The America Show
Memorial Day's festival of rah-rah-America movies, broadcast and cable selections,
is over. Now let the normal routine begin, the usual suspects emerge, and a long-overdue
rating of the raters enter the fray. The Yap-A-Rama festival this post-MemDay
Sunday is rated by the Hollywood Forum, in preparation for fifty-one weeks of
left-leaning commentary to offset the one brief week of Hollywood offering to
patriotism and enthusiasm for America.
Fair-&-Balanced Scoring System
Each weekend panel discussion offers a chance for insight to how the media think,
or how they behave in any case. The standard shows with wrap-segment panel discussions
-- Meet the Press, This Week, Fox News Sunday, et al -- -plus the all-panel,
all-the-time entries -- McLaughlin Group, Washington Week in Review -- are scored
by the balance and strength of players on each show, and its host, with a "0" being
perfect balance between right and left perspective and history of its panel membership.
A left-leaning takes that show into a negative range, and in the rare occasion
of a right-leaning result, the score is a positive number.
Contributor |
Media
bias is one of many to remain in the cultural combat weapons
locker, with
the final and seventh "seal of liberals' fate" being Hollywood. Small
progress has been achieved in the first six seals -- political opinion magazines,
think-tank effect on policy, campaign-methodology achievement, talk-radio, news
coverage and commentary, and blogs wrap up the history in preparation for our
final assault.
The Usual Suspects
The top of the heap is This Week [once with David Brinkley, when
it really counted], now with Georgie Porgie Stephanopolous, a Clinton political
operative whose rise to host this show was just one more proof of life of the
left in dominating the news business, and commentary. Brinkley was slowly crossing
the political Rubicon, to the rightside, when retirement left the show in the
hands of Cokie Roberts and Sam Donaldson. Some 'balance' there -- to be replaced
by a single host with Georgie boy. This week on This Week was the
typical balance: George Will as the regular conservative, paired with Robert
Reich, an ardent Clintonista and colleague of Georgie, plus the "power couple" of
TIME's Jay Carney and his babe-with-brains wife, Clare Shipman, ABC colleague
with Georgie. Scoring an early point in bashing America was Reich, discussing
the massacre focus of all the weekend shows: "We don't know how many Hadithas
there are."
Score for This Week in this first week's ratings, post-MemDay FilmFest
of patriotic fervor, is -3, with only one ardent conservative in the pack, as
the "Other George" to the show's host heralding such Clinton bias.
No show in this collection is hosted by a onetime operative from a rightwing
administration. "TW" is lucky it's not scored at -5, as a host has
great influence on the tenor of a panel, plus its selection of guests and themes,
as well as set-up pieces to start the chatter.
Tale of Two Chris's
Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, son of leftwing scion Mike Wallace,
gives the only fair-and-balanced show that might somewhat score positively, with
Brit Hume and Bill Kristol as a pair of well-presented conservatives [compared
to so many others 'chosen' by panel hosts], offsetting Susan Page of USA
Today,
and always-left [and always-wrong] Juan Williams. Page is among the least left
of the spate of lefties that dominate the booking on these panels, giving FNS
a score of +0.5, since Wallace does at time sound like he's going to get a spanking
when he next sees his lefty dad.
Then came Chris -- Matthews, another political operative of the left given a
voice and forum to spout his Tip O'Neill upbringing, with this week including
near-regular Norah O'Donnell of MSNBC [Hugh Hewitt's least-favorite news cutie],
and CNN's John Roberts sitting among Elizabeth Bumiller of the NY Times and her
colleague, softy-republican David Brooks. A 'balanced' pair of NY Times entries
is not matched elsewhere in the membership, and with Chris' history, "CM" garners
a score of -1.5 this week, which is less biased than is typical of that show.
Old Standbys
Washington Week in Review is hosted by another lefty, Gwen Ifil,
whose guests included TIME ass't. managing editor, Mike Duffy, sitting among
Doyle McManus of the LA Times [its Washington bureau chief] and David Wessel
of the Wall Street Journal, plus newcomer Janine Zacharia of Bloomberg news.
McDuffy characterized the Haditha story as a Rorschach Test of Americans' response,
and the panel generally saw the story in 'neutral' tones of those who wish never
to be seen as too-patriotic. It's mindful of a PBS panel two decades ago, in
the Fred Friendly seminars, where a hypothetical raid on American GIs was being
covered by reporters, and the news members of the panel ultimately felt they
could not warn the Americans, for they were merely observers, not Americans in
that combat situation. A sickened Marine colonel observed that he'd be expected
to sacrifice his men's blood to recover any media members who'd been wounded
in such an outbreak, and that he would do so, even while overwhelmed with nausea
for doing his duty to those who were more duty- bound to journalism than to America.
Thus, as so often is the case, "WWIR" gets a score of -4.5, even with
one ostensibly conservative WSJ reporter on the panel.
Meet the Pres" had only a two-member panel, to discuss public affairs,
contrasting with the frequent four-member group, this week including WSJ's John
Harwood with Gwen Ifil. Yep, there's Gwen again, evidence again that MTP again
goes to its kissin' cousins in journalistic incest that runs as rampant as in
any Arkansas hillbilly joke. Harwood referred regularly to a joint poll with
NBC; odd, no one wants to have a joint poll with Fox, or the Washington Times.
With Mr. Earnest as the host, Tim Russert's long history as a political operative
for the left, MTP scores a sad, but better-than-usual, -1 for this week's effort.
Bottom of the Barrel
McLaughlin Group groping makes one cry, and struggle to endure until
its end -- which I did not, as usual -- but its usual suspects include odd-but-most-rightwing
Pat Buchanan [a favorite for lefty show bookers to present as 'typical' of conservative
thought] with always-left/always-screeching/always-wrong Eleanor Clift. Oddly,
this is the one show that endures a Washington Times contribution, and onetime
political operative of the right, Tony Blankeley -- who served as Newt's chief
of staff, and has to suffer Clift's constant, incurable harangue about GI misbehavior
and America's failure to meet a standard of virtual perfection in warfare that
she would never apply to FDR or Wilson, or even LBJ. Financial Times' Caroline
Daniel filled out this bottom-feeder of yap-a-rama output. With McLaughlin himself
an odd bird, a breed akin to Huffington -- sometimes populist, sometimes traditionalist
-- the "MG" thus scores a usual-suspects' rating of -1.75, which would
be worse but for a true-conservative like Blankeley being present.
Reliable Sources has little panel output, but being the navel-gazing
entry of journalism -- the only such effort, pale though it be -- it is worth
noting its panel entry this week, with Torrie Clark representing reasoned-righties
against the hottest political babe ever to sashay in front of a camera, The
Nation's
boss, hurricane of lefty thought Katrina vanden Heuvel. Here was a case of even-matching,
with host Howie playing neutral and struggling to maintain balance of time between
the two ladies. No such luck, as Heuvel is so convinced of her righteousness
she makes the Ayatollah seem like Hamlet. Score is even on guest booking, but
the time-allocation skews it slightly, so the RS final tally is -0.5.
Institutional
Bias
The sources of such guests continue to be skewed to the
left, with only one right-speaking member heralding from
a conservative publication. This week's score for balance-of-sources
is a usual-suspects' rating of -15. Seems there needs to be some affirmative
action for conservatives, as individuals and their sponsoring institutions.
Every
show strives to have at least one woman, sometimes all-women [Ifil does this
on "WWIR" on occasion], and not infrequently a 'balance' of women
and men on the panel membership. Maybe sometime these shows will take a tally
of
conservatives and grant some affirmative action for the right.
Summary Scores, accounting for the 'weight' of each panel's total body-count
to give an average at bottom:
