Special Media Matters Reports

  • The Progressive Majority July 2008
    Gender and Ethnic Diversity in Prime-Time Cable News
    Media Matters for America examined four programs on each of the three cable news networks during prime time, and recorded the gender and ethnicity of every guest who appeared during the month of May 2008 -- nearly 1,700 guest appearances in all. The results demonstrate that, at least in prime time, whatever effort the networks have made to increase the diversity of their guests have borne little fruit. Although there may be more African-American political analysts appearing during the daytime hours (particularly on CNN and MSNBC) in prime time -- when the audiences are largest -- white men continue to dominate.
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  • Black and White and Re(a)d All Over September 2007
    Black and White and Re(a)d All Over: The Conservative Advantage in Syndicated Op-Ed Columns
    This project did something that has never been done before: It amassed data on the syndicated columnists published by nearly every daily newspaper in the country. While a few publications, most notably Editor & Publisher, cover the syndicated newspaper industry, no one has attempted to comprehensively assemble this information prior to now. The results show that in paper after paper, state after state, and region after region, conservative syndicated columnists get more space than their progressive counterparts.
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  • The Progressive Majority June 2007
    The Progressive Majority: Why a Conservative America Is a Myth
    Conventional wisdom says that the American public is fundamentally conservative -- hostile to government, in favor of unregulated markets, at peace with inequality, wanting a foreign policy based on the projection of military power, and traditional in its social values. But as this report demonstrates, that picture is fundamentally false.
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  • Left Behind May 2007
    Left Behind: The Skewed Representation of Religion in Major News Media
    It would surprise few people, conservative or progressive, to learn that coverage of the intersection of religion and politics tends to oversimplify both. If this oversimplification occurred to the benefit or detriment of neither side of the political divide, then the weaknesses in coverage of religion would be of only academic interest. But as this study documents, coverage of religion not only overrepresents some voices and underrepresents others, it does so in a way that is consistently advantageous to conservatives.
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  • More Reports

  • May 2007
    Sunday Shutout: The Lack of Gender & Ethnic Diversity on the Sunday Morning Talk Shows
    Not only are the Sunday morning talk shows on the broadcast networks dominated by conservative opinion and commentary, the four programs -- NBC's Meet the Press, ABC's This Week,CBS' Face the Nation, and Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday -- feature guest lists that are overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly male.
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  • May 2007
    Locked Out: The Lack of Gender and Ethnic Diversity on Cable News Continues
    During the controversy over Don Imus' remarks about the Rutgers women's basketball team, some cable-news viewers may have noticed something unusual: the presence of significantly more African-Americans. The nature of the controversy led the cable networks to seek comment from a far more diverse group of people than they ordinarily do, which begs the question: To the extent these cable programs included a more diverse guest lineup during the Imus controversy, why do they provide such diversity only when issues of race are in the news cycle?
    Read the Report
  • March 2007
    If It's Sunday, It's Still Conservative
    Special Report: How the Right Continues to Dominate the Sunday Talk Shows
    On the Sunday after the 2006 midterm elections, in which Democrats took control of Congress for the first time in a dozen years, viewers tuned in to NBC's Meet the Press to hear what the Democratic win meant for the country -- only to discover that host Tim Russert did not have any Democrats on at all. That incident is hardly an aberration. This report shows that the Sunday shows -- Meet the Press, ABC's This Week, CBS' Face the Nation, and Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday -- have consistently given Republicans and conservatives an edge over their Democratic and progressive counterparts in the last two years, the period of the 109th Congress.
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  • February 2006
    If It's Sunday, It's Conservative: An analysis of the Sunday talk show guests on ABC, CBS, and NBC, 1997 - 2005
    The Sunday-morning talk shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC are where the prevailing opinions are aired and tested, policymakers state their cases, and the left and right in American politics debate the pressing issues of the day on equal ground. Both sides have their say and face probing questions. Or so you would think. In fact, as this study reveals, conservative voices significantly outnumber progressive voices on the Sunday talk shows.
    Read the Report
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