Failing at its "No. 1 goal" (expose' of Washington Journal)

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2764


Failing at its "No. 1 goal"
Lack of balance at C-SPAN’s Washington Journal
By Steve Rendall


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To test C-SPAN’s claims of fairness, Extra! studied Washington Journal’s guestlist, tabulating all 663 guests that appeared on the show in the six-month period from November 1, 2004 to April 30, 2005. Guests were classified by gender, ethnicity, party affiliation (if any) and occupation. The study also looked at the think tanks most prominently represented on the show.

Despite C-SPAN’s stated goals, Extra!’s study found Washington Journal skewing rightward, favoring Republican and right-of-center interview subjects by considerable margins over Democratic and left-of-center guests. The study also found that women, people of color and public interest viewpoints were substantially underrepresented.

Overall, people of European ancestry made up 85 percent of Washington Journal’s guestlist—563 out of 663. (Extra! was able to identify the ethnic background of more than 99 percent of guests.) People of African (26) and Asian (24) heritage accounted for 4 percent each, while those of Middle Eastern (22) and Latin American (18) descent represented 3 percent each. No Native Americans were identifiable on the guestlist from November 1, 2004 to April 30, 2005.

Looking just at U.S. guests with identifiable ethnicities (617 in all), European-Americans were even better represented, at 88 percent. African-Americans and Latinos held steady at 4 percent and 3 percent, respectively. Americans of Middle Eastern descent and Asian-Americans were each about 1 percent of guests. According to the U.S. Census, about 70 percent of Americans are white and non-Latino; about 12 percent each are Latinos of all races, and non-Latino African-Americans; about 4 percent are Asian-American and 1 percent are Native American. (Middle Eastern descent is not a census category.)

On gender, Washington Journal was even more imbalanced when compared to the general population, with a guestlist that was 80 percent male (533 guests) and 20 percent female (130), a four-to-one imbalance. Furthermore, 69 percent of guests were white males (457), while just 3 percent were women of color.

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Out of the 205 partisan guests, Republicans outnumbered Democrats nearly two to one (134 to 70): Republicans accounted for 65 percent of Washington Journal’s partisan guests, while Democrats made up 34 percent. No representative of a third party appeared during the study period.

Elected officials who appeared on Washington Journal were slightly more balanced than overall partisan guests. Of the 97 elected officials appearing on the show (senators and House members), 58 were Republican and 39 were Democrat—a 60 to 40 percent imbalance in favor of the GOP.

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Journalists accounted for nearly a third of all guests (215, or 32 percent), the largest single occupational group on Washington Journal’s guestlist. The establishment-oriented Washington Post, with 20 journalists appearing as guests, was the most visible outlet, followed by the Capitol Hill–focused Congressional Quarterly with 12 and the right-leaning Washington Times with 10. USA Today and Time each provided eight guests, while five represented the Christian Science Monitor.

Despite its declaration of balance, the Washington Journal hosted journalists from right-leaning opinion magazines more often than it did those from the left. For instance, the conservative Weekly Standard furnished three guests, as did the like-minded National Review (including National Review Online). Only two guests from the liberal American Prospect were invited on the Journal, and only one guest from the left-leaning Nation.

When opinion journalists from all outlets were included, the right-leaning bias was nearly as strong: 32 right-of-center journalists appeared, vs. 19 left-of-center reporters (even counting editor Peter Beinart, the New Republic’s pro-war editor, as being on the left). Perhaps this tilt to the right could be rationalized if right-wing magazines were distinctly more popular than their counterparts on the left, but the reverse seems to be true; Mother Jones and The Nation both best National Review’s circulation numbers by a wide margin, and The Progressive outsells the Weekly Standard and American Spectator.

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There’s no reason that the network can’t address the imbalances in its guestlist in the same spirit—if balance really is the No. 1 goal.
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big thank you to FAIR for doing this research.

wonder how WJ will answer questions about this?

(mods: I read the FAIR copyright rules and hope I got it right)

nt

Democrats, Right out numbers the Left....

In Washington...

What bothers me the most about this is that The Washington Times is even considered a valid newspaper....

They obviously squew right, and not just on the editoral, and have a tiny circulation, and yet, they are all over the media...

But the Right also has a better Think Tank infra-structure... They just dominate... The left also has a lot of people who try far too hard to stay non-partisan... And so end up diluting the message...

This is a great study...