Liberal Media?

Over and over again, Republicans call into question the "fairness" of journalists; they can't refer to the media without their favorite pejorative adjective "liberal"--the "liberal" media. In sticking to the claim that journalists cannot be trusted, they have successfully convinced millions of Americans that Republicans are the victims of a liberal media.  A tally of the guests on Sunday talk shows, however, indicates that Republicans are guests on those shows more than Democrats. According to Roll Call (24 January 2012),

"GOP lawmakers appeared on the Sunday shows nearly twice as often as Democratic lawmakers in 2011, a dominance far greater than the prior two years, according to a Roll Call database of Members' television appearances....[snip] the GOP lawmakers captured 64 percent of the Congressional appearances on the five shows that Roll Call tracks, and every network featured more Republican lawmakers than Democrats. Of 330 Congressional appearances tallied by Roll Call last year, 210 went to Republicans and only 120 went to Democrats — fewer if you subtract the eight appearances made by Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut Independent who caucuses with Democrats."

One of those popular media guests from the American Enterprise Institute, Norman Ornstein, has observed that his appearances on those Sunday news shows have plummeted since he and Thomas Mann, congressional scholar and senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, published a book that's created a great deal of interest--It's Even Worse than it Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism.

Greg Sargent, of The Washington Post asked Ornstein about the media reaction to their book, in which Ornstein and Mann lay most of the fault of government gridlock at the feet of Republicans. Sargent writes (Washington Post, 14 May 2012) that Ornstein:

confirmed that the book’s publicity people had tried to get the authors booked on the Sunday shows, with no success.

“Not a single one of the Sunday shows has indicated an interest, and I do find it curious,” Ornstein told me, adding that the Op ed [published in the Washington Post 27 April 2012] had well over 200,000 Facebook recommends and has been viral for weeks. “This is a level of attention for a book that we haven’t received before. You would think it would attract some attention from the Sunday shows.’

Ornstein also noted another interesting point. Their thesis takes on the media for falling into a false equivalence mindset and maintaining the pretense that both sides are equally to blame. Yet despite the frequent self-obsession of the media, even that angle has failed to generate any interest. What’s more, some reporters have privately indicated their frustration with their editorial overlords’ apparent deafness to this idea. [h/t, Kevin Drum]

So take that 'liberal media bias' meme with a huge container of salt. Republicans have little difficulty getting their views taken seriously in the news media and having oppositional views muted.