Monday, July 16, 2007

White Sunday



The post speaks for itself. But, then again, read it and let us know what you think.


Sunday Shutout: the lack of Gender & Ethnic diversity on Sunday Morning Talk Shows

Source: Media Matters

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.

And the top-rated Sunday show -- Meet the Press -- shows the least diversity of all. The NBC program is the most male and nearly the most white (Face the Nation beats it out by 1 percentage point), and it has the highest proportion of white males to all other guests.

A breakdown of the guests who appeared on the Sunday shows in 2005 and 2006 shows that men dominate these shows. In fact, men outnumber women by a 4-to-1 ratio on average.


The divide is even starker when it comes to race/ethnicity: On average, there were nearly seven white guests for every guest of any other race/ethnicity. On Meet the Press and Face the Nation, there were nearly nine white guests for every guest of another race/ethnicity.


Fox News Sunday and This Week have a slightly higher degree of diversity than the other two programs, which are virtually identical. This Week's higher proportion of Asian-Americans can be attributed to the frequent appearances of Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria in the program's roundtable discussion. Fox News Sunday's higher proportion of African-Americans can be attributed to the weekly appearance of National Public Radio senior correspondent Juan Williams. (Williams accounted for 99 of the 126 appearances by an African-American on the program during these two years.) Aside from those notable exceptions, approximately nine out of every 10 guests on the Sunday shows are white.

More HERE

2 comments:

Nancy Hanks said...

Agree - for a more "colorful" dialogue about the Sunday talk shows, check out Fred Newman and Jackie Salit's Talk/Talk on independentvoting.org....
Nancy

Constructive Feedback said...

Wow. You mean to tell me that "Fox News". Sorry, I mean "Faux News" has more Blacks on than these others? No way. And Black folks aren't even supposed to watch Faux due to all of the internal pressure not to. Go figure.

And to think in a different study ABC's program with George Stephanopoulos was deemed "The Whitest". I guess his diversity training with the Clinton Administration didn't stick.


(PS- I have to let you know how much I throughly enjoy your daily "Truth Teller In Spotlight" selections. You have really thrown some zingers at me. I mean - all of them have been straight up LEFTISTS. Just a coincidence I suppose. Makes for good entertainment though)