The work of E. E. Schattschneider (1960) and other suggests that there
may be systematic biases or unrepresentativeness in the voices that i
nterest groups contribute to public deliberation about policy. Evidenc
e from hundreds of TV news stories concerning 80 diverse policy issues
from the 1969-82 period indicates that corporations and business grou
ps predominated (especially on economic issues), with 36.5% of all int
erest group mentions, contrasted with only 13.2% for labor. Profession
al and agricultural interests were rarely heard from. Citizen action g
roups had 32% of all interest group stories, but these often concerned
unpopular protest activity. Such imbalances, apparently resulting fro
m differential command of money and other resources, seem to violate n
orms of equal access, representativeness, balance, and diversity in th
e marketplace of ideas.