constantly pander to the modern conservative’s super-sensitive feelings: if a Democrat said the earth was round and a Republican said it was flat, the New York Times would report, “Opinions on the shape of the earth differ.”

10

Are you trying to imply that opinions on this matter are somehow unanimous?

11

The right routinely denies the existence or possibility of such, IME.

12

Apparently not.

13

That’s why you should watch Up with Chris Hayes on MSNBC. It is probably the only show (well, maybe Melissa Harris-Perry afterward as well) worth watching on the weekends.

14

Setting aside right wing hysteria, here is a pictorial characterization of the real world media debate on global warming. It’s presented in a form of a graph, though AFAIK it’s not backed by data: it’s just a picture. Anyway, the range of media debate runs from right wing think tanks to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Average expert opinion is somewhat more alarmist than that committee, unsurprisingly. And yet the broadest and compromised professional consensus of a few years ago is treated as one side of the story, with the other side consisting of paid hacks.

To complain of left-wing bias is purely hyper-emotionalism.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/12/whats-really-scary/

15

Thanks for the invite… maybe I will.

BTW…I caught about 10 minutes of only one of the shows yesterday. It was This Week with George (former high-level Clinton staffer and probably a Democrat) Stephanopolis. Didn’t take long to find some bias … what do you think:

Coming back from a break they ran two commercials. The first was an Obama the economy is coming back feel good commercial. The second was a Romney commercial with quotes of Obama surrogates dissing mothers.

One positive although questionable; the other negative with facts. I’ll bet the Obama campaign was pleased with the choice… I’d bet that the Romney campaign might have found one that they preferred had been used.

What do you think?

16

Thanks…anybody see a pattern there?

17

I saw that too. Republicans were overrepresented as guests. It was done in the middle of a contested primary. The question askers are the key.

If the shows were hosted by those on the right I’d love to see them have 100% Democrat guests… if I had an agenda.

18

I’d like to see some examples of the first quote.

On the second, that seems to be a common response … that the clearly left-leaning media isn’t left enough. Why would the Green Party warrant inclusion?

19

CONNECT THE DOTS, PEOPLE! Patterns! Just last week I saw this kid in my yard looking up in a tree, he said I’m looking for my burro owl, I said JUMPIN JESUS ON A POGO STICK, everyone knows that a burrow owl lives in a hole in the ground. Do you think a kid like that will know what the Democrats are doing to our talk shows?

20

And if there’s one thing you’ll find in posts by What the … !!!, it’s dots. Lots and lots of dots. Man oh man, are there dots.