Who's on the News?

Who's On the News?

Study shows network news sources skew white, male & elite A study of ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News in the year 2001 shows that 92 percent of all U.S. sources interviewed were white, 85 percent were male and, where party affiliation was identifiable, 75 percent were Republican.

Conducted for FAIR by the media analysis firm Media
Tenor, the study shows that the big three nightly news
shows rely heavily on society's most powerful groups
when they report the news of the day. More than one in
four sources were politicians-- George W. Bush alone
made up 9 percent of all sources-- versus a mere 3
percent for all non-governmental advocacy groups, the
sources most likely to present an alternative view to
the government's.

Even before the September 11 attacks, Republicans made up a full 68 percent of partisan sources (which surged to 87 percent after the attacks). These figures should dispel the myth of a liberal or pro-Democrat news bias, but don't necessarily prove a conservative or Republican slant. Rather, they reflect a strong
tendency of the networks to turn to the party in power
for information. Sixty-two percent of all partisan
sources were administration officials; when these are
set aside, the remaining partisan sources were 51
percent Republican and 48 percent Democrat, suggesting a strong advantage overall for the party that holds the White House.

Big business, too, was overrepresented. In a year in
which the country lost 2.4 million jobs, corporate
representatives appeared about 35 times more
frequently than did union representatives, accounting
for 7 percent of sources versus labor's 0.2 percent.

Women made up only 15 percent of all sources (14
percent on ABC and CBS, and 18 percent on NBC), and were rarely featured as experts. Women were
particularly poorly represented in the categories of
professional and political sources, which were only 9
percent female. More than half of the women who
appeared on the network news in 2001 were presented as ordinary Americans (as opposed to experts of some kind), versus 14 percent of male sources.

Racial imbalances in sourcing were dramatic across the board. ABC, CBS and NBC each featured a lineup where 92 percent of U.S. sources were white and 7 percent were black. Other groups were even more strikingly underrepresented, with 0.6 percent of all sources being Latino, 0.6 percent Arab-American and 0.2 percent Asian-American. Out of a total of 14,632
sources, only one (on NBC) was identified as Native
American.

For all the hype about the "death of network news,"
the fact remains that approximately one quarter of
television-viewing homes in America tune in ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News or NBC Nightly News on an average weeknight-- that's about two-thirds of the U.S. public that claims to follow current events regularly. It serves the country poorly when, as these findings show, broadcast news functions more as a venue for the claims and opinions of the powerful than as a democratic forum for public discussion and education.



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The full study, "Power Sources," appears in the June
2002 issue of FAIR's magazine, Extra!. Below are some
excerpts of the data. To go straight to the full
study, visit:
http://www.fair.org/extra/0205/power_sources.html

Race of U.S. Sources, Where Identifiable White Black
Latino Arab-Am. Asian-Am. Native Am.
ABC 92 % 7 % 0.5 % 0.5 % 0.3 % 0 %
CBS 92 % 7 % 0.7 % 0.7 % 0.3 % 0 %
NBC 92 % 7 % 0.6 % 0.6 % 0.2 % 0.024 %
TOTAL 92 % 7 % 0.6 % 0.6 % 0.2 % 0.008 %


Gender of Sources Men Women
ABC 86 % 14 %
CBS 86 % 14 %
NBC 82 % 18 %
TOTAL 85 % 15 %


Partisan Affiliation of Sources, Where Identifiable
Republican Democrat 3rd Party/Independent
ABC 73 % 27 % 0.7 %
CBS 76 % 23 % 1.2 %
NBC 75 % 25 % 0.2 %
TOTAL 75 % 24 % 1 %


*62% of all partisan sources were administration
officials; George Bush alone accounted for 33% of the
total. When these are set aside, the remaining
partisan sources were 51% Republican and 48% Democrat,
suggesting a strong advantage overall for the party
that held the White House.

Total Partisan Sources Before & After Sept. 11
Republican Democrat 3rd Party/Independent
Before 9/11 68 % 31 % 1 %
After 9/11 87 % 13 % 0.1 %


Due to rounding, not all numbers add up to 100
percent. Based on data compiled by Media Tenor, a
non-partisan German-based media analysis firm, the
study includes all reports on ABC World News Tonight,
CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News from January 1,
2001 through December 31, 2001-- a total of 14,632
individual sources in 18,765 individual reports.
Analysis by Ina Howard, U.S. Research Director of
Media Tenor International.

For the full study, visit:
http://www.fair.org/extra/0205/power_sources.html