Seeing a Tilt in Sunday Talk

It is a perennial complaint about American television news: that the guests on the Sunday morning public affairs programs are not representative of the country's diversity. A new study says the guest bookings do not represent the population of Congress, either. "In 2009 the talk shows told us (by their selection of Congressional guests) that the people who matter are disproportionately white, male, senior and Republican -- disproportionate not just when compared to the American population overall, but also when compared to the population of Congress itself," concluded a study published this month in The Green Bag, a quarterly journal supported by the George Mason University School of Law.