Media rationalized favoring republicans because they were "in power"

[Enrique]

This will be a handy reminder when they continue to do so during Obama's administration...


http://mediamatters.org/items/200703140002

After the initial 2006 report, "If It's Sunday, It's Conservative," which analyzed more than 7,000 guests on the Sunday shows during the Clinton and Bush presidencies and found a Republican-conservative tilt during both administrations, network executive producers attributed their lack of balance to the Republican control of Congress and the White House.

2006 RESPONSES:

"Republicans are in power. I bet you'd find the same thing during Clinton's administration." -- Carin Pratt, executive producer of CBS' Face the Nation

"Members of the administration -- members of the president's staff and cabinet, most of whom are Republican -- are often guests on the show. Their segments more often than not are either followed by or include a guest with an opposing voice." -- spokesperson for ABC's This Week

"One needs to consider that the party holding the presidency also has a cabinet full of major newsmaker guests that speak to U.S. policy matters -- Defense, State, Justice, Treasury, etc. The same would be true for the eight years of the Clinton administration when the cabinet was, by and large, filled with Democrats."-- Betsy Fischer, executive producer of NBC's Meet the Press

[corruptmewithpower]

1. The future is democratic.

Democrats don't all agree on everything, so future broadcasts will consist of a variety of democratic views. Diversity is a good thing.

[Enrique]

2. so far it's not happening that way

see #4:

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/top10/357

[corruptmewithpower]

3. So far?

Things are happening awfully fast, and I do hope our politicos spend some time to get a stimulus bill that will do what it needs to do, not the separate agendas of hundreds of congress members, but a real unified plan. Once we learn to do what is necessary and stop reacting to the losers, they'll cease to be newsworthy.

[snot]

6. yeah right -- when Dems OWN the media the way Reps have for the last few decades.

and I mean, like, literally, OWN.

[annabanana]

8. I think that anyone who owns a broadcast media outlet should be banned

from any government contracts. Period.

[tavalon]

4. Actually, I think until Obama does something stupid that we need to take him to task for ,

we should use all of our pent up energy to smack down the "media" whores at any chance we get. I'm not talking about Faux "News", they are beyond discredited, that's kind of like shooting fish in a barrel, fun at first, but quickly unsatisfying. Now, MSNBC and CNN need to be taken out to the woodshed regularly and I think we need to organize around this, while we have some down time. They are lying liars too because they started using the Faux methodology. We should send Helen out there to tell them to shape up.

[KharmaTrain]

5. Old Habits Die Hard...

The corporate media are both lazy and arrogant...they like to be able to control stories and use whom they want to push those narratives. To the GOOP's credit, for years they bombarded the networks with guests, "experts" and other talking heads to fill up their shows...names that still get called on as they will quickly find a camera or a way to the studio and always ready to spin. The Democrats have no such operation...no AEI or Heritage Institute pushing their "experts" all over the place...efforts that led to framing Democrats as "tax and spend" and "unpatriotic"...it was one hell of a well-oiled machine. And the corporate media loved it...they could always find someone to throw the dirt or make noise...while Democrats were "boring".

[annabanana]

7. Please remember. The media is not there for us. It is there to provide

eyeballs for the commercials. WE are the product for sale.

The media could lose money for a generation and owning it would still be "worth it" for the corporations that use it to shape "conventional wisdom" and a general acceptance of the status quo.

[Ichingcarpenter]

9. Faux has about a 5-1 ratio and MSNBC has at least a 2-1 ratio

of conservative to liberal. Meanwhile we have almost a 2/3 majority
in Congress plus the Presidency. So we should get a 4-1 ratio if they wanted
to play that game. Just start counting if they bring a counter point liberal spokesman up..... they don't, so the public just gets a repuglican viewpoint.

I hope media matters gets a response