More Sticky Issues For Non-Sticky Labels

Running the risk of beating this subject into the ground (I know, too late), I feel compelled to once again address this recurring proposition that grand conclusions can be drawn about bias based solely on sometimes arbitrary and often meaningless labels. Media Matters is at it again, this time with a study about guests who appear on MSNBC's "Hardball." Last month, the organization whose self-described mission is "dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media," offered a similar study that concluded Sunday shows unfairly broadcast more conservative messages simply because more people labeled Republican or conservative appeared on them.

I've called that methodology into question here and since Media Matters repeated the exercise for "Hardball," I wanted to offer a couple further thoughts. First, the "Hardball" study counts only the first two months of this year, hardly long enough to draw broad conclusions. More importantly, those who appeared on the program were once again assigned labels – either Republican, Democrat, conservative or progressive – rather than being judged on anything they actually had to say. That practice remains a fatal flaw in this methodology.

No doubt I'll hear the same litany of responses to this position as I have in the past – that the content is meaningless because conservatives and Republicans are going to get their message out regardless of the topic, that the audience only hears one side of the debate, that liberals are intentionally being shut out of the process, etc, etc. I'm not buying it, no how, no way.

For starters, what exactly is the "conservative" position? Is it anything in support of President Bush? In that case, the "conservative" position was heavily outweighed on "Hardball" over the past few weeks (including at least one week covered in this study) when it came to discussing the issue of the day – the Dubai ports deal. In case you weren't paying attention, there weren't many people on either side of the ideological divide who were real supportive of that. Okay, isolated incident you say? Well then, what's the "conservative" position on immigration? Is it being for some type of limited amnesty program or for building a big, huge wall and rounding up everyone who's in our country illegally and dumping them on the other side? There are a lot of "conservatives" on both sides of that issue.

Let's look at some of the people labeled "conservative" in this study. There's Pat Buchanan, someone I think we can all agree is pretty darned conservative. But wait a minute, what's that you say, he has been an opponent of the war in Iraq since the very beginning? So what does one label him then? "Anti-war conservative?" Tucker Carlson? A conservative to be sure but also the host of his very own MSNBC program and someone who has broken with his party line on plenty of issues. Joe Scarborough? Ditto.

Look, I'm not saying that there isn't a point to be made here. If Media Matters, or anyone else, feels that their particular point of view on a particular issue is not being represented, that's a fair complaint. If you are against the war in Iraq and feel outraged because Senator Joe Lieberman has been asked on to give a Democrat's view (yes, he is a Democrat) instead of Congressman Murtha, fine. But the issues discussed on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis rarely break down in neat little categories, nor should they. Are we really to believe there are only two ways to look at complex issues like health care, for example? You can't normally organize the world into simple categories so what good is a study designed around doing just that?