FAIR’s current study looked at 25 weeks of Special Report ’s one-on-one interview segments (6/30/03–12/19/03), finding 101 guests. FAIR classified each guest by political ideology, party affiliation (where applicable), gender and ethnicity. When FAIR first studied Special Report in 2001, the dominance of conservative guests was so overwhelming (71 percent of all guests) that we used just two ideological categories, “conservative” and “non-conservative.” The latter included guests with no discernible political ideology.
When FAIR’s second study in 2002 found conservative guests had dropped to less than half of the total, we added a “left of center” category for comparison purposes. Though the “left of center” category was more broadly defined than the “conservative” category— since many right-of-center guests were not counted as conservatives—conservatives still outnumbered those on the left, 14 to one.
Fifty-seven percent of Special Report ’s one-on-one guests during the period studied were ideological conservatives, 12 percent were centrists and 11 percent were progressives.
Twenty percent of guests were non-ideological.
Among ideological guests, conservatives accounted for 72 percent, while centrists made up 15 percent and progressives 14 percent. (The total exceeds 100 percent due to rounding.)
Viewers were roughly five times more likely to see a conservative interviewed on Special Report than a progressive.
The five-to-one conservative-to-progressive imbalance is actually a marked improvement from FAIR’s 2002 study, which found that “left-of-center” guests—three percent of the total—were outnumbered 14 to one.
In the 2002 study, however, conservative dominance was less marked, at 48 percent of total guests.
Special Report ’s guestlist shows a similarly heavy slant toward Republicans. Forty-two guests were current or former Democratic or Republican officials, candidates, political appointees or advisers. Guests who had past affiliations with both Republicans and Democrats were counted as nonpartisan; for example, Dennis Ross—having served under presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton—was classified as non-partisan.
Of the 42 partisan guests, 35 were Republicans and only seven were Democrats—a five-to-one imbalance. Furthermore, of the handful of Democrats that did appear, the majority were centrist or conservative, and frequently expressed views more typical of Republican guests.
For example, centrist Rep. Jim Marshall (10/23/03) argued that the media weren’t covering the “good news” in Iraq, while Sen. Zell Miller (11/4/03) talked about his dissatisfaction with the Democratic party and his fondness for George Bush. Thirty-four of the 35 Republicans who appeared were conservatives; only one, Noah Feldman, was classified as a centrist.
The five-to-one partisan imbalance represents a greater slant than FAIR’s 2002 study, which found Republicans outnumbering Democrats by three to two, though it is still better than FAIR’s 2001 study, which found Special Report ’s guest list favoring Republicans by more than eight to one (50 vs. 6). After the 2001 study, the show’s anchor, Fox managing editor Brit Hume, told the New York Times (7/2/01) that, though he had yet to read the findings, “if it is a reasonable question, and we find that there is some imbalance, then we’ll correct it.”
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1187
I know you are going to ignore this and say that it all comes from "Right Wing" media.
