Media Bias Debate

Morning Joe devoted a segment on Thursday to supporting taxpayer funding of PBS, with a series of softball questions for PBS CEO Paula Kerger.

Eli Tan, a San Francisco-based tech reporter for the New York Times, devoted 2,500 words in the paper’s Sunday edition decrying the spread of right-wing conspiracy theories, now that no one subscribes to the Times or local newspapers anymore: “How Misinformation and Partisan ‘New Media’ Changed a California Town.” The story was heavily based on a "militia" incidence that…

MSNBC’s Ali Velshi gave an ode to public broadcasting on his Sunday show, where he tried to claim that the existence of public media is correlated with democratic health. In order to make such a claim, Velshi had to ignore one major detail from the study he cited.

Ever since Audie Cornish took over as host of CNN This Morning, we've been on a kvetch campaign about her failure to include Trump supporters on her reliably left-leaning panels. So it was surprising to see a welcome halt to this with the return of Republican strategist Brad Todd.

One really easy way to know that TV journalists are Democrats is how they rush to defense of PBS and NPR and use all the same arguments that Democrats have made in congressional hearings and social media. They willfully ignore the incessant bias of "public" broadcasting and deflect back to kiddie shows like Sesame Street, as if that's anything like comparing Trump to Hitler. On Sunday…

The Friday primetime lineups of CNN and MSNBC did not handle the news that President Trump signed an executive order forbidding taxpayer money for PBS and NPR well, as they portrayed the news as an assault on everything from democracy, science, the military, farmers, and even the country itself.

Self-reflection was absent as the cast of characters that made up Friday’s edition of PBS News Hour attacked President Donald Trump’s executive order that cut off their taxpayer money. From putting their heads in the sand on their liberal bias, to trying to make themselves free speech martyrs, Friday’s show by itself showed by Trump’s move was the correct one.

Former scandal-plagued NPR CEO Vivian Schiller joined CNN News Central guest host Erica Hill on Friday to freak out over President Donald Trump’s Thursday executive order that ceased taxpayer money from going to NPR and PBS. According to Schiller, the move is just another example of Trump “attacking a free press” for reporting on things he does not like.

NPR CEO Katherine Maher traveled over to Comedy Central and The Daily Show on Tuesday to ring the alarm bells over what could happen should NPR lose its federal money. Maher painted a nightmarish scenario where people go without news, Sesame Street gets shut down, and political polarization increases because, according to her, public media is the “foundational infrastructure…

CNN might be funnier than the late night comedy shows, albeit unintentionally. During CNN Newsroom’s Saturday pregame show ahead of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, media analyst Sara Fischer claimed that freedom of the press has become increasingly politicized. Her first example was to claim that funding PBS and NPR is an “investment in the free press,” but that has now become…

Last Thursday, MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle met up with actor Rainn Wilson of The Office fame on his Soul Bloom podcast to discuss, among other things, the lack of trust in the news media. According to Ruhle, history began when Donald Trump decided to enter politics because she argued that he and his allies have spent their time trying to discredit the media in their attempt to…

Wednesday night sounded like "Protect My Public Media" night on NPR and PBS. NPR's All Things Considered put on their CEO Katherine Maher for what was basically seven-minute pledge drive for federal funding. She unveiled another unintentional laugh line. Asked about Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene saying they'd have to "hate us on your own dime," Maher claimed "We don't hate anyone in…

Wednesday’s PBS News Hour covered the Trump administration’s efforts to cut taxpayer funding for PBS and National Public Radio. PBS didn’t present its critics beyond generalities, while anchor Amna Nawaz and reporter William Brangham took the opportunity to lobby for themselves. Anchor Amna Nawaz: As we have been reporting, the Trump administration wants to cut the federal funds that…

For the Tax Day edition of CNN’s Inside Politics on Tuesday, media correspondent Brian Stelter joined host Dana Bash to allege that President Trump wants to defund PBS and NPR for “simply covering the news.” If Stelter really believes that then he has a funny definition of what is newsworthy.