NewsBusters Podcast

On "International Fact Checking Day," we discuss how PolitiFact can't find any Democrats saying false things with Matthew Hoy, author of the new book "Fact-Checking Frauds: How Fact-Checkers Distract, Deceive, and Distort Our Politics." What tactics do they use? There's obvious selection bias -- in targets, in fact claims, and in expert testimony.

The elitist media celebrated another "massive" and "historic" set of "No Kings" protests on the Left, but they can't seem to remember the Democrats cracking down on conservative "disinformation," from COVID to climate to the Biden scandals. The new free-speech victory in the Missouri v. Biden case was ignored by the press.

Sheridan Gorman, an 18-year-old college student at Loyola University in Chicago, was shot dead by an illegal alien. The networks hate reporting on crime committed by illegal immigrants. They would insist it’s atypical, and it seems too racist and pro-Trump to cover. News loses to narrative, and that narrative is Trump is ruining everything.

The "climate emergency" pushers have pompously predicted planetary doom within ten years for more than 30 years. Why are they never checked? Author Kevin Mooney has a new book titled "Climate Porn," and we discuss the remarkable imbalance of climate coverage and the nasty tendency to punish people who even gently question the panic on the Left.

Sunday's Oscars telecast on ABC declined in the ratings again as the comedians -- both host Conan O'Brien and presenter Jimmy Kimmel -- drowned the event in a series of ridiculous anti-Trump jokes and comments.

CNN host Jake Tapper claimed "Every reporter that I know wants the United States to succeed in every way." But two London CNN bigwigs were photographed schmoozing with the Iranians at their embassy in London, and it didn't look like they were there to ask tough questions at the anniversary party for their Islamo-fascist revolution.

If journalists pose as guardians of the public interest, why do they get on the wrong side of 80-20 issues? Our study of the network newscasts and the Big Four News Apps found great disinterest in the "Save ACT," which would require proof of citizenship of voter registration and voter ID at the polls. It's overwhelmingly popular -- and being ignored.

Kristen Welker's softball Sunday interview on NBC with the Iranian foreign minister reminded everyone again of an anti-American double standard. The liberals inside newsrooms put enormous pressure on interviewers to question Trump fiercely, while representatives of mass-murdering Islamist regimes get open-ended softballs.

CNN's Brian Stelter wasn't "Facts First" when he tweeted: "Pete Hegseth reverting to his fake-news routine in today's Pentagon presser." What's fake? "The press only wants to make the president look bad." Does Stelter watch CNN? Jim Acosta also trashed Hegseth as spewing "Fox MAGA talking points to bash the press."

President Trump ordered a new offensive in Iran over the weekend, taking out top Iranian tyrants like Ayatollah Khamenei. Bizarrely, our media composed puffy obituaries for the Ayatollah and gave Iran's foreign minister a softball platform, unlike when they all pressure each other to be ever more hostile in questioning our elected president.

The State of the Union reveals that our country isn't unified. The media thrive on division, on trying to divide Trump from the public. The "fact checkers" pounce on Trump and leave the Democrats untouched. Their comedians and actors speak in the most hateful terms, and then Democrats accuse Republicans of being the ones who divide people.

The annual State of the Union address is every president's golden opportunity to talk all over live national television for an hour (and then some). We're poised for what happens afterward. They have touted Biden speeches as "forceful and feisty" and they have trashed Trump speeches as "intensely partisan." Look in the mirror, people.

In the new eruption of leftist protest over anyone demanding Stephen Colbert provide "Equal Time" to their incessant tilt, we point out again that all the comedy shows tilt dramatically to the left, just like "The View." Whoopi Goldberg felt pressed to address the NewsBusters scoop on her place in the Epstein files.

Who is in the majority in Congress right now? If you watch TV news stories on congressional hearings, you're mostly given angry soundbites of yelling Democrats. Hearings featuring Trump officials were presented to make those officials look controversial, unpopular, and ineffective.

The Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny, fresh from trashing ICE at the Grammy Awards, organized a highly divisive Super Bowl spectacle that put his leftist Latino identity politics front and center. The ardent adoration it drew from leftists and Democrats underlined its political intent.

The Washington Post laid off 300 employees this week, transforming billionaire owner Jeff Bezos into a James Bond villain. Chuck Todd tweeted he was “leaning into the evil rich guy stereotype.” Owners must lose hundreds of millions of dollars for that “vital pillar of democracy” -- leftist media bias.

Journalists are rarely arrested, in part because the media elites freak out, since they apparently can never commit a crime if they're trying to interview people. Lemon can't be part of a mob violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, to which they added churches. Now if a journalist was part of a mob invading an abortion clinic, we all know the Left would freak out about that.

Most Americans think the violence and hot rhetoric in Minnesota have gone too far, but the national media are mostly attacking the Republicans and ICE as if they're the only violent ones with the hot rhetoric. TV "news" stars get furious when you suggest Tim Walz or Jacob Frey or any other Democrat needs to tone down the wild Nazi talk. They don't want to calm it down.

At a time when deportation is a dirty word and ICE is smeared as the Gestapo, Peter Schweizer offers a vivid counterpoint about defending American civilization in his new book “The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon.”

Across the dial on Sunday, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey was cued up for his message about leftist anti-ICE protesters. On ABC, Frey responded to a softball question: "It's about love. We are showing something far more powerful and consequential here, which is love. We are standing up for one another."

Several leftist movie stars lectured about the allegedly villainous law-enforcement activities of ICE on the red carpet at the Golden Globe Awards. They wore "Be Good" pins to mourn Renee Good and mourned of "terrorized" immigrants. Why should we care what they think?

Everyone can agree that Renee Good's shooting as she drove into an ICE agent was tragic. But the media and Democrats mangled the facts into Good was just a peaceful mom who was driving away from the villains in an exhibit of "classic de-escalation behavior."

What is going on in The People’s Republic of Minnesota? The network news can hardly notice the massive welfare fraud perpetrated by Somalis in that state, and the media find nothing offensive about local Democrats telling ICE to 'get the f--k out of Minneapolis' and threatening to deploy the National Guard against ICE.

Submerged in all the coverage of the American military seizing Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro and his wife on Saturday was how well the mission went: the target was apprehended with zero American deaths. But the media spin was: this must be illegal, this must be headed for failure, this feels like American imperialism.

What were President Trump’s “achievements” in 2025? The media use and abuse of this term is an important measurement of bias. Conservative wins don't get the A-word. Achievements are programs like Obamacare, lauded as Obama’s “signature achievement.” It doesn’t matter if the Affordable Care Act ended up affordable. Capitalism is measured by its results. Socialism is measured by intentions.

Did you ever notice the Hollywood Left is never guilty of hate speech? Unleashing your hatred on Donald Trump and his supporters is never subjected to “fact checking” and it’s never a reason to doubt the future of late-night “comedy.” Christian Toto of HollywoodInToto.com reviews the cultural landscape.

The leftists inside CBS News clearly despise new Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss, who threatens to add troublesome balance to their “news.” The war erupted when Weiss delayed the latest ’60 Minutes’ hit piece on Team Trump deporting Venezuelans into a "notorious" Salvadoran prison. Delaying it is a “crisis,” the Trump-haters screamed, a “death knell for democracy.”

Alex Christy is our super-serious media analyst with the late night-comedy spreadsheet, counting jokes and guests over the last three years. In 2025, it tilted even further to the left. An amazing 92 percent of late-night political jokes are aimed at conservatives, up from 82 percent in 2024. The guest list included almost zero conservatives. Jimmy Fallon put on Greg Gutfeld in August.

President Trump gave a prime-time address on the economy on Wednesday night, and the networks felt it was necessary to attack it, especially ABC. Jon Karl claimed he'd never heard a primetime speech that "was as defensive and hyperpartisan as this one." He certainly forgot Joe Biden's 2022 Philadelphia speech denouncing "MAGA Republicans" as endangering democracy.

In the era of Donald Trump, journalists will earnestly tell each other that their jobs begin with fact-checking Trump's lies. They must do "fact-checking in real time." But they do nothing like that when they interview Democrats. The Sunday show hosts suck up to Democrats and let them drop rhetorical bombs, like Trump is engaging in a “dizzying campaign to increase violence in this country.”

Journalists always warn us of the far right, but where on earth is the far left? When journalists are puffing socialists like Zohran Mamdani, they show where they belong on the ideological spectrum. If they tagged Ilhan Omar or AOC as "far left," our jaws would drop.

How is talk radio doing when so many young people don't listen to broadcast radio? How can anyone stand listening to NPR? These questions and some free-speech concerns came up in a chat with Derek Hunter, an author and talk-radio host on WMAL-FM in Washington, DC.

As the Media Research Center reported a new poll finding that less than 25 percent of survey respondents correctly identified Charlie Kirk's killer as a leftist, former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer tells us that young people have largely abandoned traditional media and form opinions from very non-traditional platforms from TikTok on down.

The Washington Post and others were upset when the White House created a new web page to name a worst "Media Offender of the Week." How dare they challenge the "rigorous" journalism of the elitist media! Plus: You won't believe Jim Acosta's new boycott idea.

On a recent radio interview, we discussed why the major media performs so poorly in polls about trust in the news, and yet, they are still influential in setting the agenda. Congress has low approval ratings -- lower than the press! -- and yet Congress is still our legislative authority. The power to decide what is "news" must still be challenged in every news cycle.

NBC "Meet the Press" host Kristen Welker devoted a chunk of her interview with socialist Zohran Mamdani to begging him to repeat his view that Donald Trump is a "fascist" and a "despot" and a "threat to democracy." This game of Repeat Yourself isn't about eliciting answers. It's about ginning up the most negative soundbites.

Conservative CNN contributor Scott Jennings stars in viral clips for the verbal battles he has on "NewsNight with Abby Phillip." How does he prepare for TV combat, and how can he possibly stay calm in the face of leftist assaults that he's a racist or a Trump toady? He explains his CNN battles and discusses his new book on Trump, "A Revolution of Common Sense."

Once the Schumer Shutdown collapsed by the defection of more compromising Democrats, we find ourselves back in a conveniently timed outbreak of Jeffrey Epstein mania, appearing to change the subject away to whatever Democrats wanted to discuss now. Hundreds of network minutes have been spent making hyper-negative noises on how President Trump's interactions with Epstein are the latest exhibit of his evil ways.

Whether it's Google News or Apple News or Wikipedia, too often the media outlets defined as "reliable sources" are the elitist liberal sources. People cruising their phones or digging into search engines are force-fed NPR, CNN, NBC, The Washington Post, The New York Times. Conservative sites are classified as unreliable. Wikipedia smeared NewsBusters as "unreliable."