How the Elitist Media and News Apps Rushed to Fauci’s Defense

MRC original graphic

This week, the “Big Three” Networks and News Apps shielded fellow elitist liberal, Dr. Tony Fauci, largely ignoring bombshell revelations from his pandemic-era diaries released Saturday by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) before Wednesday’s Senate hearing and, following the proceedings, promulgating Fauci’s preferred framing of a “deep, partisan,” and “fiery” affair foisted upon him by Republicans.

A Media Research Center analysis of coverage on ABC, Apple News, CBS, Google News, MSN, and NBC found little in terms of illuminating diary details, which included Fauci’s recommendations that destroyed the lives of millions, an eager embrace of his celebrity status, collusion with elite reporters, and a private acceptance of the lab-leak theory while publicly dismissing it as fringe.

Put another way, ten stories on the Big Three News Apps and 27 minutes on the broadcast networks showed they largely held onto the Fauci diaries until the day of the hearing, only to cover them in a tertiary manner behind decrying the hearing’s impact on public health, defending Fauci, and a fixation on the tense emotions.

In reaction to these findings, Media Research Center President David Bozell said, “The Fauci diaries should have been one of the biggest stories of the year. Instead of investigating what the diaries revealed, the elitist media and the news apps went into full-blown protection mode.”

Bozell added:

They downplayed the bombshell disclosures before the hearing, then pivoted to portraying Fauci as the victim afterward. Rather than examining his own words about school closures, the lab-leak theory, media coordination, and his celebrity status, viewers were served stories about a ‘fiery’ and ‘partisan’ hearing. It’s another reminder that when one of their own is under scrutiny, the legacy media’s first instinct isn’t to inform the public, it is to protect the establishment.”

ABC’s flagship morning and evening newscasts — Good Morning America (GMA) and World News Tonight — spent five and a half minutes on the Fauci diaries and hearing across only three meager reports, focusing largely on the atmospherics.

Before the hearing, correspondent Jay O’Brien said on Wednesday’s Good Morning America that a retired scientist would, at “85 years old,” have to face “a fiery hearing” because he “has long been a target of” Paul, who obtained his “private diary” (even though it was created as an official agency record, on official time and with government resources).

Like much of the network coverage, O’Brien engaged in a bait-and-switch by insisting Fauci has never discounted the possibility of a lab leak in Wuhan when the facts show otherwise.

Afterwards, on Wednesday’s World News Tonight and Thursday’s GMA, O’Brien boasted of Fauci as “the man millions of Americans turned to for answers during the COVID pandemic” now being “needled” by Republicans even though he “served in government for 54 years and has testified in more than 200 hearings.”

GMA co-host George Stephanopoulos — who surfaced in the diary as having Fauci for ripping a Trump tweet that was critical of him — bemoaned the scene as “a sign of the times” that a hearing could be “as partisan as it gets.”

At CBS, their newscasts, CBS Mornings and the CBS Evening News, combined for a hefty 14 minutes (13:55).

Even though they were the only broadcast network to mention the diaries before the hearing day (24 seconds on Monday’s Evening News), they also contained the single-worst instance of coverage insulating Fauci from all criticism, both personally and professionally.

Wednesday’s Mornings featured correspondent Caitlin Huey-Burns warning of the “explosive hearing” about Fauci’s “revealing journal entries,” helmed by a “long...Fauci critic.”

But medical contributor Dr. Celine Gounder — who also served on the Biden-Harris transition team — provided the most scrupulous defense.

Along with defending gain-of-function research as “a very important tool” to “anticipate” future viruses, she asserted Fauci never possessed any authority to close the country down and shutter schools.

She even denied Fauci’s diaries showed the doctor reveling in his fame, arguing they “actually” showcased “the pressure it was creating and the harassment, and death threats.”

Even if that were the case, she asserted, anyone would have enjoyed the attention and a selfie-seeking fandom.

Shirking any specifics of the diaries, Wednesday’s Evening News harped on the “angry” hearing with Paul “kick[ing] one of Fauci’s lawyers out” while “Democrats accused the GOP of conducting a biased investigation.”

To their credit, though, fill-in anchor Matt Gutman aired excerpts of a lengthy interview with National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Fauci critic.

Thursday’s CBS Mornings emphasized the “fiery” mood (“Republican after Republican...unleashed on Dr. Anthony Fauci”) over substance, denying any possibility that the doctor committed any error or act of hypocrisy.

Over on NBC, Wednesday’s Today insisted Fauci has always been “open to the lab-leak theory” and predicted a “contentious” hearing centering around Fauci’s “private reflections that are now gaining attention after a Republican senator posted them online,” framing the disclosure as a violation of Fauci’s privacy.

In reality, the diaries were dictated on a government computer.

Along with the lab leak, correspondent Monica Alba said the diaries showed Fauci “reflect[ed] on his newfound fame” and “mak[ing] his feelings about President Trump known.”

Alba returned for Wednesday’s NBC Nightly News to push Fauci’s framing about Paul being “unhinged,” but conceded the diaries showed Fauci bragging about convincing then-New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to close schools and “gushed about praise he received from celebrities.”

The NBC reporter dropped the modicum of effectiveness on Thursday’s Today, instead griping the “hearing was supposed to be part of an investigation into the origins of COVID-19, and the government’s response, but instead, it highlighted the deep, partisan divisions that still exist over the pandemic years later.”

Alba concocted a tiresome discounting of what was actually stated at the hearing, insisting it boiled down to “Republicans repeatedly slamming Fauci” and Democrats saying his invoking of the Fifth Amendment was “the right call.”

As NewsBusters’s Jorge Bonilla wrote on Wednesday night, the hearing coverage “was intentionally shallow in that there was no exposure of the substance of the questions asked of Fauci.”

While heated moments were shown, they aired without context and skipped substantive arguments made by Senators Joni Ernst (R-IA), Hawley, James Lankford (R-OK), and even Democrat John Fetterman (PA). 

Over on the Big Three News Apps, Google News had four stories in an hour and a half after the hearing ended, three to one favoring the left. The stories were published from NBC News, Politico, the Associated Press, and, to its credit, Fox News.

That lone Fox News story? It disappeared from Google’s home feed within an hour of MRC’s review. Before many readers ever reached it, Google placed 53 other stories, largely from left-leaning outlets, ahead of it in a separate section.

The Fox News story centered on Rep. James Comer’s (R-KY) contention that Fauci’s presidential pardon rests on legally questionable ground.

Like its colleagues on the TV side, NBC News revealed its sympathies from the outset, spotlighting Fauci’s description of Paul as “unhinged” directly in the headline.

The body was equally dismissive. NBC labeled the hearing “hyperpartisan” and asserted it “yielded no new revelations” about the pandemic, even though senators centered much of the hearing on Fauci’s newly released notes, which contradicted key elements of the government’s pandemic narrative.

Politico similarly threw cold water on Paul’s warning that Fauci could face repercussions for taking the fifth, framing the issue with the headline, “That could get complicated.” Like NBC, Politico omitted the key revelations that fueled the hearing.

The Associated Press likewise buried mention of Fauci’s notes near the bottom of its article before assuring readers that Fauci’s early thoughts on the coronavirus “already were reflected in a 2024 memoir and in interviews at the time.” The AP effectively suggested there was little new information to see.

Google doubled down the following day by promoting stories from Qatar-tied Al Jazeera and the socialist New Republic rather than highlighting additional reporting that more comprehensively examined the contents of Fauci’s writings.

Apple News featured one story immediately after the hearing, and only two more the following morning.

Apple News initially selected Reuters, which likewise failed to thoroughly detail the diary’s most significant allegations, including Fauci’s reported role in school closures and the entries that undercut the government’s handling of the laboratory leak theory. Instead, Reuters largely presented Fauci’s notes as consistent with his longstanding public positions.

By Thursday morning, Apple News promoted its own podcast episode on the hearing, amplifying Fauci’s attack on Paul with the headline, “‘Unhinged obsession’: inside Fauci’s tense hearing on Capitol Hill.”

The Politico story Apple News promoted the following day continued the pattern, focusing on the political fallout while largely avoiding the most damaging disclosures in Fauci’s notes.

Finally, MSN only shared a single story after the hearing, and none on Thursday morning.

That one story MSN featured? It emanated from Rolling Stone, a left-wing magazine that framed the hearing largely as an exercise in conspiracy theories.

Unsurprisingly, Rolling Stone went further than any of the elite broadcast networks or publications.

The article claimed Republican senators intended to confront Fauci over “a myriad of conspiratorial claims about the pandemic.” Among the so-called claims was that Fauci helped fund dangerous research, bore responsibility for pandemic deaths, and participated in the censorship of COVID-19-related information.

Rather than examining why Republicans were making those allegations or how they related to the diaries, Rolling Stone dismissed them wholesale while devoting little attention to the notes themselves.

Entering the week, the liberal, elite media engaged in either minimizing or obfuscating any mention to their readers and viewers of Fauci’s explosive musings and double standards.

Once the hearing came and went, the hive mindset remained, shifting to deliberate avoidance of a conversation about accountability for pandemic tactics that crushed businesses, exacerbated the scourge of mental health, increased isolation, and stunted education development.

Methodology: The Media Research Center tracked the top 20 stories on Apple News, Google News, and Microsoft’s MSN on July 29, 2026, at approximately 1:18 pm ET and again on July 30, 2026, at approximately 8:30 am ET. MRC then identified the Fauci-related stories and analyzed their headlines and content. The Fauci hearing ended at approximately 11:35 pm ET.