The PBS News Hour marked the passing of left-wing feminist and abortion militant Gloria Steinem with coverage more akin to heroine worship than journalism. Co-anchor Geoff Bennett opened Thursday’s edition: “We remember feminist icon Gloria Steinem, a trailblazer who helped transform the fight for women`s rights and equality and whose influence spanned generations.”
After that opening tease, both anchors continued in similar fashion, leaving out any ideological tags and most of her controversies.
BENNETT: Gloria Steinem, the pioneering journalist and fierce activist who was an icon of the women's liberation movement, has died at the age of 92.
AMNA NAWAZ: For more than half-a-century, Steinem challenged entrenched ideas about gender and power, helping bring the fight for women's equality from the margins of American life into the mainstream.
The “remembrance” by reporter Jeffrey Brown covered the same supposedly sacred ground.
Just some of PBS's gush for abortion militant Gloria Steinem, from anchor Amna Nawaz: "For more than half-a-century, Steinem challenged entrenched ideas about gender and power, helping bring the fight for women's equality from the margins of American life into the mainstream." pic.twitter.com/F3VOMyr8vn
— Clay Waters 🇮🇱 (@claywaters44) September 6, 2026
JEFFREY BROWN: For more than five decades, Gloria Steinem was one of the most prominent faces of American feminism. A trailblazing journalist, political activist, and public intellectual, she helped lead a movement that revolutionized both the professional and personal lives of women across the country.
Brown used the euphemism “reproductive rights” once, but at least stuck to “abortion” otherwise:
BROWN: She also said the fight for reproductive rights was a catalyst for her own career in activism.
STEINEM: And I began to see what, of course, the radical feminists were saying in the first place, which was that it is a caste problem and that women are an oppressed group. And then, finally, I understood that, even though I was not married living in the suburbs, that it was a problem that affected absolutely every woman.
PBS chose Steinem clips to show off her abortion-centric view of the world:
BROWN: As a political activist, she worked to elect women to office and was a co-founder of the National Women's Political Caucus, traveling the country, speaking out against sexism and economic exploitation.
STEINEM: It's the kind of blue-collar working woman who needs these reforms the most, I think, and also poor women and welfare women. But it's -- I think it really is going forward on all on all levels at once, and it's an important bridge between black women and white women.
BROWN: She remained a prolific writer, a bestselling author, and prominent public speaker for much of her long life, advocating for women's rights internationally, opposing apartheid, and campaigning prominently for Democrats, including Hillary Clinton. Along with others in the movement, she helped solidify gains that many these days may take for granted. Still, when she spoke with Judy Woodruff in 2020, she said she felt it much remained unfinished.
STEINEM: We have the right to vote. We still don't fully have the right to our own bodies. Many women are still subject to bodily invasion at a rate far exceeding that of men. I think we have yet to understand the rights that the female half of the human race need as females.
BROWN: She condemned the Dobbs decision in 2022, which overturned abortion rights.
Naturally, no one spoke up on behalf of the unborn.
PBS kept the gush going in the following segment, an interview with Steinem documentary director Julie Taymor. Nawaz predictably chose not to frame the post-2016 election meltdowns as non-partisan:
I have to ask you because you were with her in a couple of key moments, election night in 2016. You were there with cameras. You thought that you would witness her witnessing the first woman president in America, and then you followed her instead on the Women's March that followed that election. What did you learn from her and take away from her in those more fraught moments?
The duo twisted Taymor’s privilege in rubbing shoulders with feminist political elites into mourning for the ongoing suffering of women (symbolized by the electoral loss of Hillary Clinton, who enabled her husband Bill’s harassment and philandering by going after his accusers in anti-feminist fashion):
We were at Samantha Power's apartment, the ambassador to the U.N., and there were 40 women from different countries there, and you watched the night go on as each of these women, these ambassadors, knew that it would be difficult for them, for the women in their countries. The last person in that room that night before she went over to see Hillary was Gloria Steinem. And these were her words: “We have to look at the upside of the downside.”
Nawaz commiserated with her guest at the end with a verbal pat on the back: “Julie, I know it's a tough day for you. We can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us[.]”
