Thursday, August 02, 2007
Candidates and air time: Fair, and not fair
Amid renewed demands (CWCID: Glenn Reynolds) from Democrats to reimpose the "fairness doctrine" on broadcast media, the New York Times is wondering whether Fox News is giving an unfair boost to Rudy Giuliani. The evidence for this charge is circumstantial. The Times shows that Roger Ailes, who runs Fox News, has long swapped backscratches with Giuliani, and -- via a graphic reproduced below -- that Fox has interviewed Giuliani more than it has any other candidate (and more than any other network has interviewed Giuliani).
Now, the Times does a credible job of showing that Ailes and Giuliani have shared a mutually beneficial relationship in the past, and I do not doubt that their friendship remains both satisfying and useful. The graphic (which bears the self-revealing original filename 0802-nat-web-subFOX.gif), however, is not really evidence for anything. Take a good look:
Yes, at first blush it looks as though Fox is giving Giuliani disproportionate "interview time," but the underlying article pretty much destroys the idea that it is because Giuliani and Ailes have a mutual man-crush. From the 34th paragraph:
This year through July 15, Mr. Giuliani appeared for 115 minutes in interviews on Fox, according to The Hotline, the political journal. More than half of those minutes, 78, were spent with Mr. Hannity, co-host of the “Hannity & Colmes” talk show. Mr. Hannity, a conservative who has spoken of his admiration for Mr. Giuliani, makes his own decisions about bookings, a spokeswoman said. (bold emphasis added)
I'd say that last sentence is a slightly relevant fact that might have warranted higher placement in the article. It is impressive, though, that the Times has even the nano-honesty necessary to include it at all.
Beyond that, the graphic has loads of interesting stuff that the Times might have written about had it started with a different narrative in mind.
First, the "non-Fox" networks are giving far more air-time, on average, to leading Democrats than leading Republicans. If we assume that the leading Republicans during the relevant period were Giuliani, McCain, and Romney (Thompson not being formally in the race), the non-Fox networks spent 403 minutes interviewing them. Those same networks spent 645 minutes interviewing the top three Democrats (Clinton, Obama and Edwards). In other words, the five non-Fox networks, which overwhelm Fox in aggregate audience, spent 60% more time interviewing top Democratic candidates than their Republican counterparts.
It gets worse. The non-Fox networks love John McCain, who received 71% of the interview time devoted to the top Republicans. If we exclude McCain and Obama (the most-interviewed Democrat on the non-Fox networks), the proportion of time on the non-Fox networks devoted to top Democrats rises. The non-Foxes devoted 384 minutes of interview time to Clinton and Edwards, and only 218 to Romney and Giuliani, an "excess" of 76%.
The situation does not improve if you toss in the minor candidates (although one is forced to wonder why MSNBC loves Biden and Dodd so much, and CNN can't get enough of Duncan Hunter). The non-Fox networks would much prefer to interview Democrats than Republicans, and deliver on that preference with real air time.
So, not only does the "interview time" graphic fail to support the claim that Giuliani is capitalizing on his friendship with Roger Ailes (although he probably is), it emphasizes the extraordinary devotion of the non-Fox networks to the leading lights of the left.
Are the Democrats sure they want to bring back the fairness doctrine?
13 Comments:
By 
GreenmanTim, at
Thu Aug 02, 10:42:00 AM:
Clinton's strategy of covering all the media bases fairly evenly makes her look like a centrist, while Obama did not appear on Fox and is appealing to a different voter base. And look at Kucinich, the leftist actively engaging with Fox viewers! One might uncharitably deduce from this graphic that MSNBC is the last refuge of the long shots...
By 
, at
Thu Aug 02, 11:27:00 AM:
Ah, yes, the leading lights of the left. Can't you feel the momentum for Chris Dodd and Joe Biden?!?
What this really shows is that there's little correlation between success in getting airtime on the various news shows and success on the campaign trail. No matter how many times McCain appears on Meet the Press, his campaign looks like it will crater before a single primary ballot is cast.
By , at
Thu Aug 02, 08:54:00 PM:
TH -
Just to pile on to what you've already noted, the major candidates on the Dem side are on CNN all the time. Meanwhile, as you note, the only Republican with lots of presence there is Duncan "can someone please tell me who the hell I am?" Hunter. I also note Tancredo being there a good bit.
I suspect that the lion's share of both of these comes from the daily spoon-banging-on-the-highchair xenophobiafest that is Lou Dobbs's "news" program.
By Purple Avenger, at
Thu Aug 02, 09:54:00 PM:
Looks like an inconvenient truth to me.
By , at
Thu Aug 02, 10:25:00 PM:
It should also be remembered that there are some Democrats that refuse to be seen on Fox, artificially increasing the time difference Republicans have on that network.
By , at
Fri Aug 03, 12:45:00 AM:
And as we all know the NYTs always give a unfair advantage to the demacrats and AS WE ALL KNOW. TRIX ARE FOR KIDS
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Fri Aug 03, 02:39:00 AM:
I never thought I could fit more than 10 pounds of manure into a 10-pound bag until I started to read the NY Times in high school. Boy, those folks can cram a lot of crap into a small amount of space.
By , at
Fri Aug 03, 07:32:00 AM:
SouthernRoots makes a good point. I'd like to see from Fox News: of those Democrats on the list, which shows have requested an appearance, the dates of the requests, and the responses to the requests. I wouldn't be surprised to find that each and every Dem had numerous invites from numerous shows and that each and every invite was declined. If I didn't make a mistake in transcribing the data into my spreadsheet, the ratio of Republican to Democrat airtime breaks down by outlet thusly:
ABC R:D Ratio = 0.76
CBS R:D Ratio = 0.91
NBC R:D Ratio = 0.67
CNN R:D Ratio = 0.76
FOX R:D Ratio = 5.77
MSNBC R:D Ratio = 0.65
Also, I'd like to note that there are two more Republicans than Democrats on the list which skews the numbers slightly.
By , at
Fri Aug 03, 04:09:00 PM:
Let them try to re implement it and make fools of themselves.
By Gordon Smith, at
Fri Aug 03, 10:16:00 PM:
You're right, Hawk, this is strange, but not inexplicable.
Coverage of Democratic candidates began immediately following the Nov. '06 elections. The press loves to cover Hillary, and they're looking forward to the two-year feeding frenzy. Throw a worthy adversary, Obama, into the mix, and you've got the makings of great TV.
McCain was the Beltway Republican "frontrunner" before anyone actually got into the race, and the corporate media stuck with that narrative, reality notwithstanding, until only recently.
The Republican race for the nomination is much more difficult to cover. There's really no clear front-runner, or even a pair to duel for it. Romney, Giuliani, and the undeclared Thompson are in a three way tie for the nomination.
They don't say much, still figuring out how to distance from Bush without losing Bush-loyalists. They're not raising anywhere near as much money as Dems, and their President has approval ratings to make Caligula blush.
The right-wing blogosphere, I imagine, will be the ones to formulate a decent narrative for the Republican nomination race. The corporate media just can't come up with a way to sell the thing.
By , at
Sat Aug 04, 12:54:00 AM:
ALL THE BULL CRAP THATS FIT TO PRINT
By joated, at
Sun Aug 05, 03:56:00 PM:
It's interesting that Hillary R. Clinton has racked up so few minutes of air time on each of the networks until one thinks about it. She and her handlers very carefully select who gets to ask what questions of the dear lady for, God forbid, someone should, you know, ask about lost-and-found file folders, missing furniture, dead associates, pardons (and money brothers and brothers-in-law pocketed), pocketed top secret papers, etc., etc, etc.
Wonder if anyone will ever ask those questions.
By , at
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