Nov 16th, 2008 at 10:22 am
If It’s Sunday, It’s Conservative
Look, this discrepancy is easy to explain. When conservatives dominated the government, it was necessary for conservatives to dominate the Sunday show guest lists in order that the views of big-time newsmakers be reflected. Conversely, with progressives coming into power, we need conservatives to dominate the Sunday show guest lists in order to counterbalance the views of those holding high political office.
40 Responses to “If It’s Sunday, It’s Conservative”
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November 16th, 2008 at 10:28 am
The Sunday morning shows have more conservatives than parity because their audience is more conservative than average.
Me? I don’t watch those shows. I spend Sunday mornings catching up on my reading, including my blog reading. If anybody says anything important on one of the shows, I’m sure I will read about it on the net.
So I’m not going to complain irrationally about why those shows don’t do more to please people like me, who aren’t watching.
November 16th, 2008 at 10:34 am
Anyone see this Ron Brownstein dreck today? Basically another version of “It’s all good … for Rudy(Or in this case .. Republicans)!!”
Dan Kervick:
How do you know? Shouldn’t all the Conservatives be in church when the shows are on? Or does the audience skew on the older side(Which means they probably go to the earliest masses possible)?
November 16th, 2008 at 10:39 am
the earliest masses possible
That would be Saturday evening Mass.
November 16th, 2008 at 10:41 am
I count 4 Dem elected officials… and the main discrepancy seems to be that there are 3 Republican governors spread across the five shows, presumably to talk about the big conference they just had.
More broadly, there is a lot of interesting open debate going on about “where does the GOP go from here”, and a lot of these folks (Jindal, Gingrich, Pawlenty, Arnold) want their voices heard on the topic. I think Democrats don’t want to say too much right now until they get a better read on what Obama’s plans are, which is probably good strategy from both an individual and party point of view.
November 16th, 2008 at 10:46 am
How do you know? Shouldn’t all the Conservatives be in church when the shows are on? Or does the audience skew on the older side(Which means they probably go to the earliest masses possible)?
You are overgeneralizing badly, here. Also playing to Republican spin that they are the party of church-goers. The number of people who watch the Sunday political talk shows is not that large and probably skews heavily to older, better-educated traditional conservatives rather than the larger group of fundamentalist right-wingers who spend their entire mornings in church or hanging around their churches. They will get most of their political commentary from religious radio or conservative talk shows.
Or, as many middle-aged and older conservatives (and moderates!) seem to do, they turn on Headline news, or CNN or Fox, and keep it on as background noise from the moment they get up until football or golf comes on around noon.
November 16th, 2008 at 10:51 am
That would be Saturday evening Mass.
OT: Which was the service my family always attended. Everyone in the neighborhood assumed we were Jewish.
November 16th, 2008 at 10:57 am
Can people stop using “progressive” as though it’s the standard alternative to “conservative”? If you hate the word “liberal” so much, use “Democrats” and “Republicans”, since that seems to be what you mean in this case. “Progressive” is just a terrible word which all right thinking people should avoid.
November 16th, 2008 at 11:04 am
errrrm. let’s take a look at MTP’s roundtable today:
Tom Friedman, NYT (davos-class enviro-liberal)
Tavis Smiley, (liberal PBS host)
Andrea Mitchell, (standard-issue Georgetown liberal)
Katty Kay, BBC (probably even to the left of this blog)
nothing but conservatives, clearly…
November 16th, 2008 at 11:21 am
Tom Friedman, NYT (davos-class enviro-liberal)
What? Just because he promotes solutions to our energy problems?
Tavis Smiley, (liberal PBS host)
And you know this how? What makes him a liberal exactly?
Andrea Mitchell, (standard-issue Georgetown liberal)
Yeah, a standard issue Georgetown liberal would marry an Ayn Rand disciple.
Katty Kay, BBC (probably even to the left of this blog)
She could be a Tory. How do you know she isn’t?
November 16th, 2008 at 11:38 am
Wait, wait, so when conservatives are in power, they dominate because the shows need to reflect the view of those in power. Then when conservatives are not in power, they should still dominate because now the shows need to counterbalance the view of those in power?
So in this formulation, when does liberal/progressives/Democrats get to dominate? Ok, not dominate, at least getting 50/50 coverage.
If this is the logic, how come when conservatives were in power, liberal/progressives/Democrats didn’t get to dominate to, you know, counterbalance the view of those holding high office?
Or is Matt being sarcastic here, and I’m just not getting it?
November 16th, 2008 at 11:43 am
This is pretty stupid. Obviously the GOP types are on to answer the standard post-election “you f*cked up! what do you do now?” questions. There’s a lot better television in that than “wow, democrats! you rock!”
November 16th, 2008 at 11:48 am
I suspect Kervick is right: it’s the audience demographics, stupid. Would anyone be surprised to find out that the audience skews whiter and older than the electorate? (I’d love to know if it skews rural or Southern.) Maybe this evokes some questions about the extent to which these shows are meant to function as news and analysis programs rather than entertainment, but you don’t need a nefarious explanation to make sense of the bias.
November 16th, 2008 at 11:52 am
First, I’d like to thank my white brothers and sisters for their intelligent comments on this website. (What is race but extended family?)
Second,I’d like to note:
Most of the people listed in this study are not “conservatives” but neocons.
————
SIGNATURE:
The white patriot’s Coat of Arms: gens alba conservanda est (the white race must be saved)
—-
T.S. Eliot: “White Trash” is a white person who fornicates with a non-white.
—-
BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA’S DECLARATION OF WAR AGAINST EUROPEAN AMERICANS.
Obama has supported:
(A) Reparations. Redistributing money from European Americans (Whites) to blacks, mestizos, and Asians.
(B) Criminalizing white parents who refuse to let their children practice miscegenation.
(C) Using “hate crime” laws to silence any criticism from European Americans.
(D) Using Third World immigration to overwhelm European American majorities.
(E) Maintaining anti-white affirmative action programs
(F) Creating a mandatory “America Serves” community-service program to indoctrinate and deracinate young European Americans
—-
From evolutionary philosophy email list: “Children of mixed, white-black, marriages identify 99% of the time as black and detest European Americans (whites). Why? They almost always look black (eye color, hair texture, nose shape, skin color, etc.). Obama wrote: “I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother’s white race.”"
November 16th, 2008 at 11:56 am
Does Matt let actual Neonazis post here now?
November 16th, 2008 at 11:56 am
As long as this trend continues, to adapt a phrase that Nancy Reagan once made famous:
“Just don’t watch.”
November 16th, 2008 at 11:56 am
“I suspect Kervick is right: it’s the audience demographics, stupid. Would anyone be surprised to find out that the audience skews whiter and older than the electorate?”
That might be true, but the audience demographic also I think skew Washington type, political junkies and political reporters. The problem is, what appears in these shows then gets regurgitated as conventional wisdom by journalists. So even though only a small percentage of people watch these shows, their influence are significant because of who actually watch them. That is why the “we are a center-right nation’ meme will continue to dominate the conversation.
November 16th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Brilliant Quote…i’d like to make a distinction though between what you’re talking about (conservative vs liberal guests)vs the kind of questions actually being asked on these shows. The reason why commenter number 1 and i for myself don’t watch those shows are because they are designed to provide accountability to and for the public. Russert and others know before hand where and where they cannot go. This is extremely frustrating…its like Russert knew what kind of responses he would get from his guests and adjusted the questions accordingly…what Russert should’ve done is, instead if ignoring those biases, he should’ve asked the questions designed to elicit the most accountability, and if he were to be stonewalled, he should keep asking the question over and over again, exposing the guest as not being 100% truthful…i’d say this is at the heart of whats wrong with sunday news shows and why we don’t watch them
November 16th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
clarification…
The reason why commenter number 1 and i for myself don’t watch those shows are because they are designed to provide accountability to and for the public, when in fact they do no such thing.
November 16th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Saying that the audience for these shows skews conservative..well i don’t know the evidence for this. But it’s a self-fulfilling excuse: I’ll admit, as a liberal Dem, I stopped watching because the panels are all filled with Republican apologists and operatives. So, now that they’ve driven away viewers like me, they get to use this as an excuse…to have even more Republicans dominating! Heads you win, tails I lose, etc.
November 16th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
I appreciate the post. Especially after both Obama’s win and media coverage of McCain lies, there’s been a tendency in blogs to triumphalism, directed at oneself. Either bloggers proved the mainstream media irrelevant, or bloggers are what turned the media against McCain. I still doubt the latter, figuring that they just took it personally when he stopped treating them like best of friends. And the former alternative is plain dangerous.
One explanation, in addition to those in other comments, is simply this: the right cares enough about the mainstream media to ride it heavily. The left is naturally grass roots and happy to revel in alternatives. Take a look today at the public editor in the Times. Once again, he’s responding, somewhat sympathetically in the end, to what’s obviously a flood of right-wing mail. They go right for the jugular.
November 16th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
I only tuned in to “This Week” to watch Paul Krugman kick George Will’s ass again, and he did. This time, George Will decided to spout off traditional right wing inanities about how FDR prolonged the Great Depression, and it was beautiful to just watch him get shut down in 1 sentence. Watch the discussion on why George Will thinks investment slowed in the Depression.
November 16th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
By the way, when assessing the guest ratios on these programs, never forget that the default (however ridiculous) assumption is that the hosts themselves are all extreme crazy liberals, therefore the guests should be right wingers just to balance the hosts.
The hosts themselves participate in this game because they laughably imagine themselves as tough, crusading journalists who will ask the hard questions, thus obviating the need for actual liberal guests & commentators to ‘balance’.
It’s all absurd. They’ll continue to find any excuse to skew as hard to the right as they can get away with, as they’ve done for the past 30 years.
November 16th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
One explanation, in addition to those in other comments, is simply this: the right cares enough about the mainstream media to ride it heavily. The left is naturally grass roots and happy to revel in alternatives.
If these shows just did real journalism and broke real news, and held public officials to account “the left” would be happy to watch as well as continue to use our “alternatives.” Whatever those are…anyways it would be good television instead of predictable hackery.
November 16th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
“Or is Matt being sarcastic here, and I’m just not getting it?”
To ask the question is to know the answer.
November 16th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
A good question to ask would be, when Democrats and liberals fuck up, and need to be exposed, will sunday news shows be more inclined to ask slightly more “revealing” and “direct” questions. I don’t think the boundaries will change too much. Another question I’d like to ask is, is the stronger a guest’s or politician’s liberal reputation in the its base and amongst the village correspond to the moderator’s license to ask “tougher” questions. By tougher questions, I just mean standard journalism?
November 16th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
And there’s also the major problem of instead of debunking conservative minsinformation, they allow it to play into the debate. This in turn fucks up our society as we’re now having debates based in non-realities. How can we be a productive society when half of our political population is dedicated to adding to the “confusion” and our media elites are either clueless or indifferent to it…and the country suffers.
November 16th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Real liberals prefer to read the Sunday NYT and listen to NPR. Outside of the Beltway world who watches these shows? Here in Boston I’ve yet to meet a single person who gave a shit about Tim Russert for example. The political world of the Sunday chat shows is a very small and parochial one.
November 16th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
But vanya…it could be a bigger one, if they just did their jobs!
November 16th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
First, I’d like to thank my white brothers and sisters for their intelligent comments. (What is race but extended family?)
Second:
John, I am in no way a “neo nazi.” In fact, I despise neonazis.
If there are any white European Jews who wish to join me in defending the West from the Third World hordes, then they are by all means welcome to join.
————
SIGNATURE:
The white patriot’s Coat of Arms: gens alba conservanda est (the white race must be saved)
—-
T.S. Eliot: “White Trash” is a white person who fornicates with a non-white.
—-
BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA’S DECLARATION OF WAR AGAINST EUROPEAN AMERICANS.
Obama has supported:
(A) Reparations. Redistributing money from European Americans (Whites) to blacks, mestizos, and Asians.
(B) Criminalizing white parents who refuse to let their children practice miscegenation.
(C) Using “hate crime” laws to silence any criticism from European Americans.
(D) Using Third World immigration to overwhelm European American majorities.
(E) Maintaining anti-white affirmative action programs
(F) Creating a mandatory “America Serves” community-service program to indoctrinate and deracinate young European Americans
—-
From evolutionary philosophy email list: “Children of mixed, white-black, marriages identify 99% of the time as black and detest European Americans (whites). Why? They almost always look black (eye color, hair texture, nose shape, skin color, etc.). Obama wrote: “I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother’s white race.”"
November 16th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Is Nigel just going to keep posting the same thing over and over again at every post? At least 24Aheaddotcom had variations; sometimes he’s even actually responding to Matt’s post. Nigel is like the zombie version of 24Aheaddotcom.
November 16th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
This Nigel thing is pretty pathetic. I think there are clearly some people worried about their small penis sizes, given the overwhelming losses that white conservatives suffered in the last 2 elections.
November 16th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
Nigel has one off-topic moronic post that he keeps repeating irrelevant of context or applicability. He is indeed an excellent example of what us Brits call an “idiotic bloviating wanker”.
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