NewsBusters Time Machine

It’s hardly a secret that large swaths of the public have soured on the news media as reliable communicators of factual information. A series of new polls released in 2023 showed the public’s distrust of the media elite has gotten worse, not better.

It was 32 years ago — on Christmas Day, December 25, 1991 — that the world rejoiced at the final dissolution of the Soviet Union. But some in the media refused to blame the communist system for its failures, even as they treated Gorbachev, the last communist, better than his Western counterparts and his anti-communist successors.

Nine years ago this week, President Barack Obama chose to establish formal relations with the Communist dictatorship in Cuba. Instead of worrying that Obama was handing a much-needed and undeserved lifeline to the decades-long Castro dictatorship, the liberal media applauded the “historic” decision.

Fourteen years ago tomorrow (December 10), liberals were ecstatic as President Barack Obama accepted the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. Obama had been president for a mere 11 days before the window for nominations closed on January 31, but his media fan club nonetheless celebrated the “towering honor” bestowed upon their hero.

Five years ago this week, former President George H. W. Bush passed away at the age of 94. The media’s 2018 retrospectives of Bush and his presidency are an example of how liberal journalists can be like prehistoric bugs stuck in amber, frozen in biased poses struck decades earlier, regardless of how thoroughly they’ve been debunked.

Twenty-three years ago, November 2000, the liberal media unleashed their full fury on Florida’s Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, for following the election laws of her state as well as various court rulings to certify George W. Bush as the winner of her state’s electoral votes in the disputed 2000 presidential election.

Six years ago, the networks had a chance to properly report on Senator Robert Menendez’s (D-NJ) alleged corruption during an earlier federal trial, and they blew it. NewsBusters documented how ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN buried the embarrassing (for Democrats) trial detailing how Menendez accepted extravagant gifts and travel, in exchange for federal favors.

Twenty years ago, CBS faced a firestorm after a leaked script to the New York Times showed the network’s upcoming mini-series, The Reagans, was an inaccurate and unfair portrayal of the 40th President, then in the final months of his battle with Alzheimer’s disease.

Fifteen years ago today, November 4, 2008, American voters elected liberal Democratic Senator Barack Obama to the Presidency. It was a campaign in which the public recognized the media elite’s tremendous favoritism towards Obama, and even many reporters admitted the coverage had been slanted against the Republicans.

During the first six weeks of House Democrats’ 2019 impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump, the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts churned out a staggering 398 minutes of coverage, TWENTY TIMES more coverage than they’ve supplied to the Joe Biden impeachment inquiry this year.

Eight years ago, when ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton faced tough questions over the Benghazi disaster, helpful news reporters lavished praise on her performance while condemning the partisanship of Republicans who dared question the Democratic presidential frontrunner.

The last time Israel sent tanks into Gaza, in 2014, we saw many in the U.S. media work to undermine the effort by blaming the Israelis for heavy casualties among Palestinian civilians who were, in fact, put in danger by the cruel decisions of cynical Hamas leaders.

Since Tuesday’s ouster of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, journalists have slammed House Republicans as radicals and extremists. If it sounds familiar, it’s because that’s exactly what viewers heard after Republican Speaker John Boehner stepped down eight years ago.

Journalists’ shutdown playbook is straightforward: single out Republicans for blame; highlight “victims” of the shutdown to build public anger; and then claim Democrats won because they were the “grown-up” party.