This Week in Media Bias History

Sometimes it’s an understatement to say journalists live in a bubble. On the one hand, they thrill over Barack Obama as “God.” Yet, on March 23, 2009, MSNBC anchor David Shuster called it a “fantasy” to say that the press was pro-Obama. Other examples from This Week in Media Bias History: That time Ted Turner created a slobbering propaganda film on the Soviet Union, a country that “belongs to the…

After the Gulf War in 1991, Time magazine was worried about an outbreak of patriotism. It must be stopped before it “bursts the bounds of reason” and “passes into jingoism.” Another example from the This Week in Media Bias History archives: Dan Rather, he’s not subtle. The now-disgraced CBS Evening News anchor in 1995 described the 1994 GOP congressional class as aiming to “demolish” programs “…

Sometimes reporters just come out and say it. And on March 7, 1994, Time journalist Margaret Carlson admitted that favorable coverage for Hillary Clinton is simply “rooting for your team.” Other examples from This Week in Media Bias History include: Newsweek lamenting the “victims of capitalism,” Brian Williams insisting his work has been “cleansed” of opinion.

According to PBS, Ronald Reagan was to blame for AIDS, homelessness... and the rise of Donald Trump??? That was the claim from the taxpayer-supported network on February 24, 1998. Other examples from This Week in Media Bias History include: Admiring the “geek-chic cool” of Al Gore and mocking conservative Arizonians as “cranky retirees.” 

Now that Barack Obama is gone, it’s easy to forget how much liberal journalists loved the Democrat. In 2009, ABC’s Terry Moran insisted that Obama was “the first president since George Washington to be taking a step down into the Oval Office.” 

If there’s one thing that some journalists love, it’s fawning over tyrants. This Week in Media Bias History returns with a disgusting quote from then-Good Morning America co-host Diane Sawyer on February 13, 2007. She asked Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad if he becomes sad and emotional when bad things happen. Also, we’ve now arrived at the tenth anniversary of Chris Matthews getting a “thrill” up his…

Just when you thought This Week in Media Bias History couldn’t get any crazier, it does. Journalists hate Donald Trump. But they really LOVED Barack Obama. How far did the New York Times go to make that clear? In 2009, one of the paper’s bloggers wrote about sex dreams involving the Democratic president. Other examples this week include talking about impeaching Ronald Reagan and falling for…

Some quotes featured in This Week in Media Bias History are so awful, they end up becoming infamous. This edition has one of those quotes. On January 29, 2015, NBC journalist Ayman Mohyeldin smeared Chris Kyle, the late Navy SEAL portrayed in the film American Sniper. He slimed Kyle as a “racist” who went on "killing sprees.” The quote would go on to win the Media Research Center’s 2015 “…

You may think that our latest edition of This Week in Media Bias History contains examples too insane to be real. Sadly, they were actually uttered by journalists. In 2015, ex-Today show host Bryant Gumbel called the NRA “pigs” and a “curse upon the American landscape.” In 1990, CNN founder Ted Turner praised Communist Mikhail Gorbachev as “moving faster than Jesus Christ.” 

This Week in Media Bias History returns with some real groaners from the liberal press. In 1994, ABC lamented the demise of the USSR, saying, “For many, the workers’ paradise has become a homeless hell.” In 2015, PBS chided that having more kids meant more damage to Earth. And NBC’s Bryant Gumbel mocked Donald Trump... back in 1992. 

In 1999, journalist Eleanor Clift compared House Republicans during the impeachment of Bill Clinton to the Ku Klux Klan. In 2011, sleazy New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, with no facts whatsoever, blamed the Tea Party for the shooting of then-Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. In 1989, journalist Lesley Stahl predicted that, in years to come, historians would be baffled by anyone liking Ronald…

Media bias, “fake news” and liberal spin aren’t new. The Media Research Center has been exposing and battling left-wing bias since 1987. Now, you can keep track of the worst historical examples of media bias, courtesy of the MRC’s archives. Every day in 2018, research director Rich Noyes will be tweeting out “this day in media bias history” from the files of NewsBusters and the MRC.