Finding: Less Than A Quarter Of Economic-Issue Guests On Cable Represented A Minority Group, Which Are Most Economically Vulnerable

78 Percent Of All Guests In Economic News Segments Were White. In the first six months of 2015, Media Matters found that an overwhelming majority of guests invited to appear on cable TV news programs to provide commentary on economic issues were white. People of color only accounted for 196 of the 892 total guest appearances, or just 22 percent. African-Americans made up 15 percent, followed by Latinos at 6 percent, while Asian-Americans and Middle Eastern guests amounted to less than 1 percent each.

National Poverty Center: Poverty Rate Is Higher For Racial/Ethnic Subgroups. Blacks and Hispanics, whose poverty rates are higher than other ethnic groups, are vulnerable to negative economic changes. According to 2010 data from the National Poverty Center, “27.4 percent of blacks and 26.6 percent of Hispanics were poor” in comparison to “9.9 percent of non-Hispanic whites and 12.1 percent of Asians.” [National Poverty Center, 2010]

Finding: MSNBC Had Most Guests Of Color, Fox News Was Most White

MSNBC Included The Most Guests Of Color In Their Economic Discussions. While CNN featured a higher proportion of guests of color (roughly, 36 percent of all guest appearances featured a person of color), they were, overall, the network with the fewest guest appearances, totaling 56. On the other hand, MSNBC featured 466 guests during discussions about the economy, of which 120 were people of color. Fox News brought on 370 guests to comment on economic news but only 15 percent (56 guests) were people of color.

Appearances By Fox News' Contributor Juan Williams Accounted For Nearly Half Of Hispanic Guest Appearances On Fox. Fifteen percent of Fox News' guests during economic segments were representative of an ethnic or racial minority, but they weren't a diverse group. Regular contributor Juan Williams' appearances accounted for 20 of the 56 appearances by guests of color at Fox News.

Methodology

Media Matters conducted a Nexis search of transcripts of evening (defined as 5 p.m. through 11 p.m.) weekday programs on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC from January 1 through June 30, 2015. We identified and reviewed all segments that included any of the following keywords: econom!, jobs, growth, debt, deficit, and minimum wage. When transcripts were incomplete, we reviewed video. Guest appearances for all segments were coded for race and ethnicity.

The following programs were included in the data: The Situation Room, Erin Burnett OutFront, Crossfire, Anderson Cooper 360, CNN Tonight, CNN Special Report, The Five, Special Report with Bret Baier, The O'Reilly Factor, The Kelly File, Hannity, On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, The Ed Show, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Politics Nation with Al Sharpton, All In with Chris Hayes, The Rachel Maddow Show, and The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell. For shows that air reruns, only the first airing was included in data retrieval. Because of the nature of the show, the rotating guest hosts of Fox News Network's The Five were counted as guests.

For this study, Media Matters only included segments that contained substantial discussion of policy implications on the macroeconomy. We defined a “substantial discussion” as any segment where a host dedicates a monologue, or portion of a monologue, to economic news or policy analysis, or any segment where two or more guests discuss economic news or related policy topic. We did not include teasers or clips of news events, or rebroadcasts of news packages that were already counted when they first aired in the 5p.m.-11p.m. survey window.

John F. Burnett contributed research for this report.