The Media Research Center’s war on public broadcasting continued in a May 27 “study” by Clay Waters:
Paula Kerger, chief executive of the taxpayer-subsidized Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), recently told the New York Times, “In terms of the news, we work really hard to try to bring multiple viewpoints forward.”
But as the second Trump administration begins and PBS comes under unprecedented existential pressure from the administration for its liberally biased evening news product, a review of coverage of the first four months of Trump II proves the PBS News Hour still occupies a liberal bubble, and it’s sealed tight as ever.
A new Media Research Center study tracked and labeled every guest that appeared on the News Hour over the first four months of Trump’s second term — January 20, 2025 (Inauguration Day) through May 19, 2025 — and found that liberal-Democratic leaning guests outnumbered conservative-Republican leaning guests by 173-41, a ratio of 4.2 to 1 (106 guests were rated either neutral or politically unrelated). That gap surpassed findings from an analogous MRC study conducted two years ago, which uncovered a ratio of 3.7 to 1.
Yet even those figures understate the program’s true slant, as many of the Republican and conservative guests opposed Trump on a variety of issues and controversies, including military issues, program cuts, and deportation of illegal immigrants.
Curiously, Waters refused to post a complete list of guests so that we could judge for ourselves how accurate his ideological assessment. As you ‘d expect, his ideological bias showed; his headline referenced “leftist” guests and the graphic referred to “left-wing guests,” while conservative guests are never referred to as “right-wing.” That’s one big reason not to trust Waters’ assessment.
The same day, Tim Graham raged at NPR for suing to stop the Trump administration’s defunding of it:
The “public broadcasting” elites argue with a straight face that removing any taxpayer subsidies is a violation of the First Amendment. On Monday morning, National Public Radio filed a lawsuit claiming that President Trump’s executive order telling the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to withhold funds from NPR is “a clear violation of the Constitution.”
The lawsuit says Trump’s order violates both “the expressed will of Congress and the First Amendment’s bedrock guarantees of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of association.”
NPR and PBS refuse to engage in the allegations of 24/7 liberal bias. The White House laid out chapter and verse about the tilt, and NPR CEO Katherine Maher put out a statement accusing Trump of “retaliatory, viewpoint-based discrimination.” Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!
It’s hilarious that Graham is complaining that “NPR and PBS refuse to engage in the allegations of 24/7 liberal bias” — it’s as if they know the MRC is working in bad faith and serious partisan bias. Plus, it’s also highly ironic because Graham adamantly refuses to engage with our criticism of the MRC as right-wing propaganda and Trump Regime Media. Still, Graham’s ranting continued:
These people define aggressive leftist propaganda as journalistic “independence” and “integrity.” Folkenflik claimed Trump’s executive order on CPB is “part of a larger assault on the news media writ large.” Criticizing journalists (and refusing to fund their slanted product” is an “assault on the media.” But it’s “integrity” in action when the news media wage a “larger assault” on Trump and the Republicans, even to the point of lawfare aiming to put them in jail.
These people have a funny definition of what the First Amendment is. These taxpayer-funded networks retaliate against conservatives for daring to win elections after they’ve been smeared as threats to democracy. Our opposition to these partisan “public” networks is the embodiment of democracy and a vibrant display of the First Amendment.
Graham, of course, defines right-wing propaganda as “media research.”
Alex Christy served up a little Stelter derangement in a a May 28 post:
CNN chief media analyst Brian Stelter welcomed NPR’s lawsuit “hitting back” at the Trump Administration on Tuesday as the outlet argues that removing their federal funding via executive order violates the First Amendment.
Stelter’s first swing at the matter came during The Situation Room when he reported, “NPR says in the suit, quote, “The executive order violated the expressed will of Congress and the First Amendment’s bedrock guarantees of freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of association and also threatens the existence of a public radio system that millions of Americans across the country rely upon.”
CNN has the First Amendment right to be a liberally biased network, but NPR is required by law to maintain “strict adherence to objectivity and balance in all programs or series of programs of a controversial nature.”
Nevertheless, Stelter echoed NPR’s lawyers, who claim that it also has a First Amendment right to broadcast whatever it wants[.]
Christy went on to complain that NPR won’t play along with the MRC’s narrative: “NPR denying the charge doesn’t mean anything. If Fox News received federal funding, Stelter would not claim that self-assessments of neutrality were proof of neutrality.” And the MRC’s assessments of “bias” are not actual proof of bias. Christy then unironically whined that Stelter called in “neutral third-party expertise” to argue for NPR’s lawsuit chances:
Of course, there are experts on the other side as well, because if a judge does rule in Trump’s favor, it does not mean the judge is anti-First Amendment, because if National Public Radio wants to change its name and continue doing the same old liberal programming, it can do so, but there is quite simply no First Amendment right to federal money.
Waters served up more grumbling in a May 28 post:
As its own future comes under threat by the Trump administration, a juxtaposition on National Public Radio’s homepage Tuesday (see photo) unwittingly showed just what kind of job losses NPR has sympathy for — DEI woke-work, not the manufacturing jobs that actually involve making things, and which happen to employ many Trump voters.
“Corporate America’s retreat from DEI has eliminated thousands of jobs” is an expanded “digital feature” version of a story by Maria Aspan for Tuesday’s Morning Edition. Over the airwaves, Aspan lamented “the numbers are pretty bleak. More than 2,600 jobs in diversity or DEI have been eliminated in the last couple of years.” She decried the “now very politicized job market” of DEI (which stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion).
Wasn’t it the left-wing DEI movement that politicized the job market?!
Graham rehashed his whining in his May 28 podcast:
NPR went to court and sued the Trump administration over the president’s executive order calling on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to deny federal funds to NPR and PBS. They claim it’s “a clear violation of the Constitution.”
NPR argues with a straight face that removing any taxpayer subsidies is a violation of the First Amendment. Apparently, liberal speech must be forcibly supported by conservative taxpayers for the Constitution to be upheld. NPR CEO Katherine Maher has even contended that defunding NPR would be violation of the free speech of NPR’s private backers.
Trained lawyer Dan Schneider exposes the nonsense. NPR is not a private broadcaster. It takes federal funds, and it has to live up to what the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 called for: “strict adherence to objectivity and balance” in programming. But the CPB has never forced “strict adherence.” Liberal bias would go unchallenged.
Graham repeated his particularly whiny complaint that “NPR and PBS refuse to engage in the allegations of 24/7 liberal bias” — again ignoring that he refuses to engage in any criticism of his own work and that of his employer.
On May 29, Waters lashed out at the head of NPR for not admitting right-wing narratives about it:
Katherine Maher, president and chief executive of National Public Radio, continued her sympathy tour to save NPR from the Trump administration’s executive order, with a pit stop at NPR’s publicly funded cohort, PBS’s News Hour program. When gently challenged that Trump says NPR lacks viewpoint diversity, she comically claimed: “I first of all, respond by saying we’re a nonpartisan news organization.”
Co-anchor Geoff Bennett interviewed Maher on Tuesday’s edition, where he explained that NPR’s lawsuit, joined by three public radio stations in Colorado, “contends the president’s order is a violation of the First Amendment.” Bennett read a PBS statement relaying that the network hasn’t joined NPR’s lawsuit but may take legal action in the future, then asked Maher, “What’s the case that you’re making against the Trump White House?”
Maher laid out NPR’s case, leading with her chin by leaning on that bogus First Amendment argument.
[…]The Public Broadcasting Act also mandates “strict adherence to objectivity and balance in all programs or series of programs of a controversial nature,” which both NPR and PBS are clearly failing to provide. And, as Dan McLaughlin explained at National Review Online, “There is no First Amendment right for media organizations to be on the public payroll in the first place.”
Of course Waters would cite a right-winger to bolster his right-wing argument. He went on to huff, “NewsBusters disproves the ‘nonpartisan’ NPR thesis several times a week.” Actually, cherry-picking stories to push a partisan narrative does not disprove NPR’s claim to be nonpartisan.