Just Because You're On Cable Doesn't Mean You're Different

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Media Matters put out a study looking at four programs on each of the three cable news networks during prime time - which you can read here (in PDF format) - and I wanted to post a couple of bullet points:

In total, 67 percent of the guests on these cable programs were men, while 84 percent were white.

MSNBC showed the greatest gender imbalance, with 70 percent of its guests being male. CNN and Fox News were not far behind; each of those networks featured 65 percent male guests.

Fox News was the whitest network, with 88 percent white guests. CNN and MSNBC were close behind, with both featuring 83 percent white guests.

Latinos were particularly underrepresented. Though they now comprise 15 percent of the American population, they made up only 2.7 percent of cable news guests. The worst of the three networks on this score was MSNBC, which featured only six Latino guests out of 460 prime-time appearances during the entire month.

A number of ethnic groups were shut out entirely, or nearly so, on some networks. During the month of May, Fox News and MSNBC each featured a single Asian-American guest. Across the three cable networks, there were only four appearances by guests of Middle Eastern descent, two on Fox and two on CNN. There was not a single appearance by a Native American during the entire month.
Wow.

Just one Asian American in the whole month?

I thought there might at least be two.

That's pretty bad people.