Media Matters counted the number of times those military analysts named in David Barstow’s New York Times investigation (“Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand”) “collectively appeared or were quoted as experts” since January 1, 2002: 4,500 times.
4,500 times on ABC, ABC News Now, CBS, CBS Radio Network, NBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, and NPR. Media Matters didn’t, however, “assess whether individual instances of commentary — or the analysts themselves — were supportive of administration policy.” Still, this gives some sense of just how much horsepower we could be talking about here.
Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.