PBS gave added power to Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg when he took advantage of being included in a Signal chat about attack plans in Yemen. As the host of Washington Week with The Atlantic, he used the entire March 28 episode as a cudgel against the Trump Administration, surrounded by a cadre of left-wing Democrat journalists: New York Times reporter Peter Baker and New Yorker writer Susan Glasser (a husband and wife combo), as well as White House reporter Laura Barron-Lopez, and Shane Harris of The Atlantic.
Aside from the especially convenient topic, the all-liberal lineup is typical for this show. In a follow-up to our NewsBusters’study of Washington Week with The Atlantic, now analyzing the 36 episodes that ran during the eight-month period July 26, 2024 – March 28, 2025 (from immediately after Joe Biden's decision not to run for re-election through the present day), we found once again that the show is highly reinforced bubble of liberal media spin, with no conservative rebuttals.
There wasn’t a single representative of the conservative media organizations Fox News, The Washington Times, New York Post, Washington Examiner, Washington Free Beacon, Daily Caller or National Review to be found. There were two appearance from Stephen Hayes of The Dispatch, but the anti-Trump messaging from Hayes was completely in tune with the unanimous playlist of punditry. No dissonance emerged.
New York Times’ White House correspondent Peter Baker, one of the more excitable liberal anti-Trump journalists on the panel, led all reporters with 13 stops over the study period.
Eugene Daniels, formerly of Politico, now full-time with MSNBC after many appearances on the network (he also leads the White House Correspondents’ Association) came in next with eight guest shots, six with Politico and the most recent two with MSNBC.
Peter Baker's wife Susan Glasser of The New Yorker, author of a post-election article claiming Trump would return “far more dangerous than ever before,” appeared on six occasions.
PBS NewsHour’s ultra-liberal White House correspondent Laura Barron-Lopez appeared as a guest at the table five times, in addition to one slot as guest moderator.
Log-rolling alert: Reporters from Goldberg’s own Atlantic were the most frequent guests, with 16 separate journalists making a total of 32 appearances. Atlantic-affiliated main host Goldberg counted as one appearance, and Atlantic-affiliated three-time substitute host (and one-time guest) Franklin Foer counted as two appearances, one as guest and one in his repeat-substitute host duties. (Over the course of the study, at least two guest reporters switched from their original platforms to join Goldberg’s Atlantic, a demonstration of the magazine’s reporter-poaching aggressiveness.)
Besides Goldberg, who hosted 29 of the 36 episodes analyzed, Foer guest hosted on three occasions. Keeping things in the tax-funded house, PBS reporters hosted the remaining four times, White House reporter Lisa Desjardins twice, and congressional reporter Laura Barron-Lopez and reporter William Brangham once each.
The public airwaves were also well represented as guest commentators, with reporters from NPR and the PBS NewsHour appearing frequently alongside liberal media stalwarts like the Washington Post and New York Times. In all, 21 separate outlets (all but two of which were liberal) were represented by a total of 52 individual panelists. Of those two non-liberal outlets, The Cook Political Report analyzes polling and elections, while The Dispatch is an anti-Trump site.
