Conservative bias on Sundays

Not in houses of worship across America but on the network talk shows.

In an important, comprehensive new study that confirms what so many of us have suspected for so long, Media Matters for America has examined the Sunday morning talk shows on NBC, CBS, and ABC from 1997-2005 and found that "conservative voices significantly outnumber progressive voices" on those shows.

Click on the link above for the executive summary (and from there for the full report).

Here's one of the key findings: "In every year examined by the study... more panels tilted right (a greater number of Republicans / conservatives than Democrats / progressives) than tilted left. In some years, there were two, three, or even four times as many righttitled panels as left-tilted panels."

No surprise. None whatsoever. But it's good to have the bias quantitatively proven.

Yet the myth of liberal bias in the media will no doubt live on.

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A friendly tip of the hat to Steve Benen: "Let's all say it together, 'What liberal media?'"

See also Kevin Drum (who asks why "the anti-war side get shunned so badly by the talk shows"), Digby ("none of this is surprising to those of us who have been watching this stuff from our side of the aisle for the last decade or so"), Atrios (scroll down for several posts on the report), and Maha (read it all -- it's really good).