PressEthic

On Wednesday, Jeff Cohen, a media critic and founder of Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) appeared on WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show promoting his recently published new book, Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media

Cohen and Lopate eloquently argue the political balance of power on the big three cable news networks, where Cohen says the left is marginalized. "There's this unwritten rule that you can't represent the left on American TV every night if you're proudly, actually on the left," he argues.

Cohen refers to his own experience as a pundit on Crossfire, the CNN staple that aired from 1982-2005. The show's format calls for two co-hosts - one from the right and one from the left - who call on their political allies while "debating" the issues of the day. Together, the two sides theoretically balanced one another out to achieve some sort of political center. For six years, while Cohen was a frequent contributor, the co-host from the left was journalist Michael Kinsley. Cohen says Kinsley was a self-defined "wishy washy moderate," not a leftist. On the other side was Pat Buchanan, a radical conservative who hosted the show for seventeen years. According to Cohen, the whole show was a farce, because, "they were never really ready for a co-host from the genuine left."

Cohen partly attributes the lack of strong left voices on cable news to "a fear of sponsor flight," saying networks are hesitant to air progressive perspectives because, "they know that genuine representatives of the left will often be critical of business."

A lot of executives who grow up in a timid, corporate environment are never afraid of having someone to the far right, but they're afraid of having genuine progressives.

During Crossfire's final years, the left was represented by Paul Begala and James Carville (who also served as advocates for the Democrats during CNN's 2006 midterm election coverage). Tucker Carlson dominated the show from the right, and six months before the show was finally cancelled, Jon Stewart appeared as a guest and schooled them all. Carlson's finesse as the rightist co-host exemplified his rise to power at a young age, while Begala and Carville came off as bumbling, loony, and out of touch. And while Carlson may have been more moderate than Buchanan, his co-hosts simply toed the line of the Democratic Party platform.

Not much has changed. A look at cable commentary shows reveals a dearth of authentically liberal commentators. Cohen's explanation, the fear of losing advertising, is probably a large part of the reason why.