What I want is clear, substantiated examples proving that any their claims are patently false.

This is the wrong question to ask. I have no doubt that the numbers in the cited study are correct. But they're presented out of context. A news story can have all its facts lined up, but if it presents them without context or leaves out other important facts, it doesn't matter that its not "false." It matters that it's not a complete and fair report.

That is the problem with Media Matters, especially that study for the very reason I cite. It doesn't put it into historical context.

Thanks, Mona, for doing the legwork on Stossel. I reacted similarly when I saw him listed as a "conservative" but was too lazy to track down counterexamples.

Please educate us.

[This study] fails to take into account one important point: at the time of the study Repubulicans/Conservatives held the White House and both Houses of congress. Those in power tend to get asked onto such shows.

Now if they did a comparison during a similar period of the Clinton administration, I bet you'd find the ratio the same in the opposite direction.

1. You can't win an argument citing "I bet you'd find."

2. MM's point is valid, paricularly since we weren't "at war" during Clinton's term. And there are letters from neocons over and over today arguing that Fox and other MSM talk shows represent a balanced number of pundits on the right and left. That's just laughable. Even IF Clinton supporters were over-represented ten years ago, MM's study shows a trend listing heavily toward the right. That's what's happening now and 5 years ago, not ten or 15 years ago. It's lopsided, and it's wrong.

3. My earlier point regarding Juan Williams' credentials as a leftist are well-supported by MM. He's got some real whoppers on there. And they're not "out of context."

You need to read the study. Even accepting your criticism as true, they also analyzed the numbers of conservative versus progressive journalists, and still found conservatives outnumbered progressives. Plus they analyzed panels, and found of the panels that were ideologically slanted, conservative panels outnumbered progressive ones.

Once you get to feature guests, 75% conservative/Republican, 17% progressive/Democratic. Your critique could apply here, but a 75/17 disparity (the balance being guests of no easy ideological assignment) doesn't wash down for me merely on the premise that Republicans were in power. That's better than 3 to 1.

So even if you are right, your critique only invalidates one portion of the study leaving 2 other categories of imbalance that should not be affected by the party affiliation of the party in power.

And finally your one criticism does not support the statement that "Media Matters is a joke."

Who said anything about a war, orbitboy? I sais nothing about Juan Williams. (Your name is more appropriate than you realize, apparently.)

My point remains: those in positions of power in government tend to get asked onto the TV news/opinion shows because they're the ones making and implementing policy. They're the newsmakers by every defintion of the word. When Republicans are in power, they tend to be represented on those shows. Ditto for Democrats. (The same is true in print outlets, by the way.)

The MM study goes to great lengths to make something look sinister and biased when in fact it simply measures reality in newsroom judgment.

Good point on #2. The media isn't supposed to play lapdog to whichever party is in power, and I would not support an overwhelming preponderance of guests coming from the next Democratic administration on all 3 prime Sunday talk shows for the period of 2009 to 2017 either.

Whether Clinton officials got 75% of the guest spots in the 1990s on Sunday mornings is immaterial now. Let's end this practice.

The party in the White House has plenty of ways to get its message out, and it would benefit democracy itself for the media to try and give more time to opposing viewpoints, regardless of whoever is in power.

We saw this in 2004, during the campaign where Bush suddenly felt the need to make "major foreign policy" speeches every 20 minutes, and every time something good happened for Kerry. It's not easy to prevent an administration from abusing its position on the bully-pulpit like that, but at the very least the media shouldn't be actively helping them do it by giving their officials lots of air time on network talk shows.

Dan D., my point is still valid because MM chooses to define who is a "conservative journalist" and who is a "progressive." In short, they make the rules that govern the rest of the study. They find what they want to find.

And anyone who thinks Juan Williams is a conservative, no matter what various stupid things he may have said from time to time, has not kept up with his work. He's not a raving leftist, but his work consistently falls to that side of the bell curve, on NPR, on Brit Hume's show, and in the Washington Post.

And again, when one side of the political spectrum is in power, they tend to be more represented in every sort of news/opinion outlet because they're the ones making the news. MM is determined to find "conservative bias" in the news, so whether consciously or not, it frames the questions in order to find what it's looking for.

Brent Bozell's Media Research Center does the same thing from the right. And that's fine. Neither MM nor MRC pretends to be anything other than what they are. I'm not alleging dishonesty here; it's simply ideological blindness.

We saw this in 2004, during the campaign where Bush suddenly felt the need to make "major foreign policy" speeches every 20 minutes, and every time something good happened for Kerry.

Sorta like in the late '90s, when Bill Clinton started launching cruise missiles every time Monica started talking.

Why Hume gets away with it is that what he says is pretty much the standard opinion of DC pundits, so they just see it as punditry, not partisanship.

If you'll recall, David Brinkley, who really was an anchorman on a real news show, made attacks on Clinton the night of his reelection that were strikingly nasty and personal.