NewsBusters Podcast

On Sunday night, the Senate made the first steps toward ending the Schumer Shutdown, and the Keith Olbermanns of the world were fulminating away. Suddenly, the networks admitted it was the Democrats who had been holding out and shutting down things.

It was a Democratic wave election, and the journalists went surfing. The amount of TV coverage of off-year elections in New Jersey, Virginia, and New York City was minimal this fall, perhaps because Democrats were feeling good about their chances and didn't want to give publicity to their opponents. Negative angles on Zohran Mamdani or Jay Jones were ignored or downplayed. MRCTV's Brittany Hughes and Nick Kangadis analyze the results.

Bongino Report content manager Matt Palumbo is out with another book on the Soros family philanthropic empire. This one's titled "The Heir: Inside the (Not So) Secret Network of Alex Soros.” Our Soros expert Joseph Vazquez helps explain what Alex has been doing to make a mockery of their so-called "Open Society" foundations.

Congressional hearings are a great opportunity for Republicans to expose the Left with tough questions. In a March hearing with the CEOs of PBS and NPR, Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) demonstrated how to drag them into answers they don't want to give. He joins the Podcast to discuss "public" media and the other occasions of liberal tilt.

The networks and newspapers hyperventilating over President Trump as a "one-man wrecking ball" who okayed demolition of the East Wing of the White House to build a new ballroom is the silliest Trump scandal imaginable. He's a "mob boss" who may "never leave" office, and his architectural plans betray "a darker history in fascist and totalitarian politics."

Free speech includes the freedom to mock humorless liberals.Whether it was jokes about CNN buying huge washing machines to launder news or naming transgender Biden appointee Rachel Levine "Man Of The Year," Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon tells us the Big Tech censors came to limit the reach of conservative satire.

FCC Chair Brendan Carr joins the NewsBusters Podcast to discuss protecting free speech over the airwaves and online, the future of broadcast licenses, and Operation Clean Carts—his push to block fraudulent Chinese hardware from infiltrating U.S. networks.

CNN granted a platform on Wednesday night to socialists Bernie Sanders and AOC in a "Shutdown Town Hall." The host, Kaitlan Collins, interrupted them only nine times. But when Collins interviewed Trump in a town hall format in 2023, she interrupted 113 times. Fox News contributor Joe Concha addresses that terrible tilt and other topics.

One of the ironies of the left is they boast about backing democracy and then support people who despise Western civilization in its entirety. Ryan Mauro of the Capital Research Center and Joseph Vazquez of MRC Business discuss the “Open Society Foundations” and how they have supported a violent far-left fringe, including terrorists both foreign and domestic.

New studies from NewsBusters demonstrate once again that "public" broadcasting inevitably tilts toward the leftist party, and the latest violent protest in Chicago and Portland prove once again that the press is pro-antifa, pushing their bizarre line that it's not an organized movement, it's just "an idea."

Three weeks after Charlie Kirk's assassination, the media are back to promoting full-throated Nazi smears, especially denouncing ICE agents as Trump's "Gestapo." Plus: the liberal media celebrate the bravado of ICE-hating Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny, recently named the half-time entertainer at Super Bowl 50 in February.

Jane Fonda is relaunching her father's "Committee for the First Amendment," proclaiming Trump is engaged in a "coordinated campaign to silence critics." We're still reckoning with the dramatic Biden Administration pressure campaign to silence and deplatform critics across Big Tech platforms. But the pro-Biden media routinely ignore leftist censorship against conservative "misinformation."

The indictment of former FBI Director James Comey caused wailing and gnashing of teeth in the liberal TV studios. The most ridiculous argument came from anyone arguing that suddenly the nonpartisanship of our government prosecutors has come to an unprecedented end, as if Biden didn't weaponize the Justice Department, and Democrat prosecutors never sought to ruin Trump.

Google admitted the Biden administration pressured them to suppress “misinformation” from their opponents, and they shut down YouTube accounts from Dan Bongino, Steve Bannon, and Sebastian Gorka. But the networks ignore all that as they make Jimmy Kimmel into their free-speech hero, despite his non-stop lying on national TV.

The networks were mostly respectful toward the Charlie Kirk memorial service on Sunday, unlike HuffPost calling it a "ragefest" and The New York Times worrying about church-state separation. Plus: some networks have offered zero seconds on the GOP-led House investigation of how Biden's staff desperately hid his mental decline.

ABC stations revolted when late-night host Jimmy Kimmel uncorked some revolting remarks about the murder of Charlie Kirk, lying against all evidence that the suspect is a Trump supporter. MRC president David Bozell joins the show to call for ABC to fully break with Kimmel's dishonesty and cruelty.

The Sunday "news" shows demanded that Republicans condemn angry speech by conservatives after the murder of Charlie Kirk, not leftist rhetoric. It's perverse after a conservative was gunned down on campus.

The shock of Charlie Kirk being gunned down in Utah just doesn’t go away. There’s no one who’s been involved in conservative politics who doesn’t know about Charlie – even if some of us never met him – and there’s no one who doesn’t feel like this could have been the fate of any conservative speaker out in public.

Horror bubbled up on social media over the brutal murder of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska, who was randomly stabbed to death while riding the light rail in Charlotte, North Carolina, by a homeless man with an extensive criminal and mental health record. A young woman fled war in Ukraine only to find death in an American city. The liberal networks struggled to locate it.

NewsBusters Associate Editor Nick Fondacaro and Managing Editor Curtis Houck speak with 2022 MRC Bulldog Award winner Drew Holden to unspool some of his famous X threads calling out the liberal media’s bias. Living in the D.C. metro area, they take a deep dive in Holden’s findings regarding a dubious Washington Post poll claiming D.C. residents thought crime wasn’t an issue. They also examine the media’s knee-jerk reaction to the FBI’s raid of John Bolton’s house, claiming President Trump was on his “revenge tour.”

NewsBusters Managing Editor Curtis Houck and Associate Editor Nick Fondacaro were stunned by Sunday’s Face the Nation in which the show made a baffling decision to deceptively remove a key portion of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s answer about the alleged criminal record of illegal immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The fellas dove into CBS’s attempt to save face before highlighting some delicious hypocrisy at The Atlantic, a setback for Navy veteran Zachary Young in two defamation cases, and the left fawning over communist China’s military parade.

Associate Editor Nick Fondacaro and Managing Editor Curtis Houck fill in for a somber edition of the NewsBusters Podcast as they break down and analyze the liberal media’s coverage of the Annunciation Catholic Church and school shooting. They take a look at the liberal media’s refusal to identify the obvious anti-Catholic motive and the shooter’s transgenderism, all while taking jabs at prayer not saving the kids murdered in the church.

When someone cries "no proof," it’s probably because they can’t handle the evidence. CNN host Abby Phillip repeatedly argued that there was no weaponization under Democrats because you can't identify a "Big Puppeteer" who's directing the entire conspiracy against Trump or Tea Party conservatives.

When is a non-lethal car accident a national news item -- and a car crash that killed three is not? When an illegal alien killed three. ABC, CBS, and NBC wouldn't touch the story of an illegal alien (with a commercial driver's license from California) who drove a truck into three people during a U-turn in Florida. We discuss this and other wokeness topics with Bill D'Agostino.

The late professor Ted Smith accused the liberal networks of an “omnidirectional bias,” of granting negative coverage to Republicans regardless of where the winds blow, or the facts land. Nothing can go right or deserve praise. That goes double for President Trump over his talks with Russia and Ukraine.

President Trump's temporary takeover of law enforcement in DC caused an outburst of media protest, that somehow crime was at a "historic low" -- if you use bogus numbers. Plus to celebrate the 20th anniversary of NewsBusters, we remember some of the most outrageous examples of network nonsense with Geoffrey Dickens.

President Trump held a press conference Monday to announce a federal takeover of D.C. police, and CNN unfurled its usual fury, starting with Canadian "fact checker" Daniel Dale lamenting "there was a lot of deception." But was there? Dale hemmed and hawed over Trump's framing of crime stats, while allowing that D.C. is a high-crime city.

The Left was furious that Fox late-night host Greg Gutfeld was going to appear on "The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon." But the interview was non-political as they laughed about an old bar-hopping memory. After the Colbert cancellation, does it signal that Fallon wants a broader audience?

Can a Republican member of Congress actually hold something called a “town hall meeting”? That would imply a space for civil discourse of a broad cross section of the community. Recent "town halls" have been dominated by booing and screaming Democrats -- who begin the din within 30 seconds. The networks could not even describe the booing screamers as Democrats.

The Democrat newspapers and networks are decrying "controversial" mid-decade redistricting by Republicans in Texas. It's partisan...but it's also partisan when Democrats do it in blue states. The partisan press doesn't consider that "news."

Kamala Harris coming on for her eighth appearance on "The Late Show" on CBS is part of a dreary routine, the Stephen Colbert Democratic Precinct Hall. But when you actually watch the interview and break it down, you can’t help but think: a 12-year-old might ask tougher questions.

Not only is the cast of "The View" unanimously for Democrats, their guest list in 2025 has been unanimously liberal. Nick Fondacaro talks about his study numbers, and his line that 'The View' stands for only one view.

When the network anchors claim there's "no evidence" of a Democrat hoax on Trump-Russia collusion, it means they don't like the evidence. Why can't they acknowledge facts they don't like? All three broadcast networks had Sunday hosts "firefighting" Tulsi Gabbard's document dumps on Obama. Jorge Bonilla explains.

In his "Reliable Sources" newsletter, CNN's Brian Stelter freaks out over the Paramount-Skydance merger, insisting CBS is caving to an authoritarian, just as media outlets allegedly did before Viktor Orban in Hungary. A source is only "Reliable" if it hates President Trump with an unquenchable passion.

CBS canceling Stephen Colbert's late night show -- ten months from now -- has been treated like the "dismantling" of the Constitution, and democracy itself. Liberals act like they alone represent the First Amendment and democracy, and whenever someone cancels a TV show, it must be a craven attempt to curry favor with a "fascist." Socialists fuss that "corporate masters" don't have the courage to rip Trump 24/7 as they wish.

The defunding on PBS and NPR finally happened, something the MRC has been advocating for decades. MRC President David Bozell and Managing Editor Curtis Houck reflect on all the lame liberal arguments and the questionable future for these networks.

The debate over so-called "public" broadcasting should be focused on its fundamental unfairness toward Republicans and undisguised loathing of conservatives. PBS and NPR and their Democrat allies want this fight to be over Elmo and emergency alerts. They can't deny how flagrantly they push a leftist agenda, so they have to change the subject.

Axios.com reported House Democrats claimed their voters feel there “needs to be blood to grab the attention of the press and the public.” But the press doesn't want to cover political violence from the Left, like active shooters at ICE facilities, even when a cop gets shot in the neck.

There's no doubt that the word "public" in their name is a fraud. When Americans aren't allowed to criticize their supposedly "public" networks, when their viewpoints are offhandedly labeled misinformation, they cease to be networks that represent all the public. They then represent only a fraction of the public, that fraction being the pompous liberal elite who want to tell the public what to think while invalidating any and all disagreement. This is the exact opposite of what America has always represented.

On Sunday, ABC featured a Democrat citing an estimate from the "Yale Policy Lab" that Trump's "big beautiful bill" would kill 100,000 people over ten years. Last week, NBC promoted a report claiming 14 million people would die from Trump's cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development. Reporters hinted that adorable little girls drowned in a Texas flood because of Trump's cuts to the National Weather Service. But they're "fact-based."

Liberals really hate it when you say they hate America. Some of them prove it. Some of them make strange arguments about how they love Cherry Pop-Tarts and McDonald's, so of course they love America.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt ripped into socialist New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani on Monday, and Mediaite editor Colby Hall just couldn't figure out why she would attack this new radical face of the Democratic Party. He even failed to identify him as a mayoral candidate, saying he "isn't even in Congress yet."

Liberal journalists subtly tell you they're liberal when they describe who in politics is "extreme." When you're a liberal, Bernie Sanders isn't extreme. He's not very far from you at all. So it's only natural that virtually every Republican is "far right" on the media's political spectrum. Bill D'Agostino discusses his latest study of how "far" the media go.

The current dominant spin about President Trump's bunker-busting bombs on Iran's nuclear facilities comes from anonymous intelligence sources who are guessing that the Iranian nuclear program has only been set back about three months. Once again, reporters like CNN's Natasha Bertrand exploit shadowy sources for an anti-Trump spin, pretending all the way that there's no politics being played.

Within minutes of American bombs dropping in Iran on Saturday night, the network “experts” were second-guessing everything, calling the moves “extremely risky.” President Trump was responsible for endangering both American troops and innocent Iranian civilians. Journalists always want to line up for diplomatic “solutions,” even if nothing gets solved.

Newsletters on the media are channeling gloom inside CNN after Warner Bros. Discovery spun them off, much as Comcast spun off MSNBC. Insiders are worrying about CNN being able to exist. There's panic at Anderson Cooper's disco, and his pay will probably shrink. Meanwhile, Fox quadruples CNN in the ratings.

The polls are wildly varying on President Trump's approval rating right now. One has him down 17 points, while another has him up ten. It's more likely our left-wing media will prefer the worst number. But maybe approval ratings are overrated by the power sniffers.

Toning down the rhetoric sounds like the right idea after political violence. But nobody thinks liberal journalists like CBS host Margaret Brennan or the ranting ladies of "The View" are the role models for civility referees. They have a blatant double standard on who gets to savage and smear their opponents.

NewsBusters is taking a victory lap for the House vote to claw back funding for PBS and NPR. But The Washington Post went to my neck of Wisconsin and suggested this is bad because "other radio signals are staticky and internet service can be patchy." They'd be "poorer" without the "independent option" of NPR. That's the NPR PR.

If the media were truly objective on violent protests against police, they would discourage January 6 rioters and leftist rioters. They shouldn't be shaming Trump at the same time they downplay violence against police in Los Angeles as a nothingburger.