C-SPAN‘s coverage of the House sit-in brought charges of political bias. (photo: Rep. Chellie Pingree)
The Washington Post‘s Callum Borchers (6/23/16) cited FAIR research in a story about complaints that C-SPAN continued to cover the Democratic sit-in on the House floor even after House Speaker Paul Ryan had the network’s cameras turned off.
“This isn’t the first time C-SPAN has been accused of taking sides, of course,” Borchers wrote, noting that usually, “the charge is that it has a conservative bias.”
One of his examples: “In 2005, the media watchdog Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting examined the political affiliations of guests on C-SPAN‘s Washington Journal program during a six-month period and determined that the show was ‘skewing rightward.'” The Post reporter quoted from Steve Rendall’s piece on National Journal‘s guestlist from the November/December 2005 Extra!:
Out of the 205 partisan guests, Republicans outnumbered Democrats nearly two to one (134 to 70): Republicans accounted for 65 percent of Washington Journal’s partisan guests, while Democrats made up 34 percent. No representative of a third party appeared during the study period.
Elected officials who appeared on Washington Journal were slightly more balanced than overall partisan guests. Of the 97 elected officials appearing on the show (senators and House members), 58 were Republican and 39 were Democrat—a 60 to 40 percent imbalance in favor of the GOP.
