Media & Democracy Project analyzed all 816 guests on five Sunday Shows in 2021.

[Nevilledog]

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🧵 NEW: Our team analyzed all 816 guests on five Sunday Shows in 2021.

What was our main finding?

Sunday Shows do not inform the public! Most guests are politicians, few are experts, and topics are limited.

Our full research report is available at: http://MediaAndDemocracyProject.org/sundayshows



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6:50 AM · Jun 16, 2022

STUDY: Sunday News Shows Are Not Informative Or Representative

https://www.mediaanddemocracyproject.org/sundayshows

Executive Summary
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The Sunday Shows are the flagship political and civic discussion TV programs of the major broadcast networks. They are watched by over 10 million people each week but have a much broader reach beyond that, often setting the agenda for news coverage and discussion across all media platforms. Who appears and what topics are discussed, reflects “who” and “what” the mainstream media considers to be most important. To understand this better we, the Media and Democracy Project, collected and analyzed information on every guest of the five major Sunday Shows in 2021. We covered ABC’s This Week, CBS’s Face the Nation, NBC’s Meet the Press, CNN’s State of the Union, and Fox’s Fox News Sunday. There were 816 guests appearing on 251 shows. We performed data analysis on characteristics of the guests and textual analysis of show transcripts.
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Politicians invited more than experts

We found that the most common type of guests were members of Congress and that politicians overall, including state and local politicians made up the majority of the guests. Other guests were experts who were invited to discuss topics they have deep knowledge of: medical professionals, cabinet secretaries, climate experts, CEOs, professors, community members, foreign leaders and others. Extensive analysis of the content of show transcripts found that when members of Congress discuss topics, they are more likely to talk about politics and process than substance and their policy prescriptions are more superficial.

COVID covered well but climate, and most other topics were not

We then categorized experts by policy area. Figure 1 shows the breakdown of experts by policy area and politicians by type. The Sunday Shows clearly recognized the need for expertise when discussing the pandemic. 20% of the guests were health professionals — 17% were medical experts. But they had very few experts on most other vital issues. About half a million Americans died of COVID in 2021, 250,000 died of drugs and alcohol abuse but while there were 141 experts on COVID, there was one drug policy expert. There were 11 appearances by experts on climate change — just over 1% of all guests and much fewer than the 19 by Gov. Asa Hutchinson alone (R-AR), the most frequent political guest across the five shows.
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Focus on DC insider topics increases cynicism and polarization

When politicians are the primary commenters, issues are viewed through a political lens which increases polarization. Studies have shown that a focus on political gamesmanship not only leaves the public uninformed but that “this type of reporting elevates the public’s cynicism toward politics and the issues.” This type of coverage, rather than the current reliance on politicians, would serve to inform the public much better. As a report from the Shorenstein Center documents, in the past Sunday Shows featured fewer politicians and more substance.

*snip*

[3Hotdogs]

1. The idea of these wasn't/isn't to inform anyone about anything. It is to fulfill the FCC mandate for

public service programming.

As an example, I refer to the WABC radio, Sunday morning show, "Religion On The Line." What a useless waste of broadcast electricity.