Lack of balance at C-SPAN’s Washington Journal

"Since 1979, C-SPAN has provided an invaluable service to viewers with its no-frills coverage of congressional hearings, press briefings, demonstrations, book readings and other political events. By presenting public affairs with a minimal intrusion by hosts or reporters, C-SPAN has gained a reputation as a frictionless conveyer of raw political information to the public."

"Washington Journal’s reputation for maintaining a low-key atmosphere for serious discussion is matched by its image of fairness. The New York Times (12/15/96) once described C-SPAN as “the politically neutral public-affairs cable channel,” and NPR’s Mike Pesca (On the Media, 4/6/02) declared that balance was the key to the network’s success: “This bare-bones, aggressively evenhanded format is why C-SPAN was founded and probably why 8 million people a week watch Washington Journal."

However..........

"Despite C-SPAN’s stated goals, Extra!’s study found Washington Journal skewing rightward, favoring Republican and right-of-center interview subjects by considerable margins over Democratic and left-of-center guests. The study also found that women, people of color and public interest viewpoints were substantially underrepresented."

The article goes on to list all the results, and I have to admit I was surprised. I haven't been able to catch the show for a while, but it seems it no longer has anything resembling a balance. I hope this doesn't spill over to it's other shows.

I loved being able to watch entire speeches on that network because it afforded me the opportunity to see just how badly the general media was on reporting, commenting on, and debating, public speeches. I was amazed at how often speeches, having been reduced to 15 second sound-bites by the news, would be reported as meaning something entirely different than what was actually said. With C-SPAN I was able to get the full context, and would often wonder what the hell the talking-heads were watching while the speeches were on, that they'd later get them so wrong and totally miss the points being made. With the exception of Presidential speeches, you can't listen to or watch others such as Congressional debates and Senate hearings, not to mention a whole host of others including even the British Parliment, in full, without C-SPAN, unless you happen to attend them.

It looks as though even C-SPAN has become vulnerable to media bias. Now I'll be wondering what speeches they might decide not to show, in favor of right-wing points of view.