More on CNN
by Chris Bowers, Thu Mar 03, 2005 at 11:49:22 AM EST
judy has begun airing a new segment on her show called "inside the blogs." during this small 2 minute piece, "blog reporter" jacki schechner and producer abbi tatton sit at two computers and read blogs. that's right. they sit there and read blogs. out loud.(...)
our interns poured through the transcripts of inside politics and documented every mention of every blog during this new segment since feb. 14, and the results are clear:
- mentions of conservative blogs: 54
- mentions of liberal blogs: 29
jacki has labeled andrew sullivan as "centrist" (march 1). sorry, but we steadfastly count sully as a con.
jacki calls jeff jarvis's buzz machine as liberal (feb. 28). so does jeff himself. in our opinion, anyone that reads instapundit on an hourly basis, and has more conservative than liberal links on their blogroll is suspect when they wear the "lefty" tag, but for the sake of as much balance as we can squeeze out of this exercise, we'll call buzz machine a lefty site.
we have to assume that jacki's mention of the "brad log" is a reference to brad de long's site, an obviously liberal blog, and the "columbia journal review" is the blog "campaign desk" at cjr's site . we also count jay rosen's press think as liberal, though jay is more concerned with how the media operates than political agenda.
we also spot jacki and abbi wonkette on the liberal side, though the only thing liberal about ana marie is her doses of snark.(...)
still, with 6 references each of captains quarters and vodka pundit, 4 mentions of instapundit and whizbang, the calling of little green footballs as one of the "blogstars" and the powerline blog as a "very important blog" ( feb. 17), it seems that the conservative total of 54 far outpaces the measly 29 mentions of the liberal sites. granted, dkos got referenced a whopping 8 times, but that leaves a sorry 21 times for all the other liberals (including wonkette, jay rosen and jeff jarvis). one mention of atrios! none whatsoever of tom tomorrow, jeralyn merritt, eric alterman, jerome armstrong, max sawicky, annatopia, billmon, david neiwert, nathan newman, jeanne d'arc, dave johnson, or the gang at tapped or first draft or corrente. or even skippy!
Liberal blogges hold a four to three traffic edge on conservatives, and yet CNN mentions conservative blogs by a 2 to 1 margin in their new blog segment. I'd be offended if this sort of thing wasn't so typical. At least it is not as bad as the gap between liberal and conservative think tank citations in the national media.









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