Over the four day period this week from February 2-February 5, a Monday-Thursday news cycle, ThinkProgress.org documented for five news networks the occurrences of interviews with members of Congress over the economic stimulus package. The complete list of appearances and times can be found here, but here's the summary. I don't know why their headline says "Senate", when members of both houses were included in the study:
* This includes an appearance by Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
Two observations:
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[FONT=Courier New]Network Appearances by Republicans ...by Democrats
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CNBC 14 (70.0%) 6 (30.0%)
FOX Bus. 20 (83.3%) 4 (16.7%)
FOX News 24 (68.6%) 11 (31.4%)
CNN 5 (62.5%) 3 (37.5%)
MSNBC 12 (41.4%) 17*(58.6%)[/FONT]
* This includes an appearance by Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
Two observations:
- I'll start with some unexpected kudos to FOX: they had the highest overall total of appearances by actual members of Congress: 35. MSNBC was second with 29. For getting information from the horse's mouth and not from pundits, FOX got -- well, six more horses. I'm stunned at CNN's showing in this regard.
- It's true that MSNBC was the only network to have more Democratic politicians on than Republicans. But they were the network that came closest to a 50-50 balance, and they were the network that came closest to the actual membership of Congress (58.8-41.2, counting Sanders and Lieberman with Democrats). CNN came in second in this regard, although their sample size was so small that a switch of just one person would have sent them all the way down to fourth.