Sunday Shutout: Influential Sunday Shows Host Few Women, Minorities

Special Report: Influential Sunday Morning Shows Host Few Women, Minorities

Report is available online at:

http://www.MediaMatters.org/SundayShowDiversity

Washington, D.C. - Media Matters for America today released "Sunday Shutout: The Lack of Gender & Ethnic Diversity on the Sunday Morning Talk Shows," a special report documenting the overwhelming lack of gender and racial/ethnic diversity on the influential, agenda-setting Sunday morning network political talk shows.

"On the whole, our report demonstrates the all-important Sunday shows are seriously lacking a meaningful presence of women and people of color. For too long, these voices have been relegated to the back of network newsrooms," said David Brock, President and CEO of Media Matters. "Women and people of color add perspective, depth, and value to the quality of our public discourse, whatever the issue at hand. For these influential broadcasts to ignore these voices is to deny the American people the genuine and representative debate they deserve on issues of the day. If we've learned anything in the wake of the Imus controversy, it is that the networks have the power to make positive, inclusive change -- change that is severely needed."

The report analyzed ABC's This Week, CBS' Face the Nation, NBC's Meet the Press, and Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday, classifying each of the more than 2,000 guests in 2005 and 2006 by gender and by ethnicity/race. It follows a report released last week titled "Locked Out: The Lack of Gender & Ethnic Diversity on Cable News Continues," which documented the continued lack of gender and racial/ethnic diversity on the major prime-time cable news shows.

Key Findings:

• NBC's Meet the Press, ABC's This Week, CBS' Face the Nation, and Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday feature guest lists that are overwhelmingly white and male.

• On average, men outnumber women on Meet the Press, This Week, Face the Nation, and Fox News Sunday by a 4-to-1 ratio.

• On average, there were nearly seven white guests for every guest of any other race/ethnicity. On Meet the Press and Face the Nation, there were nearly nine white guests for every guest of another race/ethnicity.

• The top-rated Sunday program -- Meet the Press -- shows the least diversity of all. The NBC program is the most male and nearly the most white (edged out by Face the Nation by 1 percentage point.)

Media Matters for America is a not-for-profit, progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.

Report is available online at:

http://www.MediaMatters.org/SundayShowDiversity

More from Media Matters About the Sunday Shows

In March, Media Matters released "If It's Sunday, It's Still Conservative," a report documenting the continued dominance of Republican and conservative voices on the network Sunday morning talk shows -- ABC's This Week, CBS' Face the Nation, NBC's Meet the Press, and Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday. The report classified each of the more than 2,000 guests in 2005 and 2006 as well as guests since the 2006 midterm elections by party and/or ideology. It followed on a report from 2006, "If It's Sunday, It's Conservative," which analyzed more than 7,000 guests on the Sunday shows during the Clinton and Bush presidencies and found a Republican or conservative tilt during both administrations. Visit http://www.SundayShowReport.com for more information on these reports.