STUDY: CNN NewsNight Is a Televised Struggle Session for Conservatives

Since last summer, when CNN NewsNight shifted to an panel discussion-only format, host Abby Phillip has been praised for consistently inviting prominent conservatives onto the otherwise lopsidedly left-wing network. But with how rarely Phillip actually permits said conservative guests to finish a point without interrupting them, NewsNight is more akin to a televised struggle session than the beacon of ideological diversity as which it’s sometimes portrayed.

Summary of Findings:

During a random sample of ten episodes of CNN NewsNight, Phillip interrupted a guest explicitly to contradict him or her (“adversarial interruption”) 130 times. Of those, 127 (~98%) were conservatives, while just three (~2%) were liberals. Thus, conservatives were interrupted adversarially 42 times more often than liberals.

Conservatives were interrupted 60% of the time and were interrupted adversarially 58% of the time. Liberals were interrupted only 8% of the time and were interrupted adversarially just 1% of the time.

Of the 30 guests (~96%) who were never interrupted adversarially, 29 were liberals. The sole conservative to avoid being cut off by Phillip spoke only twice, for a total of 68 seconds.