it's become almost pointless to watch Wash. Journal in the morning

[donsu]

it's almost like watching Fox without the yelling and rudeness

and more and more it's boring, listening to the same old, same old bushgang rhetoric from the same old bushgang people

I'm in the midst of deciding whether to stop watching or not. what think you all?

[montanacowboy]

1. I agree

and in addition it is way too painful to listen to the callers; the extent of their total ignorance of affairs and their pure vitriol; CSpan under Brian Lamb is exactly a propaganda arm of the administration and is no longer watchable

[Stevepol]

2. And then they'll have somebody like Mark Crispin Miller.

I usually turn it on to find out who is going to be on and if it's anybody worth watching, I'll watch it. Usually it's just the usual administration pap. Then, I agree, it's pointless.

[zanne]

3. I still like it.

They should change their call-in numbers to read Democrats, Republicans and Others, though.

[emulatorloo]

11. how about call in #s for "Ignorant" "Crazed" "Ignorant and Crazed"

all the kooks who can't get thru to limbaugh seem to go to CSPAN

[CottonBear]

4. The Fox news type callers callers are a national embarassment.

They spew the daily Fox News/Right-wing talk radio talking points verbatim. They always blame President Clinton for everything. Never mind that he's been out of office for more than five years. Are most Americans this stupid or ill-informed? If they are then we are in big trouble.

[Meldread]

6. Stupid and ill-informed. EOM

[ProfessorGAC]

10. Seen Silverspoon's Approval Numbers Lately?

33% don't indicate that he has the majority of americans in his corner.

CSPAN is no longer representative of the people, since they are doing a balancing act with their three lines that is not reflective of the populace.

The Professor

[stanwyck]

5. Great minds

I was thinking the same just this morning. I've watched Washington Journal for years. It's been gradually sinking. The guests too often have taken their cue from the Bush administration by offering nothing more than benign platitudes. There's little substance.
However, there was a good show last Friday (?) with a doctor who spoke on how badly the Bush administration has been handling the AIDs crisis. He was knowledgeable and respectful of all the callers. It was gratifying to know that there are hard-working foot soldiers out there like this man who every day take on the disastrous policies of the Bushies.
But I often don't turn to Washington Journal (as I used to daily) as listening to the robotic rightwing talking points which are straight from hateradio is not the best way for me to begin my day.
Although I do have a better understanding now of the Third Reich. Feed people lies incessantly and a certain proportion will no longer he capable of discerning truth.

[Toots]

7. I stopped over a year ago and am much happier for it..

Tired of all the LIES and no one to counter them...

[StClone]

8. Two things to improve Washington Journal call ins

1) Screen better

2) Eliminate Dem/Rep. lines

I hardly listen any more. M. Crispin Miller had idiot callers state he was a liar right on the air. He is most thorough and accountable for all his writing. He lives on facts not the pablum talking points.

My public radio is also going "Centrist." we are losing some of the old guard even as AAR and Ed Schulz grow.

[otohara]

9. New Report From Fair - Wash Journal NOT AT ALL BALANCED

Failing at its "No. 1 goal"
Lack of balance at C-SPAN’s Washington Journal

By Steve Rendall

Since 1979, C-SPAN has provided an invaluable service to viewers with its no-frills coverage of congressional hearings, press briefings, demonstrations, book readings and other political events. By presenting public affairs with a minimal intrusion by hosts or reporters, C-SPAN has gained a reputation as a frictionless conveyer of raw political information to the public.

In 2005, C-SPAN celebrated the 25th anniversary of the first-ever nationally televised viewer call-in shows, a format that it introduced in October 1980. By January 1995, it launched Washington Journal, a political talkshow that C-SPAN now describes as its “flagship viewer call-in program.”

Airing seven mornings a week, usually three hours per day, Washington Journal generally features a host, guests and viewer calls. Guests usually appear one at a time, though they are occasionally paired. C-SPAN’s “open phone” segments also allow callers a chance to voice a broad spectrum of opinions with no guests present.

Washington Journal’s reputation for maintaining a low-key atmosphere for serious discussion is matched by its image of fairness. The New York Times (12/15/96) once described C-SPAN as “the politically neutral public-affairs cable channel,” and NPR’s Mike Pesca (On the Media, 4/6/02) declared that balance was the key to the network’s success: “This bare-bones, aggressively evenhanded format is why C-SPAN was founded and probably why 8 million people a week watch Washington Journal.”

C-SPAN doesn’t disagree. “Balance is our No. 1 goal,” Peter Slen, Washington Journal’s executive producer and part-time host, told On the Media, adding: “We keep official stats on the Washington Journal, OK? Republicans, Democrats, conservative, liberal, moderates—we try to stay within the week nearly perfect as far as the balance goes.”


http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2764

[papau]

12. Two to one in favor of the Right Wing is no doubt a "left wing bias"

<snip>Out of the 205 partisan guests, Republicans outnumbered Democrats nearly two to one (134 to 70): Republicans accounted for 65 percent of Washington Journal’s partisan guests, while Democrats made up 34 percent. No representative of a third party appeared during the study period.

Elected officials who appeared on Washington Journal were slightly more balanced than overall partisan guests. Of the 97 elected officials appearing on the show (senators and House members), 58 were Republican and 39 were Democrat—a 60 to 40 percent imbalance in favor of the GOP.

One might reasonably expect Republicans to moderately outnumber Democrats at a time when the GOP controls the White House and both houses of Congress, but a nearly two to one advantage is hard to justify—particularly in the wake of the national election that concluded in the first week of the study period with the Republican candidate receiving 51 percent of the popular vote. That election gave the Republicans control of 53 percent of the House and 55 percent of the Senate.

Journalists accounted for nearly a third of all guests (215, or 32 percent), the largest single occupational group on Washington Journal’s guestlist. The establishment-oriented Washington Post, with 20 journalists appearing as guests, was the most visible outlet, followed by the Capitol Hill–focused Congressional Quarterly with 12 and the right-leaning Washington Times with 10. USA Today and Time each provided eight guests, while five represented the Christian Science Monitor.

Despite its declaration of balance, the Washington Journal hosted journalists from right-leaning opinion magazines more often than it did those from the left. For instance, the conservative Weekly Standard furnished three guests, as did the like-minded National Review (including National Review Online). Only two guests from the liberal American Prospect were invited on the Journal, and only one guest from the left-leaning Nation.

When opinion journalists from all outlets were included, the right-leaning bias was nearly as strong: 32 right-of-center journalists appeared, vs. 19 left-of-center reporters (even counting editor Peter Beinart, the New Republic’s pro-war editor, as being on the left). Perhaps this tilt to the right could be rationalized if right-wing magazines were distinctly more popular than their counterparts on the left, but the reverse seems to be true; Mother Jones and The Nation both best National Review’s circulation numbers by a wide margin, and The Progressive outsells the Weekly Standard and American Spectator.

Given this pattern, it’s not surprising that right-of-center and centrist think-tanks dominated Washington Journal’s 75 think-tank guest slots during the study period. The conservative American Enterprise Institute and the centrist Carnegie Endowment for International Peace were the best-represented think tanks, providing 10 guests each. The centrist Brookings Institution had seven guests, followed by the Heritage Foundation and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, two conservative groups whose experts each appeared five times. Among left-leaning think tanks, only the Center for International Policy provided as many as two guests.

Although they could serve as a valuable corrective to the show’s elite-skewed guestlist, citizen-based organizations and public interest groups accounted for just 9 percent of total guests on Washington Journal, with 57 appearances. Despite its relatively small size, this category did much to increase the ideological diversity of the program, with guests spanning the political spectrum from Club for Growth, the Family Research Council and the Independent Women’s Forum on the right, to Public Citizen, the Alliance for Justice and the National Women’s Law Center on the left.

While corporate representatives made up a small group of Washington Journal guests (24, or 4 percent), the number of guests who might have provided a balance to corporate views were even less. Union representatives, environmentalists and consumer rights groups accounted for just six guest appearances, or 1 percent of the total.

C-SPAN has taken conscientious steps to address bias in the past. According to the Baltimore Sun (3/5/01), when C-SPAN consultant and University of Maryland professor John Splaine noticed that the network fielded a disproportionate number of calls from conservatives, it set up separate call-in lines for Democrats, Republicans and independents.

There’s no reason that the network can’t address the imbalances in its guestlist in the same spirit—if balance really is the No. 1 goal.