Tuesday, February 14, 2006

[Media]

More Evidence of the Conservative Media.

One other non-global warming item. Media Matters recently completed a content analysis eight years of Sunday morning talk shows and found conservative bias. In both Clinton and Bush administrations, conservatives ideologues, conservative politicians, and conservative journalists outnumbered their liberal counterparts.
Media Matters for America conducted a content analysis of ABC's This Week, CBS' Face the Nation, and NBC's Meet the Press, classifying each one of the nearly 7,000 guest appearances during President Bill Clinton's second term, President George W. Bush's first term, and the year 2005 as either Democrat, Republican, conservative, progressive, or neutral. The conclusion is clear: Republicans and conservatives have been offered more opportunities to appear on the Sunday shows - in some cases, dramatically so.
What's even more revealing is Meet the Press's response. They admit that the proportion of Democrats/liberals has been less since 1997. They justify this by arguing that before then, Dems/liberals outnumbered conservatives/GOPs--unwittingly confirming that they have fallen sway to the unrelenting onslaught of conservatives against "the liberal media." As to MTP's direct claims, Media Matters destroys those, as well:
Overall, we see that Democrats held a 53-percent-to-46-percent advantage on Meet the Press during Clinton's second term (or a difference of 7 percentage points), not very different from the 56-percent-to-44-percent disparity you have cited from your own figures for his first term. But Republicans held a 62-percent-to-38-percent advantage during Bush's first term, a difference of 24 percentage points. This difference was even larger in 2005. Assuming your figures are correct, including Clinton's first term would have only strengthened our conclusions.
Whoops.

No comments: