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MMA EVLONDO C

The Trump administration’s repeal of the Environmental Protection Agency’s endangerment finding marks one of the most consequential climate and environmental rollbacks in modern U.S. history. In the aftermath of the announcement, CNN aired interviews with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, which are among the only major network appearances by either official since the repeal. Zeldin and Wright have seldom appeared on non-Fox outlets; their recent CNN interviews presented the network with rare opportunities to question senior officials directly about a coordinated policy campaign that threatens to undermine decades of climate and public health protections.

There is precedent for how the media can falter during these high‐stakes moments. For example, in 2018, after the first Trump administration attempted to bury a major federal climate report on Black Friday, all five Sunday morning political shows covered the story. However, much of that coverage featured climate denial, soft‐pedaled the findings, and framed the issue narrowly as partisan debate. The following month, in response to the outcry, then-host of NBC's Meet the Press Chuck Todd opened an episode dedicated to climate coverage by declaring that the program would no longer debate the existence of climate change, acknowledging that such framing misleads audiences and undermines urgency.

Unfortunately, in August 2025, as the Trump administration moved to erase the legal foundation for regulating climate pollution, those same dynamics resurfaced. CNN’s interviews with senior officials framed their positions as one side of a conventional political debate rather than as part of a governance strategy with immediate, material consequences for the climate, public health, and environmental enforcement.

CNN was offered rare access to top Trump climate officials at a moment of extraordinary policy consequence

CNN’s interviews with Wright and Zeldin aired a few days after the administration proposed repealing the EPA’s 2009 endangerment finding — the legal foundation for regulating greenhouse gas emissions. Rescinding the finding would gut the agency's core climate authority and open the door to deregulating emissions across multiple sectors.

These segments represented a rare opportunity for direct, public-facing accountability outside of the protective ecosystem Fox News creates for Trump administration officials. Media Matters has documented how Fox has repeatedly provided Zeldin a friendly platform to reframe deregulatory moves as economic reform and to portray climate funding as partisan waste. Fox has played the same role for other senior Trump officials, most recently including Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who used the network to defend FEMA’s response to catastrophic flooding in Texas.

These appearances, in which administration officials have often gone unchallenged, serve to reframe and defend policies that weaken environmental protections, limit federal disaster response accountability, and risk significant harm to public health. CNN’s interviews were among the few opportunities to press the officials advancing this agenda at a moment of extraordinary policy consequence.

Chris Wright’s CNN interview allowed him to spew climate denial under the guise of scientific neutrality, while Zeldin's reframed a regulatory gutting as legal housekeeping

During the August 5 episode of CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins, Energy Secretary Chris Wright used a solo, prime-time interview to promote an anti-science Department of Energy report — one designed to undercut the climate consensus and is already being cited to justify rollbacks on environmental protections. The report disputes the urgency of climate change, downplays sea level rise, and frames increased carbon dioxide as beneficial for plant growth. Wright echoed and amplified these points in the interview, adding that “nobody who is a credible economist or scientist” sees climate change as a major threat and repeating that carbon dioxide is “a fertilizer.” The interview aired again during the August 9 episode of The Source: Weekend.

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From the August 5, 2025, episode of CNN's The Source with Kaitlan Collins

Collins raised substantive issues: the report’s rushed timeline, hand-picked, climate-contrarian authors, the fact that “the EPA is already using this [report] to change its policy,” and that scientists said their work was misrepresented. But these points were handled in isolation, without sustained follow-up to clarify that the DOE document diverges sharply from the consensus positions of federal agencies such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as well as the Fifth National Climate Assessment, which was produced by the U.S. Global Change Research Program.

Wright sidestepped Collins’ EPA point by insisting the report wasn’t “radical” and was in “the conventional lines,” invoking the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report citations to give the appearance of rigor and alignment with established science, even as its conclusions distort that science. He leaned on process language — “open for public comment,” “part of a dialogue” — to shift the frame toward procedural disagreement, casting objections from scientists as normal debate rather than evidence of distortion. Collins’ choice to frame those objections as “some people say” made them easier for Wright to dismiss and reinforced the idea that this was simply another area where reasonable people can disagree.

Instead of forcing a clear accounting of the report’s aims and its role in advancing anti-climate science policy, the interview became mired in procedural talk. That shift blurred the stakes for viewers and left the core of the report — an ideologically driven, anti-science document already being used to justify rolling back climate and environmental protections — largely unexamined. In the absence of sustained scrutiny, Wright was able to present it not as a political weapon against climate science, but as a credible contribution to policymaking.

During the August 4 episode of CNN’s State of the Union, guest host Kasie Hunt opened her interview with EPA Administrator Zeldin by explaining the purpose of the EPA’s endangerment finding and asking Zeldin about climate science. She also raised the issue of the insurance crisis tied to climate risk and, toward the end of the interview, noted that Zeldin had the power to leave the rule in place. Although Hunt pressed for clarity around certain questions, most of them landed as isolated challenges rather than part of a sustained effort to correct or contextualize misleading claims.

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From the August 3, 2025, episode of CNN's State of the Union

When asked about rising insurance costs, Zeldin pivoted, saying that “there has been a greening of the planet that’s been taking place” and “it’s important to note that emissions have been down.” The first statement reframes rising carbon dioxide as a net benefit, sidestepping the severe and widespread harms associated with climate change. The second tacitly concedes the desirability of reducing emissions, yet uses that very point to argue against retaining the EPA’s core climate authority. These two points undercut each other, but more importantly, both misrepresent the stakes of the repeal. Hunt did not press Zeldin to reconcile the contradiction or to explain how either point justified removing the agency’s central regulatory tool.

The interview ended with Hunt asking, “Do you think the federal government should have a role in trying to combat climate change?” followed by her observation that Zeldin was “taking an action” and “could just leave it alone.” By then, the moment to draw clear lines between his rhetoric and the consequences of his policy had passed. Without sustained clarification, viewers were left with Zeldin’s account — one that misrepresented both the scope of the endangerment finding and the implications of its repeal.

In both interviews, the hosts surfaced substantive issues but left them as isolated exchanges, allowing senior Trump officials to reframe the stakes, deflect from the core science, and leave viewers without a clear accounting of how their actions would weaken climate protections.

A pattern of deference lets Fox-fortified narratives pass unchallenged

CNN’s handling of the Wright and Zeldin appearances reflects a broader pattern in which media figures conducting high-stakes interviews with senior Trump officials avoid sustained challenges to the administration’s narratives. During Earth Month this year, CBS’ Face the Nation hosted Zeldin and asked about his efforts to clawback $20 billion in climate funding — but offered no pushback when he relied on vague economic justifications, procedural deflections, and claims that had already been dismissed by a federal judge. The exchange also never addressed the environmental justice consequences of Zeldin’s actions or the public health costs of EPA workforce cuts.

In June 2024, Face the Nation gave Doug Burgum space to deny that then-candidate Trump had asked oil executives to direct campaign contributions to him. Fox News later celebrated the segment as a rhetorical win for Burgum, citing the host’s passivity as proof he had neutralized the issue. That reaction underscores how Fox functions as both a refuge for Trump officials and a megaphone for their preferred narratives. For years, the network has given these officials space to frame regulatory rollbacks as economic reform and climate funding as partisan waste.

When administration officials appear on mainstream platforms, the bar must be higher

Although CNN and other major TV outlets have produced strong reporting on the administration’s anti-climate actions, that reporting did not surface during these interviews. Instead, Wright and Zeldin were not pressed on documented harms or contradictions. When mainstream interviews fail to apply sustained, adversarial questioning, they create accountability gaps that allow harmful narratives to go unchallenged.

Live interviews with senior officials driving climate rollbacks are rare moments for direct, public accountability. These are also moments when weak framing or deference can shape public understanding long after the segment ends. The stakes are material: The decisions under discussion affect emissions, public health, and the resilience of vulnerable communities. Here are a few dos and don’ts for meeting those stakes in real time.

Don’ts:

Don't frame regulatory dismantling as a routine policy disagreement. False balance treats harmful rollback agendas as acceptable political variance.
Don't allow legal deflection to replace accountability. Citing precedent or public comment does not absolve responsibility for outcomes.
Don't underplay the stakes of live appearances. Deference in the moment can’t be undone after the fact.

Dos:

Do anchor questions in real-world consequences. Climate policy must be discussed in terms of its impact on emissions, health, and vulnerable communities.
Do hold officials to their records, not their rhetoric. Framing actions as legally constrained or procedurally neutral cannot erase their material impacts.
Do integrate existing reporting into the interview. Investigations that have already found harm or wrongdoing must inform live questioning.

Holding the most powerful decision-makers to account in these moments is not just good journalism — it is essential to making the stakes of their actions visible to the public.

### Fox News shields EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin as he promotes the most destructive climate rollback in EPA history

07/31/25 12:45 PM EDT

### In March, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin denied NY Times reporting that the agency would eliminate its research arm. On Friday, the EPA did just that.

07/21/25 5:18 PM EDT

### Fox News runs defense for Trump administration on its delayed response to Texas flooding

07/17/2

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Broadcast news shows and print outlets largely ignored Gen. Milley calling Trump “fascist to the core”

Only one article from The Washington Post and one segment from NBC News covered the comments

Written by Tyler Monroe

Published 10/14/24 mma

National broadcast news networks and print outlets buried recent comments from Donald Trump’s former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff retired Gen. Mark Milley calling the former president “fascist to the core.” Almost all broadcast news shows and the major newspapers ignored the comments, with only NBC’s Meet the Press and The Washington Post covering Milley’s “fascist” remarks.

Reporting surfaced on October 11 that Milley called Trump “fascist to the core” in comments reported in journalist Bob Woodward's upcoming book War. The comments were the latest in a long back and forth between Milley and Trump, with the former president previously suggesting Milley be executed for his comments that Trump was “shameful” and “complicit” in the January 6 attack.

Broadcast and print news almost completely ignored Milley’s characterization of Trump as “fascist.” From October 11, when the comments were first reported, through 12 p.m. ET on October 14, ABC’s Good Morning America, World News Tonight, and This Week; CBS’ Mornings, Evening News, and Face the Nation; and NBC’s Today and Nightly News all failed to mention Milley's comments. Among corporate broadcast news programs, only NBC's Meet the Press discussed the comments at all, with anchor Kristen Welker asking former Rep. Liz Cheney about Milley's comments.

Media Matters also reviewed print articles across five of the top U.S. newspapers by circulation for coverage of Milley's comments and found only one article in The Washington Post mentioning them. The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal all failed to cover Milley's comments calling Trump fascist.

On the October 11, 2024, edition of All in with Chris Hayes, Ian Bassin stressed the need for the American press to put the comments from Milley on “banner headlines.”

Milley's description of Trump as a fascist is just the latest example of a former Trump official denouncing the extremism of the former president.
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Home | The mainstream media is full of incompetent idiots

The mainstream media is full of incompetent idiots

D. Earl Stephens

andRaw Story

January 13, 2024}:

Let’s get right to it …

Too many journalists who occupy, or spend their professional lives orbiting the newsrooms of our mainstream media are incompetent, and most likely working in their important jobs for all the wrong reasons.

Worse yet, most of the leaders of these newsrooms are either bought-off corporate tools or dangerous innocents, who have absolutely no idea what they are doing in their crucial jobs, while the end of life as we know it hinges in large part on their ability to sound the alarms and let the world know what is at stake this year.

READ: Behold: Donald Trump the chosen son — and religious con

I am sadly not wrong about this.

At a time when we’ve never needed fair, hard-hitting coverage of the fascist Republican Party’s attack on our Democracy more, our journalists are catastrophically failing us, and the Fourth Estate as a whole is facing a crisis in confidence from the American public that might ultimately lead to its extinction.

The decline of the press and their inability to do the most basic thing in the news business — identify and cover the biggest stories of the day — has hit extreme levels.

How else do you explain the dangerous and shoddy coverage of the most ominous internal threat to the United States of America since the Civil War: the end of our Democracy.

How is it after watching and listening to the anti-American deviant, Donald Trump, and his pathetic minions in the Republican Party recklessly comport themselves can our media forget that one of the first things to go under fascist, authoritarian regimes is their right to conduct their business freely?

These people are inches from losing their professional freedoms because in large part of their blinding incompetence, and we are THIS close to losing our Democracy forever because they seemingly haven’t even gotten as far as identifying this very real threat to us, and their livelihood.

It boggles the mind, and as a veteran of nearly 30 years in newsrooms, 16 of those years in leadership, I am absolutely disgusted.

How DARE they.

Ever since the fatal election of the racist, soulless Trump in 2016, the press has come under fire for how they helped enable one of the darkest days in American history.

This is not breaking news.

Many members of the working press have since acknowledged their mistakes in the run-up to that election. Their failure to call a lie a lie and a racist a racist, for instance, helped normalize the savage, Trump.

Their nonstop coverage of his unhinged, heinous rallies where he insulted the disabled, and our war veterans, and failure to easily draw the stark distinctions between him and the accomplished, decent woman he was running against was journalistic malpractice.

Many of them told us they learned their lesson, and if Trump, or something like him, ever ran again they would be ready.

If only.

They have actually gotten worse.

The examples are many but let’s take a look this past weekend for just one sample of their massive incompetence these days.

Consider what happened on Meet the Press Sunday. This news program used to be the shining example of nonpartisan, hard-hitting journalism. Power was called into account on a weekly basis.

Now it is a complete mess that has no sense of itself. It’s where politicians eagerly go to recite their party’s talking points, and slap back hard at any host who dares to interrupt them.

On Sunday’s episode of ineptitude, Meet the Press host Kristen Walker was interviewing Elise Stefanik, the House Republican chairwoman.

Stefanik is currently steeped in warped, dark MAGA propaganda. Like many woman in her party, she is strutting down every runway she can find, to see if maybe, just maybe she can catch the vulgar Trump’s bloodshot eye, and have the honor of being his ceremonial whipping-girl on his fascist ticket.

It’s disgusting.

Sure as hell, it took Stefanik no time at all to do her Radical Right routine of telling one known lie after another. The doe-eyed Welker tried to politely nudge her back in her lane, before Stefanik knocked her off the road altogether, and took control of the wheel.

Stefanik: “We will see if this (2024 election) is a legal and valid election.”

Welker: “Will you only commit to certifying the results (of the election) if former President Trump wins? Does that mean only if former President Trump wins?”

Stefanik: “No, it means if they’re constitutional. What we saw in 2020 was unconstitutional circumventing of the Constitution, not going through state legislators when it comes to changing election law.”

I mean, holy shit. In other words, if the election doesn’t work out for us democratically, we’ll just once again move onto some hard-core lawbreaking to change minds.

Short of hitting back with facts, Welker should have just ended the interview about nine times, but didn’t.

Instead, Stefanik just kept backing up and running over her, and was going completely unchallenged when she vomited that the convicted attackers of our Democracy were actually “January 6 hostages" and should be pardoned.

Excuse me?

What in the hell is going on here?

Welker and Meet the Press aren’t the lone offenders of course. The New York Times and The Washington Post can spend three days reporting on completely unreliable polls they paid to conduct, while Trump spends his time literally telling all us “vermin” the new and creative ideas he has come up with for burning everything to the ground around him.

Those newspapers barely even take a sniff at the madman’s unhinged plan of attack, and instead spend their editorial resources wondering how he is polling in some diner in Pennsylvania.

Last month, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was on Capitol Hill literally begging for help while his country fights against our shared enemy, Vladimir Putin, the radical right-wing Heritage Foundation decided it was a good time to fly in one of Putin’s greatest allies, Hungary’s leader, Viktor Orbán, for talks with unspecified Republican members of Congress.

You couldn’t ask for a more stark juxtaposition of what the two parties stand for than that. You also couldn’t ask for a better example of how little the press cares for the subject of our Democracy.

Orbán’s visit barely got a sniff in the mainstream media.

Ironically, we only know of this meeting thanks to some tremendous reporting from outside the mainstream media’s toxic bubble by the The Guardian.

In their story about this fascist confab, The Guardian illuminated that:

Hungary has been portrayed by conservative media as an anti-“woke” paradise and model for the United States. Some far-right Republicans, such as Kari Lake and Paul Gosar, said they would like to see the “Hungarian model” transplanted to the US, especially when it comes to immigration and family policies. CPAC went to Hungary for the second time this year, and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson shot multiple episodes in Hungary touting Orbán policies.

Orbán has returned the favour by lavishing praising Trump … The Hungarian prime minister has criticized the multiple federal indictments against the former US president and called the judicial procedure a “very communist methodology” in a recent interview with Carlson.

So on December 11, while Democrats were trying to rally support for Ukraine, Republicans in Congress were meeting behind closed doors with a Hungarian dictator, Tucker Carlson bestie, and close Putin ally.

So, I say again: What in the hell is going on here?

I am sympathetic to a point to the argument that the corporate overlords who own too large a percentage of our major media companies are squeezing budgets, and worse, trying to dictate editorial policy in their newsrooms.

I know this is a popular theory, but it doesn’t explain why the alleged journalists who populate these places put up with that. Have they no shame?

I know scores of damn good journalists who were forced out of the business because of the death of newspapers over the past couple of decades, and the ever-shrinking opportunities to apply their journalistic expertise elsewhere.

There’s not one of them I talk to, however, who can believe what they are seeing with the pathetic coverage a majority of the press is giving to our threat to Democracy. There’s not one of them who wouldn’t have walked out the door and sounded the alarm if they had been ordered by management to ignore this threat.

So I’m back to where I started.

I now believe the media’s appalling treatment of the attack on our Democracy is a simple matter of incompetence, and/or lack of guts on the part of too many in the journalism field. Welker’s display on Sunday was the best example you’ll ever see of both.

What are these so-called journalists doing in their editorial meetings each day when they are discussing the news?

Why haven’t they setup Democracy Desks that do nothing but cover the greatest threat to America in 160 years? Why aren’t they breaking down and detailing what is at stake if, God forbid, our Democracy is overrun by a fascist leader who will never leave office and starts jailing them if they don’t toe the party line?

You’ll find some phenomenal reporting on this subject in places like The Atlantic, but we need more than monthly deep dives into this attack if we hope to survive it.

I never thought I’d type this, but the only place I feel I can get accurate reporting these days is when a natural disaster is threatening America. If a hurricane is bearing down on the United States, you can count on mass pandemonium, and all-hands-on-deck treatment in all these newsrooms.

It’s a bit much, but at least there is some real urgency in the way they approach these looming disasters.

They can’t wait to report on all the gory possibilities if we take a direct hit by one of these storms. They remind us what we need to do to be prepared, and where we can go to get help if necessary.

They make sure we understand the stakes.

They do this because they want to protect their readers and viewers. They do this because people are vulnerable. They do this because they never want to be accused of ignoring such an ominous threat. They do this because they know people are watching, and there is some real money to be made ...

If only they were smart enough to approach the catastrophic threat to our Democracy with the same sense of responsibility and vigor.

NOW READ: A 38-year-long Republican scam may soon be over — thanks to women

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. Follow @EarlofEnough and on his website.

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Sunday shows ignore report that Trump received money from foreign countries while president | Media Matters for America

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/sen-ron-johnson-runs-fox-news-whine-about-meet-press-interview

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/sean-hannity-2657922552/

On Thursday, August 18, CNN announced that it had canceled the Sunday-morning show “Reliable Sources” and that host Brian Stelter would be leaving the network. Reportedly, CNN’s new CEO and chairman, Chris Licht — who has said that he wants more “straight news reporting” and less commentary at CNN — disliked “Reliable Sources” and viewed Stelter, who spent a lot of time debunking Fox News hosts, as overly opinionated.

Liberal economist Robert Reich, in an op-ed published by The Guardian GUK on August 24, is highly critical of CNN’s decision to cancel “Reliable Sources” — and he views it as a glaring example of CNN changing for the worse. Reich, who served as secretary of labor in the Clinton Administration and teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, essentially argues that if “Reliable Sources” had been canceled because it had terrible ratings, that would be one thing. But he implies that Stelter was fired for political reasons and a misguided effort to offer “balanced journalism” at a time when extremists who are threatening U.S. democracy have no interest in balance.

“For several years,” Reich observes, “Brian Stelter’s Sunday show on CNN, ‘Reliable Sources,’ has been a reliable source of intelligent criticism of Fox News, right-wing media in general, Trumpism, and the increasingly authoritarian lurch of the Republican Party. Last week, CNN abruptly canceled the show and effectively fired Stelter and his staff. Why? The show was commercially successful. Its ratings have suffered somewhat lately, but it was doing better than several of CNN’s prime-time shows.”

Reich adds that “there appears to be more to” the cancelation of “Reliable Sources” than Licht’s view of Stelter’s “opinionated style.”

“Licht has told CNN staff they should stop referring to Donald Trump’s ‘Big Lie’ because the phrase sounds like a Democratic Party talking point,” Reich notes. “Licht also wants more ‘straight news reporting,’ along with more conservative guests. What’s motivating Licht? Follow the money. CNN’s new corporate overseer is Warner Brothers Discovery Inc., which now owns what used to be Time Warner, including CNN. The CEO of Warner Brothers Discovery is David Zaslav. Zaslav has been prodding Licht to reposition CNN to the center, and be a network preferred by ‘everybody.… Republicans, Democrats.’ But CNN is never going to be the network preferred by Republicans. Fox News has that sewn up.”

Reich continues, “As Republicans move further rightward into the netherworld of authoritarianism, there’s even less possibility that CNN’s news coverage will be able to satisfy them. Nor should CNN even try. If we’ve learned anything from Trump and his lapdogs at Fox News, it’s that facts, data and logic are no longer relevant to the Republican base. Even ‘straight news reporting’ depends on what stories are featured, which facts are highlighted and the context surrounding the news. This necessitates judgment and values.”

Liberal Washington Post opinion columnist Greg Sargent has stressed that when mainstream news outlets are reporting on someone as far to the right as Doug Mastriano, the GOP gubernatorial nominee in Pennsylvania, they shouldn’t normalize extremism in the name of “balance.” And Reich, similarly, argues that “straight news reporting” becomes problematic if it downplays attacks on democracy.

“The anti-democracy movement in America, as elsewhere, is among the biggest issues confronting us today,” Reich warns. “Is reporting on it considered ‘straight news’ or ‘opinion?’ Wouldn’t failing to report on it in a way that sounded alarms be a gross dereliction of duty? Besides, how is it possible to report on (former President Donald) Trump or Rudy Giuliani or any number of today’s Republican leaders and not speak of the Big Lie, or say they’ve broken norms, if not laws? So, what’s motivating Zaslav? Keep following the money.”

Reich adds, “The leading shareholder in Warner Brothers Discovery is John Malone, a multibillionaire cable magnate. Malone was a chief architect in the merger of Discovery and CNN. Malone describes himself as a ‘libertarian,’ although he travels in right-wing Republican circles. In 2005, he held 32 percent of the shares of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. He is on the board of directors of the Cato Institute. In 2017, he donated $250,000 to Trump’s inauguration. Malone has said he wants CNN to be more like Fox News because, in his view, Fox News has ‘actual journalism.’ Malone also wants the ‘news’ portion of CNN to be ‘more centrist.’”

On the final broadcast of “Reliable Sources,” Stelter stressed that it’s “not partisan” to defend “democracy” or “stand up to demagogues” and that “we must make sure we don’t give platforms to those who are lying to our faces” — and Reich applauds that statement.

“Sadly, there are still many in America — and not just billionaires like Malone — who believe that holding Trump accountable for what he has done, and continues to do, to this country is a form of partisanship, and that such partisanship has no place in so-called ‘balanced journalism,’” Reich writes. “This view is itself dangerous.”

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i forgot fox had them; was there ever any standards/integrity that wd not be crossed/ ppl who wd not quality/ be invited/ refused? if all news, esp on fox is just opinion/bloviator, then no one barred, plus heat is good for ratings, and the purpose of fox is to insult dems, even more than lift gop

https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/journalism-lies/

On Sunday, NBC's "Meet the Press" interviewed United States Senator Ron Johnson. ABC's "This Week" interviewed House Minority Whip Steve Scalise. CBS's "Face the Nation" interviewed United States Senator Lindsey Graham. "Fox News Sunday" interviewed United States Senator Rand Paul. They're Republicans and they had a message for a combined television audience of millions: Donald Trump won.

Not in those exact words, but that was the clear implication. This thing or that thing—it didn't really matter what thing—meant in their "view" that the former president was robbed and the legitimacy of the current president, Joe Biden, is somehow suspect.

I bring this up not because yesterday was a disaster for journalism and the integrity of the public square (though it was that). I bring this up because it seems to me an answer to the question that haunts democratic discourse: How does a republic deal with parties that lie so intensely, so voluminously and so shamelessly? Some say we should afford them the same respect we ourselves would expect. If we call them liars, that might encourage them to lie more given the outrage of being called liars. Better to check their facts, state the truth and move on in hopes that they behave in kind.

This was certainly the thinking behind Frank Bruni's latest, titled "Must We Dance on Rush Limbaugh Grave?" The Times columnist said Sunday that while the radio broadcaster, who died last week, was a white-power racist, sexist, fear-mongering, homophobic crank (not his words), it's crude and rough and, worse of all, "screechy" to say as much about a man recently killed off by the cancer. It's one thing to speak ill of the dead, Bruni wrote, "but the pitch of that ill-speak needn't be screechy. The manner of it needn't be savage. It has more credibility—and I think, more impact—when it's neither of these things. And we preserve some crucial measure of civility and grace."

For four decades, Rush Limbaugh had the biggest media megaphone through which he spit poison every day straight into the ears of 20 million Americans. He lied and lied, and he lied and lied. If there were no Limbaugh, there would be no President Trump, who himself told more than 30,500 lies, falsehoods and misleading claims during four years. Their canon of lies included lies about the covid pandemic, culminating in a death toll now exceeding half a million. Their repertoire of lies included lies about the election, culminating in the worst attack on our government since September 11, 2001. Their stockpile of lies included The Big One repeated Sunday by three GOP senators and one GOP House leader to the detriment of millions of television viewers. How does a republic deal with parties that lie nonstop? There's never been an easy answer. Whatever it is, it's not "civility and grace" alone, because they alone do not work.

It's not that I think Bruni is wrong to remind people to follow the Golden Rule. He's correct, in a purely abstract sense, to say that, "If you're going to fling your opinions at the world, you must be braced for the world to fling its reaction back at you. Those are the terms of the contract." But we are not talking about public morality in the abstract. We are talking about public morality in this place and in this time and in the spirit of defending our republic from ghouls conspiring, and still conspiring, to bring it down. Moreover, a Golden Rule that's wholly decontextualized and dehistoricized can be a gag preventing us from speaking the truth and silencing all but the most powerful.

You know who Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is. During last week's deep freeze in Texas, she started a fundraiser that has raised, as of this writing, more than $4 million to alleviate hunger and suffering in the Lone Star State. She was doing for Texans what you'd think Texans would do for her (and other New Yorkers). But instead of gratitude, the Texas Republican Party answered generosity with slander:"The gesture is appreciated, but it doesn't remove the fact that her Green New Deal philosophy failed Texans," wrote Chairman Allen West. Fact No. 1: The Green New Deal is Ocasio-Cortez's policy idea. It's not anything more yet. Fact No. 2: Texas has nothing to do with her policy idea. Fact No. 3: Wind power accounts for 10 percent of energy use in Texas. Conclusion: West is smearing Ocasio-Cortez even as she's trying to help.

This is clear later when he writes that Ocasio-Cortez's charity is not charity. What appears to be the Golden Rule is actually something sinister. West wrote: "What Texans found out this week is that wind energy, and solar, are not reliable, dependable, and available energy resources. Therefore, ma'am [Ocasio-Cortez], you're not going to buy off Texans for your green new deal energy pipe dream for $2 million" (my italics). Ocasio-Cortez did not blame Texas politicians for the straits they're in. Her pitch has not been "screechy," as Frank Bruni wrote. Her manner has not been "savage." She has been living up to the Golden Rule according to Bruni's advice. But what does she get in return? Lies, slander, contempt, and rancid accusations of trying to "buy off Texans."

Ocasio-Cortez (as well as Beto O'Rourke, who's also raised impressive sums) is modeling what Texans could expect from a government of, by and for the people. That's a threat to corrupt parties like the Texas GOP. It's therefore in the interest of people like West to run Ocasio-Cortez down, even if he comes off as gauche in the process.Fact is, coming off as gauche might be a good thing, as a lack of manners and etiquette and decorum tends to look like authentic strength, and when that's set side-by-side with kindness, authentic strength usually wins though it's a lie. The real problem, West might as well said, isn't that Texas is corrupt. The real problem isn't that the state's government failed its people. The real problem is carpetbaggers and their "New York values" coming down here, making us look bad. That's not nice.

As I said, Bruni isn't wrong in terms of substance. He's wrong in terms of engagement. He's so aloof as to be extraterrestrial. This is the world we live in. This is the world we struggle to change. It's not going to change if truth stops at the border of politeness.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

chuck Todd slammed for 'malfeasance of journalism' for allowing pro-Trump Republican to spew 'blatant lies'

David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement

November 23, 2020

Chuck Todd is once again under fire, as calls mount to fire the host of NBC News' once-venerated "Meet the Press."...

mma1120

No pushback when Trump adviser suggests that counting votes after election night is stealing the election

Trump adviser Jason Miller appeared on ABC's This Week. Talking with George Stephanopoulos, Miller claimed that Donald Trump will be ahead on election night but that Democrats will try to "steal" the election by counting ballots after that. The fact is that ballots are usually counted for many days and that mail-in ballots in many cases will be delayed in the count due to Republican-led state legislatures. Stephanopoulos, however, did not push back on the claim at all.

Over on Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace did not push back either when guest Corey Lewandowski said that Trump would be winning by such margins on election night that "there will be no need to continue to count" in the ensuing days.

===

an 220

:{:{}:

pence hit the Sunday talk shows without facing a single question about his abysmal HIV outbreak record

Laura Clawson / Daily KosMarch 2, 2020

Mike Pence talked coronavirus response on three Sunday morning talk shows yesterday, and boy, did CNN’s Jake Tapper and NBC’s Chuck Todd let him off the hook.

Mike Pence’s coronavirus clown show humiliates Trump — and endangers the rest of us

Heather Digby Parton / Salon March 2, 2020

Our vice president doesn’t believe in science — so he’s perfect to dispense pro-Trump lies and conspiracy theories.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/chuck-todd-needs-to-do-more-than-issue-a-mea-culpa/

no lnx

Chuck Todd needs to do more than issue a mea culpa

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington MonthlyDecember 27, 2019

During an interview with Peter Wade for Rolling Stone, Chuck Todd admitted that he was “naive” when Kellyanne Conway referred to “alternative facts” on his show, Meet the Press.

The Ukraine story for me really crystallized it. And for good or bad, our show has been at the forefront of this. The first Sunday of the Trump administration is when the phrase, “alternative facts” was debuted. It was on Meet the Press Rudy that Giuliani used the phrase “Truth isn’t truth.” So look, whether we’d liked it or not, our platform has been used, or they’ve attempted to use our platform to essentially disseminate, or to sort of, what I would say, is lay the groundwork for this…

I fully admit, listening to you ask that question now, and me giving you the honest answer of, yeah, I guess I really believed they wouldn’t do this. Just so absurdly naive in hindsight.

Jay Rosen rejects the idea that Todd’s performance can be written off as naive. Instead, he calls it “strategic blindness.”

By “strategic blindness” I mean what people mean when they quote Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

How naive could Todd have been during all of those months that Donald Trump was peddling the birther lie about Barack Obama as a way to launch himself on the national political stage? Where was Todd back in 2012 when political scientists Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein wrote that “the GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition?”

Chuck Todd has been the political director at NBC News since 2007. He is heralded as an expert on the subject. And yet it has taken him until 2019 to grasp that Republicans have been manipulating him with their lies.

The interview with Wade was primarily a promotion for a special edition of Meet the Press on December 29 that will focus on the weaponization of disinformation. But as Rosen notes, nowhere does Todd talk about what he will do differently based on this new awareness.

So what will they do now? My answer: they have no earthly idea. This is what I mean by an epistemological crisis. Chuck Todd has essentially said that on the right there is an incentive structure that compels Republican office holders to use their time on Meet the Press for the spread of disinformation. So do you keep inviting them on the air to do just that? If so, then you are breaking faith with the audience and creating a massive problem in real time fact-checking. If not, then you just broke the show in half.

There is simply nothing in the playbook at Meet the Press that tells the producers what to do in this situation.

You might recall that, back in 2013, Todd famously stated that it was not the media’s job to correct Republican disinformation about Obamacare. Lest anyone assume that kind of thinking is limited to Todd, I would remind you that during the Scooter Libby trial, a Cheney press aide revealed that the Bush administration preferred going on Meet the Press with Tim Russert because it was “our best format,” a program where political handlers can “control the message.” Linda Hirshman explained why.

The Russert Test was a disaster because it rewarded people willing to lie unabashedly on TV.They lied because they could not truthfully defend their positions. But Russert’s famed “gotcha” research couldn’t catch them. Much has been said this eulogizing week about Russert’s hard-working ways assembling the material in advance of the show. Old metal. When someone told a new lie on Meet the Press, such as when Dick Cheney flat-out denied he had ever said that intelligence confirmed the Al Qaeda/Iraq link, Meet the Press had no procedure for producing the contrary evidence.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how David Roberts coined the phrase “post-truth politics” to describe Republicans back in 2011.

Republicans thus talk about “taxes” and “spending” and “regulation” in the abstract, since Americans oppose them in the abstract even as they support their specific manifestations. They talk about cutting the deficit even as they slash taxes on the rich and launch unfunded wars. They talk about free markets even as they subsidize fossil fuels. They talk about American exceptionalism even as they protect fossil-fuel incumbents and fight research and infrastructure investments.

In short, Republicans have mastered post-truth politics. They’ve realized that their rhetoric doesn’t have to bear any connection to their policy agenda. They can go through different slogans, different rationales, different fights, depending on the political landscape of the moment. They need not feel bound by previous slogans, rationales, or fights.

In that endeavor, Republicans have had a willing partner in a media whose playbook was limited to viewing every issue from the two sides of the partisan divide. In the process, they abandoned the idea of seeking the truth. That allowed the GOP to traffic in disinformation and culminated in a president who has now told over 15,000 lies since being inaugurated.

While we all welcome Todd’s recent mea culpa, none of this gets resolved until the media finds a way to prioritize truth over balance.

Nancy LeTourneau is a contributing writer for the Washington Monthly. Follow her on Twitter @Smartypants60.

mma 1219

November was the second straight month that Sunday morning political shows did not air a single, substantive climate segment

12/11/19 10:27 AM EST

an 1219

no lnx

Cruz draws audible laughs on live TV after pushing debunked Ukraine conspiracy theory

Written by Igor Derysh / Salon December 9, 2019

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., drew laughs from the NBC News studio after he pushed a debunked Ukraine conspiracy theory on Sunday’s edition of “Meet the Press.”

Host Chuck Todd got into a combative exchange with Cruz after he claimed that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election despite a Republican-led Senate investigation which found no evidence of Ukrainian interference.

“Do you believe Ukraine meddled in the American election in 2016?” Todd asked.

“I do,” Cruz replied. “And I think there’s considerable evidence of that.”

“You do?” a bewildered Todd asked, prompting laughter from inside the Washington studio.

“Senator, this sort of strikes me as odd, because you went through a primary campaign with this president. He launched a birtherism campaign against you,” Todd said. “He went after your faith. He threatened to ‘spill the beans’ about your wife about something. He pushed a National Enquirer story, which we now know he had a real relationship with the editors of the National Enquirer.”

“And Chuck, I appreciate you dragging up all that garbage,” Cruz complained.

“No, but senator, is it not possible that the president is capable of creating a false narrative about somebody in order to help him politically?” Todd asked.

“Except that’s not what happened. The president released the transcript of the phone call. You can read what was said on the phone call,” Cruz said. “Chuck, let me point out a game that the media is playing. You know, a question that you’ve asked a number of people is — you’ve said to senators sort of aghast, ‘Do you believe that Ukraine — and not Russia — interfered in the election?’ Now, that — that in a court of law would be struck as a misleading question. Of course, Russia interfered in our election. Nobody looking at the evidence disputes that.”

“But the president of the United States does,” Todd pointed out.

“Look, on the evidence, Russia clearly interfered in our election. But here’s the game the media is playing: Because Russia interfered, the media pretends nobody else did. Ukraine blatantly interfered in our election,” Cruz claimed. “The sitting ambassador from Ukraine wrote an op-ed blasting Donald Trump.”

“Do you know why he did that?” Todd asked. “What did Donald Trump — what did Donald Trump, as a candidate, say about Ukraine and Crimea during the election that might’ve inspired the ambassador?” Todd pressed, referring to Trump’s remarks about Crimea that alarmed Ukrainian officials.

“So you’re saying they had disagreements with Donald Trump,” Cruz said. “And they wanted Hillary Clinton to get elected.”

“OK, so they wrote an op-ed,” Todd said. “That’s the difference.”

Meet the Press

@MeetThePress

WATCH: @SenTedCruz says he believes Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election. #MTP #IfItsSunday

Embedded video

President Donald Trump and personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani have baselessly alleged a far more nefarious Ukrainian plot, claiming that Ukraine — not Russia — hacked the Democratic National Committee and blamed the Kremlin.

Cruz’s joins senators like Richard Burr, R-N.C., John Cornyn, R-Tex., John Kennedy, R-La., and John Barrasso, R-Wyo., in pushing baseless allegations that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election in recent weeks.

After the interview, Cruz accused Todd of “deliberately LYING” on Twitter and doubled down on his claim that “there’s significant evidence” of his allegation against the media.

Top officials who reviewed the evidence told Congress that this is not true. David Hale, the No. 3 official at the State Department, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week that he was not aware of any evidence of Ukrainian interference in the election.

Fiona Hill, the former top Russia expert on the National Security Council, told the House Intelligence Committee last month that “this is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services.”

Cruz’s GOP colleague Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, agreed that there was “no evidence” that Ukraine interfered in the election. And fellow Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., told Politico that it is “important to distinguish op-eds . . . from the systemic effort to undermine our election systems.”

“There’s no way to compare any other efforts to what Russia did in 2016,” Rubio said. “There’s nothing that compares not even in the same universe.”

Former Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Penn., told CNN on Sunday that he was stunned by Cruz’s remarks.

“I can’t explain it,” he said. “You would think a man like that would have more self-respect. After all the things President Trump said about him and his family, you would think he would be out there trying to speak truth to power at a time like this.”

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/gops-ted-cruz-draws-audible-laughs-on-live-tv-after-pushing-debunked-ukraine-conspiracy-theory/

Ted Cruz draws audible laughs on live TV after pushing debunked Ukraine conspiracy theory

Igor Derysh / Salon

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Republican lawmaker blows up White House talking point claiming Turkey would have attacked US troops if they stayed in Syria

Tom Boggioni / Raw StoryOctober 13, 2019

Appearing on “Face the Nation” on Sunday Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) hammered Donald Trump’s decision to remove U.S. troops from Syria, saying the U.S. troops stationed at the border with Turkey would have…

also cruz rand paul?!

Crooks &L has a tag:

Tags:

Sunday shows

eg 719

think I've written before that the best course I took in college was an epistemology and logic class. Forcing yourself to challenge whyyou know something is a good way to check your beliefs and not fall into biases and fallacies. I've been seeing a LOT of punditry of late that really has me wanting to emulate my former professor and just stand in front of them and demand, "HOW do you know that to be true???"

I'm especially over all these conservative Never Trumpers who have written way more column inches than liberal writers are ever given on how the Democratic Party can appeal to them in the upcoming elections. This notion--this "false consensus" bias--is particularly insidious. Why do these jokers think that the majority think like them? The hubris to believe that YOU, personally, are the center of thought is pretty breathtaking. I promise you, if we took David Brooks, Joe Scarborough, Andrew Sullivan, Bari Weiss, Bill Kristol, et al., and plotted them on a chart, they would be nowhere near the center, so expecting that they are the majority is just stupid.

To be fair, I'm not anywhere in the center either. But I don't have the fricking arrogance to insist that I do and that all conversation and political dialog should center around my values or they can count me out. I understand the stakes. I think about the larger bargain that needs to be made for the sake of this country, for democracy and for the norms and rules that previously kept this country together. And I think of all those being hurt and prioritize that over assuaging my ego (something that just never seems to occur to the pundit class). That's what being a responsible citizen does.

Let's see them advocate that for once.

ABC's "This Week" — Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.; investor and liberal activist Tom Steyer. Panel: former Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J.; former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, D-Chicago; Rachael Bade of The Washington Post; and Alexi McCammond of Axios.

NBC's "Meet the Press" — Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Ron Johnson, R-Wis.; U.S. Women's National Soccer Team co-captain Megan Rapinoe. Panel: Politico Magazine’s Tim Alberta; former Rep. Carlos Curbelo, R-Fla.; Hallie Jackson of NBC News; and former Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.

CBS' "Face the Nation" — Mark Morgan, acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection; Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.; Jeh Johnson, former secretary of Homeland Security; NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine; historian Douglas Brinkley. Panel: Ben Domenech of The Federalist, Paula Reid of CBS News, Toluse Olorunnipa of The Washington Post and Kelsey Snell of National Public Radio.

CNN's "State of the Union" — Cuccinelli; New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. Panel: Rep. Nanette Barragán, D-Calif; Scott Jennings, former special assistant to President George W. Bush; former Mayor Andrew Gillum, D-Tallahassee; and Amanda Carpenter, former communications director, Sen. Ted Cruz.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" — Ernest Moniz, former U.S. secretary of energy (Barack Obama administration, 2013-2017); David Miliband, president, International Rescue Committee; Thomas Friedman of The New York Times; human rights attorneys Menaka Guruswamy and Arundhati Katju.

CNN's "Reliable Sources" — Julie Anderson, editor-in-chief of the Orlando Sentinel; Mark Katches, executive editor of the Tampa Bay Times; and Alex Harris, climate change reporter for The Miami Herald. Renee DiResta, research manager, Stanford Internet Observatory; Oliver Darcy, senior media reporter, CNN; and Katie Rogers, White House correspondent, The New York Times. Panel: Jane Coaston, senior politics reporter, Vox; Samantha Vinograd, CNN national security analyst; and Robby Soave, associate editor, Reason.

"Fox News Sunday" — Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Donald Trump; Rep. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M. Panel: Juan Williams,co-host of “The Five”; Josh Holmes, former chief of staff to Sen. Mitch McConnell; former Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah; and Jane Harman, former congresswoman, D-Calif.

So what's catching your eye this morning?

Tags:

Sunday shows

mma 1019

## Sunday morning political shows’ coverage of climate in September is a mixed bag

10/07/19 2:41 PM EDT

01/17/19 8:18 AM EST

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mickey huff diablo vly

2nd 1/2 new bk nolan higdin

US of distraction

sunday shows? ralph says spivak old days, now breaking news? todd says tough questions drive ppl to brnnose pundits

https://kpfa.org/episode/the-ralph-nader-radio-hour-september-9-2019/

yet again mma 819

Sunday morning political shows continue with business as usual despite the accelerating climate crisis

08/29/19 3:16 PM EDT

https://thinkprogress.org/fox-news-host-decimates-trump-aide-stephen-miller-racism-hypocricy-8a8b7b4b5db3/

Stephen Miller, a top White House adviser said to be the architect of the administration’s cruel anti-immigrant policies, went on Fox News Sunday to defend President Donald Trump’s latest round of racist and hypocritical attacks on congresswomen of color. The interview went rather poorly for him.

Host Chris Wallace began the interview by asking Miller about Trump’s recent tweets attacking Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and demanding that they go back to their home countries (Omar was born in Somalia and came to the United States as a child, the other three are natural-born citizens). Miller responded that the president isn’t a racist because the jobless rate has been falling for racial minorities.

“I think the term ‘racist,’ Chris, has become a label that is too often deployed by left/Democrats in this country simply to try to silence and punish and suppress people they disagree with, speech that they don’t want to hear,” Miller began, asserting that Trump “has been a president for all Americans” because of “historically low black unemployment rates, historically low Hispanic unemployment rates,” and his crackdown on immigration “to protect safety, security, rising wages for all American citizens.”

Wallace responded that Trump’s claims that Mexican immigrants are mostly rapists and drug dealers and his proposed total ban on Muslims were “not protecting the American people” but“playing the race card.”

After Miller tried to change the subject to criminal gang members, Wallace shut him down, reminding him that Trump had pushed racist “birther” attacks on Barack Obama. Miller likened those efforts to undermine the legitimacy of the former president to questions that were once raised about John McCain. Wallace quickly fact-checked him, noting that concerns surrounding the late Arizona senator were not racial, but based on the 2008 nominee’s birth in the Panama Canal Zone.

Miller then argued that questioning people’s Americanism is okay as long as you don’t intend it to be racist.

Wallace also fact-checked Miller when he attempted to claim Trump had been “clear” that he disagreed with his supporters’ racist chant — repeating his own attacks on Omar and demanding she be sent back to Somalia.

“No, he was clear after the fact,” he responded. “He let it go on for 13 seconds and [it] was only when it diminished that he started talking again.” Wallace noted that Trump “said nothing there or in his tweet after that rally that indicated any concern about the chant.”

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/republicans-take-to-sunday-shows-to-mount-vigorous-defense-of-trumps-racist-attacks/

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/the-sunday-morning-network-shows-have-become-willing-trump-enablers-%e2%81%a0-heres-how/

eric b kos

When it comes to the Sunday morning network talk shows, no other influential media platform has done so little to adjust its approach to our radical, untruthful president. Sticking to their staid, deeply respectful format where Republican government officials are treated as perpetual truth-tellers, the Sunday shows remain proudly and utterly oblivious to the seismic changes Donald Trump and his dishonest cohorts have ushered into the Beltway. That means Trump and the GOP emerge as the big Sunday morning winners—and that also means the shows have become some of Trump’s key enablers.

Hosting wildly imbalanced panel discussions that favor conservative voices, routinely ignoring breaking scandal stories that could damage the White House, and treating Trump and his radical Republican allies as utterly normal, the Sunday morning network shows on ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, and NBC consistently present a false picture of American politics during the past few years, and consistently whitewash the dangerous contours of the Trump presidency.

For most Sunday shows, booking the guests now seems to be the paramount act of journalism, and everything after that is just filler. This means Republicans representing Trump appear on the shows to promote his nonstop lies and are met with, at best, timid pushback. Hosts seem to think their job in the Trump era is to provide the president and his top officials a comfortable platform to tell more blatant untruths.

That unfortunate trend was on clear display when Trump himself sat for a lengthy interview on Meet the Press. Hosted by Chuck Todd, who Trump has mercilessly mocked and insulted in the past, the interview appeared to be a textbook example of how notto handle a chronic liar during a one-on-one interview.

“To wit, the Mad King’s interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” was another example of the perpetually nauseating confluence of Trump’s gratuitous lies and a TV news reporter too timid to treat him like the despot he is,” wroteBob Cesca. “Instead, Trump routinely steamrolls interviewers like Todd, knowing that the press will continue to behave as though he were just another generic president, worthy of the same compliant, nonconfrontational attitude we witnessed during previous, comparatively “normal” administrations."

There’s nothing normal about a sitting president who lies virtually every time he makes a public pronouncement, the way he did on the NBC program.

“You know, under President Obama you had separation. I was the one that ended it,” he falsely told Todd, while Trump resurrected his beloved and invented claim that voter fraud was the reason he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by three million tallies in 2016. Note that Trump’s own voter fraud task force couldn’t find evidence that “three million illegal voters” swayed the election.

The Q&A turned out to be a predictable cacophony of lies from Trump—a cacophony that was met with very little resistance. Should that be a surprise, considering the Sunday morning network shows are already a bastion of Republican talking heads? “There were over five times as many right-leaning signature panels on the major Sunday political news shows as left-leaning panels in the first half of 2019,”Media Matters recently reported. “Across the Sunday shows on ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox Broadcasting, and NBC, 33% of panels included more conservative than progressive guests, while just 6% of panels tilted left. Of the remaining panels, 61%, were balanced, featuring the same number of left-leaning and right-leaning guests.”

And then there are the huge Sunday morning editorial oversights. In June, most of the network morning news shows ignored Trump’s efforts to force a question about citizenship status into the 2020 census, despite a ruling by the Supreme Court that blocked the controversial move. In May, none of the network morning talks shows covered the dire, newly passed anti-choice law in Georgia that’s specifically aimed at making abortion illegal in America. The Georgia bill, along with others pending in Republican-run states such as Alabama, represents a wildly ambitious GOP strategy to make legal choice obsolete in America

And back in March, news that the former owner of a Florida massage parlor recently raided as part of a sex trafficking ring had been selling access to Donald Trump to Chinese business executives wasn’t deemed newsworthy enough to be mentioned on the Sunday network news programs the weekend after the story broke.

Notice a trend here? Over and over, the Sunday network shows completely ignore hugely important stories that often cast Trump and Republicans in deeply negative light. And yes, the blackouts matter because the Sunday shows help set policy agendas and shape public debate on important issues. (Note that none of this criticism applies to MSNBC’s AM Joy, which airs Saturday and Sunday morning. The program consistently addresses key stories the others gloss over, while also holding the Trump administration to a far tougher standard. And yes, full disclosure, I’m an occasional guest on that show.)

Oh, and then there was the credible rape allegation recently lodged against Trump. According to longtime advice columnist and writer E. Jean Carroll, Trump attacked her inside the Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York City years ago, when he lunged at her, pushed her up against a fitting room wall, and shoved his hand up her dress. That stunning news story was also ignored by the Sunday network shows. “The inconsistencies in Trump’s response, the sheer number of women accusing him of sexual misconduct, the hypocrisy of Republicans believing Juanita Broaddrick’s rape accusation against President Bill Clinton in 1999 while ignoring Carroll’s now―all were topics that would seem to warrant significant airtime on the Sunday morning talk shows but simply didn’t receive it,” HuffPost noted.

And yes, there’s a clear double standard for coverage of Democratic and Republicans. Last winter, when some women complained about the way Joe Biden interacted with them, especially with unwelcomed touching in public, the allegations were covered extensively on the Sunday shows, whereas a rapeallegation against Trump was ignored:

...

an 519

Sunday network talk shows ignored Georgia and Alabama’s radical assault on Roe v. Wade

Eric Boehlert / Daily KosMay 13, 2019

If Republicans hope their unprecedented legislative effort to overturn Roe v. Wade is largely progressing under the radar of the national media, they received confirmation on Sunday when none of the network

February 7, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) introduced a Green New Deal resolution. The resolution outlines what they plan to include in formal legislation down the line.

Over the following five days, primetime cable news coverage of the Green New Deal was dominated by Fox News. Fox News aired a total of 34 segments on the resolution, more than three times the combined total of MSNBC (8 segments) and CNN (3 segments).

Obviously, the Fox News coverage of the legislation was terrible. Many segments did not even mention climate change.

This is not the only example of cable news discussion of a policy issue being dominated by the right. In the weeks leading up to the State of the Union, Fox News aired nearly seven hours of coverage of state abortion measures, while CNN and MSNBC covered the same stories for less than 15 minutes combined.

Fox News dominating policy discussions of progressive initiatives has real consequences: They are immediately caricatured, with outright lies getting a massive head start. A large number of people get their first impressions through this distorted coverage, including many in the media.

When one of these issues does eventually jump to mainstream media, myths and lies often make the jump alongside. At minimum, the mainstream debate is partially about debunking the lies that have already happened.

Sunday shows fail again: America is in desperate need of an adult conversation about how to address climate change. Instead of that, the Sunday shows talked about climate change and the Green New Deal only through the narrow lens of the political horse race. Maybe we can prioritize fending off a massive destabilizing rise in sea level instead of worrying about whose poll numbers go up or down as a result of endorsing a resolution.

Meanwhile: Right-wing media are somehow worse than useless on the Green New Deal, as they've repeatedly invoked murderous dictators to complain about the initiative. Michael Savage, who has partied with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, even said of Ocasio-Cortez, "“This is a Stalinist in a skirt; this is a Hitler in high heels.”

tip pt? gimmick? follow __ UK?

https://www.ecowatch.com/meet-the-press-climate-change-2624807867.html

NBC’s Meet the Press Devotes Entire Show to Climate Change With No Time for Deniers

In an unusual move for the Sunday talk show circuit, NBC's Meet the Press with Chuck Todd devoted its entire program Sunday to discussing climate change, and only interviewed people who acknowledge that it is a serious threat.

"We're not going to debate climate change, the existence of it," Todd said, as Mother Jones reported. "The Earth is getting hotter. And human activity is a major cause, period. We're not going to give time to climate deniers. The science is settled, even if political opinion is not." T[pix/vid?]his is a departure for Sunday talk shows, and for Meet the Press itself, Mother Jones pointed out. When the Trump administration released volume II of the Fourth National Climate Assessment over Thanksgiving weekend, Todd invited Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute and Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee, who both disputed the science behind climate change.

But this Sunday's show broke with that pattern. It featured full interviews with climate leaders, including outgoing California Governor Jerry Brown and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, as well as a panel with experts Dr. Kate Marvel, NBC's Anne Thompson, Craig Fugate, Michèle Flournoy and Florida Republican Representative Carlos Curbelo, the rare GOP member who pushes for climate action.

"We need to stop covering the debate and start covering the story, so that people see that this is real, and so that politicians take a more-pragmatic approach and find solutions that are actually achievable," Curbelo said.

In both of their segments, Brown and Bloomberg, who co-chaired the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco this fall, spoke of the need for the U.S. government to step up its action on climate change. President Donald Trump has denied the importance of the issue and promised to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris agreement to limit global warming to well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Brown said he wished the president and Congress would worry more about transitioning away from fossil fuels than tariffs.

"I would point to the fact that it took Roosevelt many, many years to get America willing to go into World War II and fight the Nazis. Well, we have an enemy, though different, but perhaps, very much devastating in a similar way. And we've got to fight climate change. And the president's got to lead on that," Brown said, as NBC reported. [vid] Jerry Brown: Climate change is about inventing, 'not just adapting' | Meet The Press | NBC News]

Bloomberg also criticized Trump's stance.

"You know, I've always thought Trump has a right to his opinions. But he doesn't have a right to his own facts," Bloomberg said.

But Bloomberg also put pressure on whoever may challenge Trump in the 2020 presidential race, saying that climate change needed to be a major campaign issue.

"Any candidate for federal office better darn well have a plan to deal with the problem that the Trump science advisers say could, basically, end this world," he said, The Guardian reported. "I can tell you one thing, I don't know whether I'm going to run or not, but I will be out there demanding that anybody that's running has a plan."[vid?]

Bloomberg On 2020: Any Candidate 'Better Have A Plan' On Climate Change | Meet The Press | NBC New

The show also reported that the majority of Americans are starting to take climate change more seriously, pointing to a survey from the the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason Center for Climate Change Communication showing that 70 percent of Americans think climate change is happening and 57 percent think it is human caused. The polling, and the show, follow two years of extreme weather events from hurricanes to wildfires. NBC's Anne Thompson said that more Americans were beginning to believe in climate change because, "We're starting to live climate change in real time," Meet the Press reported on its Twitter feed. AROUND THE WEB

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no lnx vid

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ref 11/18 shamed to do rt thing?

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a25304542/meet-the-press-climate-change-chuck-todd-danielle-pletka/

arely do you get news of an ongoing catastrophe and, within a couple of days, a perfect example of why we've done nothing about that exact problem. But Chuck Todd and Meet The Press were happy to oblige this Thanksgiving weekend. On Friday, the Trump administration attempted to bury a harrowing U.S. government climate-change report by releasing it on Black Friday, a notorious dumping ground for bad news. Normally, though, the bad news is just for the current administration—not the whole world.

On Sunday, Todd hosted Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute on his teevee show. Her performance—and it was a performance—was a shining example of how the ruling class has successfully hemmed and hawed for decades, with the full support of the feckless Beltway media, slowing any kind of action and safeguarding big-business profits while experts in the field have known full well that human civilization as we know it is in clear and escalating peri[vid]

...Right-wing panelist on Meet the Press on climate change: "I'm not a scientist ... We need to also recognize we had two of the coldest years, biggest drop in global temperatures that we have had since the 1980s, the biggest in the last 100 years. We don't talk about that."

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As Pletka so happily volunteered, she is not a scientist. So why was she invited on one of the nation's Premier Political Talk Shows to spread disinformation about a scientific issue? That two years since 1980 have been cold does not have any bearing on the scientific consensus that climate change is real and man-made. This member of the conservative intelligentsia—the American Enterprise Institute, for which Pletka works, is a right-wing "think tank"—is actually just making the more polite version of President Good Brain's argument on Wednesday:

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS - Whatever happened to Global Warming?

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4:23 PM - Nov 21, 2018

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This is not the first time Trump has disproved global warming on the basis he is cold today. (Elsewhere, he has simply called it a Chinese hoax.) Nobody put this crap to bed better than Stephen Colbert did all those years ago. Weather is not climate. The weather is affected by changing climate patterns, but warming global temperatures over the decades—an indisputable trend, even among denialist hacks like Pletka—does not mean every day of every year will be warmer than the previous. What it does very likely mean is more powerful storms that drop trillions of gallons of water on American cities, and bigger, more ferocious wildfires that turn the American West to ash.

Of course, Pletka probably knows this. She gave Our Beautiful Boy Chuck Todd that tried-and-true conservative line that's rapidly going stale: that surely something is happening with the climate, but who can say whether humans are causing it? Well, after years of exhaustive study, scientists have found it is "extremely likely" (terms the scientific community does not choose lightly) that humans are significantly contributing to warming global temperatures. We also know that the Beautiful, Clean Coal that Pletka suggested the U.S. has switched to does not exist. "Clean coal" is a misleading term for the same coal that continues to be the dirtiest fossil fuel in existence.

Did Todd challenge her with the facts? No. But this is what the evidence says. It's just Pletka isn't concerned with gathering the evidence and coming to a conclusion—also known as the essence of the scientific method. Here is an (albeit anonymous) account from an Atlantic reader who claims to have worked for Pletka at the American Enterprise Institute:

A number of years ago I worked for Danielle Pletka for a summer as a researcher, and her piece today matches the "scholarship" she and AEI were producing in the early part of this decade. I was rarely if ever asked to perform background research on a subject but was more often asked to provide specific evidence to support ready made assertations. At the time AEI was mobilizing in support of military action against Iraq, and it was quite clear to me that the academic process was reversed - positions designed, research dug up to support the positions.

This seems like an opportune moment to mention that Pletka is widely known as a varsity-level cheerleader for the Iraq War. More recently, she demonstrated her intricate knowledge of the conflict by suggesting to the French ambassador on Twitterthat France had joined the U.S. in the conflict. OK, so that was completely and laughably wrong (Remember the idiotic Freedom Fries charade?), but at least by 2013 she was...still defending the invasion. Yes, after it embroiled the region in sectarian conflict, and after all the reasons people like Pletka peddled for going in were proven to be baseless. Eventually, this genius foreign-policy move led to the rise of ISIS. This is just another example of how, if you work in the Beltway, there are absolutely zero consequences for being completely wrong about everything.

In fact, if you work at a think tank like AEI, it might just get you a raise—if you stick to the party line. All think tanks are, to some extent, mouthpieces for their donors, but that particularly goes for a right-wing gun-for-hire shop like the Institute. The Guardian uncovered how AEI works to undermine the science on climate change in 2007:

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.

Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Travel expenses and additional payments were also offered.

And what did that ExxonMobil funding look like?

The AEI has received more than $1.6m from ExxonMobil and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush administration. Lee Raymond, a former head of ExxonMobil, is the vice-chairman of AEI's board of trustees.

You may remember that Exxon was also exposed as having discovered, through the work of its own scientists, that climate change was real as early as 1977. Instead of accepting this reality and beginning the work of responding to the burgeoning climate crisis, Exxon chose to fund disinformation on the topic for decades, protecting their profits in the shorter term. They're not alone among oil-and-gas outfits, many of which simultaneously started building their rigs to accommodate sea-level rise that would result from the climate change that, in public, they steadfastly disputed was happening.

One way to fund disinformation is to pay a think tank like AEI to spread it for you. And that's what Pletka was still doing, on Sunday, after just the latest report dropped detailing the catastrophic consequences of our inaction on the climate crisis. The U.S. report focused on the fact that the crisis will melt 10 percent of the American economy and send it crashing into the ocean by 2100. Farmers in the midwest will lose 75 percent of the crop yield on their corn. Rising sea levels will put trillions of dollars in coastal real estate in jeopardy. But last month's report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—compiled by 91 leading scientists from 40 different countries based on more than 6,000 scientific studies conducted by still more scientists—was even more apocalyptic. It found that human civilization as we know it will be in severe peril by 2040, and that we have 12 years to dramatically change course to avoid that scenario.

Amid all that, news programs like Chuck Todd's Meet The Press—offerings that putatively exist to inform the public about the world around them—are still playing host to people who are paid to spread false information about the world. Todd is not alone: CNN hosted Rick Santorum on Sunday. Like NBC News, which employs Pletka as a contributor, they pay Rick directly to spread nonsense.

...his Week talked about the climate report for two minutes with Sen. Amy Klobuchar and noted that the administration tried to bury it.

The report did not, from what I can tell, come up on the rest of the hour-long show...[vid]

whitehouse sen

Here's paid CNN commentator Rick Santorum praising the Trump administration for trying to bury the climate report, arguing that climate change is made up by scientists trying to make some money pic.twitter.com/lBpLMexgt9...

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This festering boil on the body politic highlights another in-vogue conservative argument: that the scientists who've devoted their lives to studying the climate are really just in it for those juicy government grants to continue studying it. It's all about the money! As usual in this era, this is a case of accusing the opposition of something you're already up to.

Santorum is applying the incentive structure that exists for massive multinational oil and gas corporations and those they employ—seeking out certain findings because you have a vested financial interest in a certain outcome—to climate scientists. In reality, the kind of conspiracy that right-wingers like Santorum are alleging here would be perhaps unprecedented in scale. If this is all a big con, thousands of climate scientists spread across dozens of countries would need to all be getting their kickbacks, and have a way to secretly stay on-message. It's absurdly unlikely, and it belies the aforementioned way that the scientific community vets a scientific report's findings.

Oh, and the money in government grants ain't actually that good. That's why some "scientists" might take, say, $10,000 from AEI to dispute the scientific consensus. It's all bullshit, folks, and it's bad for ya.

...ay that the nation's major television news stations routinely play host to propagandists who are paid, directly or indirectly, to spread disinformation and muddy the waters to protect the interests of massive energy corporations, all at the expense of the future of human civilization.When Pletka said emissions are down since President Trump withdrew from the Paris climate accords—making the U.S. the only nation in the world that refuses to participate—that was just true enough: they are down in 2018, though the rate of emissions reductions slowed from the previous two years and will likely continue to slow as the Trump administration attempts to roll back our efforts to combat the crisis. The crown jewel in that regard is the Clean Power Plan, our main vehicle for meeting our obligations under the Paris agreement, which Trump has sought to repeal. At the very least, Todd is obligated to challenge this crap if he's going to host a dishonest broker—or host someone who can. According to John Whitehouse of MediaMatters, none of the Sunday Shows hosted a single scientist while covering the climate in 2016 and 2017.

Fact-Checking the Attacks

The administration and its allies appear to be repeating one main talking point in their effort to discredit the National Climate Assessment: They claim, inaccurately, that the report represents only a worst-case scenario. It actually reflects a broad range of possible future outcomes—along with an enormity of direct, present-day observations of the impacts of global warming.

The naysayers are trying to build that falsehood on a number of misleading assertions:

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said "even Obama's undersecretary for science didn't believe the radical conclusions of the report that was released." This appears to be a reference to Steven Koonin, a former chief scientist for BP, who spent 18 months as an undersecretary in the Obama administration's energy department. Koonin has long maintained climate science is not "settled," and has argued the government should have a red-team/blue-team debate—an idea championed unsuccessfully by former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt.
Sanders also said that the National Climate Assessment "is based on the most extreme modeled scenario, which contradicts long-established trends." But in fact the report considered the full range of climate scenarios set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, looking at what will happen if carbon emissions decline, if they stabilize, and if they continue to grow unabated. As Hayhoe noted inher Twitter thread, "the observed increase in global carbon emissions over the past 15–20 years has been consistent with higher scenarios."
The Trump EPA put out a news release it called a "fact check" on Wednesday, citing an article on the conservative website The Daily Caller to try to bolster an assertion by Wheeler that Obama administration's science adviser John Holdren instructed the report's authors in 2015 to look at worst-case scenarios. "Mr. Wheeler's insinuation is absolutely false," Holdren, now at Harvard, responded in a statement. "Assertions by high officials of the Trump administration that these are 'worst case' reports are nothing more than a flimsy attempt to discredit the careful and comprehensive work of some of the best climate scientists in the country, inside and outside of government," Holdren said.
Wheeler, a former coal industry lobbyist, said the administration might intervene in future climate reports. "Going forward, I think we need to take a look at the modeling that's used for the next assessment," Wheeler said. But the report underwentseveral rounds of technical and policy reviewby the 13 federal agencies involved. There was a series of regional engagement workshops that reached more than 1,000 people in over 40 cities, with listening sessions, webinars and public comment. Anexpert external peer review of the whole report was performed by a committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
Roger Pielke Jr., a political scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Colorado, took issue with the reportfor including a figure that was widely quoted in the media: that U.S. GDP could take a 10 percent hit by 2100 due to climate change. The estimate was derived from an innovative, cutting-edge modeling of climate impacts on the U.S. economy published in the journal *Science*. Pielke, who often says he agrees with the core science on global warming but disputes how it is applied, argued this headline-grabbing data point should not have been included, since it reflected a scenario of more global warming than is commonly reckoned in modeling. Robert Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers University and co-author of the Sciencepaper, said the team purposefully took into account the unlikely—though not impossible—scenario at the end of the charted curve because of its potentially large consequences. "We were deliberately trying to include tail risks, not just 'most likely' outcomes, because consideration of tail risks is crucial to sound risk management," Kopp said in an email.

The arguments of the Trump administration have been amplified in media coverage in the aftermath of the report's release.

Danielle Pletka of the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute prefacing her remarks with the caveat, "I'm not a scientist," before delivering a blizzard of inaccuracies on Sunday's "Meet the Press"on NBC aimed at undermining the report's credibility. Pletka said the last two years have been the coldest on record, when in fact they have been among the warmest. She said the U.S. "is not using dirty coal anymore," when in fact about 30 percent of U.S. power is still generated by coal and only one U.S. coal plant has technology in place to capture some of its carbon emissions.

Hayhoe pre-taped an appearance on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 show to talk about the National Climate Assessment on Tuesday, but her appearance—though posted online—was bumped from the TV broadcast. CNN instead aired a segment with paid contributor Rick Santorum, a former Republican U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, who accused climate scientists of stoking alarm to make money.

NBC host Chuck Todd blamed Fox News and Roger Ailes for the state of distrust around American media and dinged a Christian broadcaster appearing on "Meet the Press" on Sunday.

“One of the best things going in Donald Trump’s favor — we know this — is the mainstream media,” Christian Broadcasting Network reporter David Brody said. “I hate to say it. I know I’m sitting on a Meet the Press roundtable, but the truth of the matter is 62 percent think the media is biased.”

“The conservative echo chamber created that environment,” Todd interjected. “It has been a tactic and a tool of the Roger Ailes-created echo chamber.”

“So, let’s not pretend it’s not anything other than that,” Todd continued.

“Many Americans distrust the media. It’s not just Republicans," Brody retorted.

“I’m just saying it was a campaign creation, a campaign tactic,” Todd countered. “It’s not based in much fact.”

Watch the segment below:

https://www.alternet.org/sunday-news-shows-ignore-puerto-rico-amid-new-study-nearly-5000-people-died-result-hurricane-maria

MMA

https://mediamatters.org/research/2017/03/23/how-broadcast-networks-covered-climate-change-2016/215718

Sunday Shows’ Climate Coverage Dropped By 85 Percent

Every Network’s Sunday Show Significantly Decreased Its Climate Coverage. After dropping slightly from a high of 81 minutes of coverage in 2014 to 73 minutes in 2015, the Sunday shows’ climate coverage dropped 85 percent to just 11 minutes of coverage in 2016 -- the third-lowest amount in the eight-year time frame Media Matters has examined. Every network saw significant declines in Sunday show coverage, with Fox leading the way (down 32 minutes from the previous year), followed by NBC (down 17 minutes), CBS (down 10 minutes), and ABC (down four minutes).

Bernie Sanders Brought Up Climate Change Four Times As Much As Hosts Did On ABC, CBS, And NBC Sunday Shows. On every Sunday show except Fox News Sunday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) brought up climate change significantly more often than the hosts themselves did. ABC’s This Week, CBS’ Face the Nation, and NBC’s Meet the Press aired a combined five segments in which the hosts brought up climate change, while Bernie Sanders brought up climate change 21 times during his appearances on those shows. Because our study counted only those segments where a media figure brought up or discussed climate change, those 21 segments were not counted in this study's overall network tallies.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/the-great-2016-sunday-show-race

usually gop but bernie 2016

http://mediamatters.org/research/2014/01/30/report-the-demographics-of-the-sunday-morning-p/197783

premier is/was Face the nation

bob s ref'd tony perkins as hate gp per splc (note retired 2015)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Schieffer

this town grgory got MTPress b/c russert not telegenic enough for HD 154.

full----- 5 shows same day (monica Lew's lawyer

http://mediamatters.org/print/research/2014/01/30/report-the-demographics-of-the-sunday-morning-p/197783

many nice charts

Top Ten Solo Interview Guests Are All Men, Only One Person Of Color.The ten guests who received the most solo guest appearances on the Sunday morning shows were all men (the list below includes 11 individuals because three guests tied with eight appearances each). Only one non-white guest, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), made the top ten.

Ideological Gap: Conservatives Outnumber ProgressivesOn Broadcast Shows

White, Conservative Men Were the Largest Demographic Group On The Broadcast Sunday Morning Shows. On the four broadcast shows, white, conservative men represented more than a quarter of all guests at 29 percent. White, progressive men represented close to half that amount at 15 percent. White, neutral men represented 23 percent. All other groups were in the single digits.

...

On Broadcast Shows, Republicans And Conservatives Hosted More Often Than Democrats And Progressives Overall. On three of the four broadcast shows, Republicans and conservatives were brought on as guests more often than Democrats and progressives: 49 percent of guests on Fox News Sunday were from the right while only 27 percent were from the left, 28 percent of guests on Face the Nation were from the right while 21 percent were from the left, and 37 percent of guests on Meet the Press were from the right while 34 percent were from the left.This Week was the only show to host guests on the right and left evenly at 31 percent for each....

A Media Matters review of the Sunday morning political talk shows finds that white males largely dominated the guest lists in 2013. MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry and Up with Steve Kornacki achieved greater ethnic and gender diversity than the broadcast shows or CNN's State of the Union. Overall, conservatives outnumbered progressives on the four broadcast Sunday morning shows.

Throughout 2013,Media Matters has analyzed guest appearances on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, CBS' Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer, Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, NBC's Meet the Press with David Gregory, CNN's State of the Union with Candy Crowley, and MSNBC's Up with Steve Kornacki and Melissa Harris-Perry, political talk shows that often set the media and political agenda. Media Matters has previously released analyses of the first, second, and third quarters of the year. This item will be updated as Media Mattersreleases additional analysis of the 2013 gender, ethnicity, and ideological demographics of the guests.

White Men Dominate Sunday Morning Shows

White Men Represented The Largest Proportion Of Guests On Every Show. On the four broadcast shows and CNN, white men represented a majority of all guests: 60 percent on This Week, 67 percent on Face the Nation, 67 percent on Fox News Sunday, 62 percent on Meet the Press, and 54 percent on State of the Union. On Up and Melissa Harris-Perry, white men represented a plurality of guests at 42 percent and 27 percent, respectively. Melissa Harris-Perry deserves special mention for having a much more diverse guest list than the other programs; 26 percent of guests were African-American women, 20 percent were African-American men, and 16 percent were white women. Up also featured significantly more women and people of color than CNN or the broadcast shows. Latino, Asian-American, and Middle Eastern guests continued to rank in the single digits or not at all among every show.