The Media Research Center’s partisan narrative on the shutdown is all about blaming Democrats for it, and it continued in a Nov. 2 post by Steve Malzberg:
Midway through day number 30 of the government shutdown, CNN’s Dana Bash discussed the situation with both House Speaker Mike Johnson, and Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) in separate interviews on Thursday’s “Inside Politics”, on CNN, and although the topic was the same, her questions and Bash’s handling of each guest’s responses were noticeably different. First it was Speaker Johnson’s turn.
Bash’s first question to Johnson involved the President revealing that he had instructed the Pentagon to begin testing nuclear weapons again for the first time in more than 30 years. Next she turned to the shutdown, and the possibility that a partial deal could be reached that would keep funding SNAP, which is set to expire on Saturday.
[…]As you can see, Bash was not bashful about confronting the Speaker. Her interview later with Booker, was nowhere near as hard hitting. CNN isn’t fair and balanced.
[…]There is no doubt that Speaker Johnson has a more powerful position, and tough questions are fair, but there is also no doubt that Bash played by two sets of rules during her two sessions. Of course this is not unique to these interviews, not unique to Bash, and not unique to CNN. It’s called liberal media bias.
And the MRC’s insistence on blaming Democrats exclusively for the shutdown is not right-wing media bias?
Alex Christy was in full comedy-cop mode the same day:
Saturday Night Live cast members Ashley Padilla and Andrew Dismukes joined the NBC show’s Weekend Update segment recently to play the role of “Two People Who Just Hooked Up.” According to Padilla and Dismukes’s characters, Republicans and Democrats need to do the same to end the government shutdown. While a sex-themed bit about ending the government shutdown would have just been odd, SNL felt the need to go even further and make Republicans the woman in the scenario, which led to multiple double entendres about GOP women’s sex lives and philosophical views about the size of government.
[…]If SNL wanted to have some cheeky fun by working in hookup jokes while discussing the government shutdown, they could have done so without equating expanded Obamacare subsidies to a well-endowed man, but it is in line with the beginning of season 51, which seems determined to be extra mean-spirited.
Bill D’Agostino went fully into the whining narrative in a Nov. 5 post:
For the past month the big three broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) have hammered both Congressional Republicans and President Trump with a wall of negative shutdown coverage, while largely shielding Democrats from blame for the now-historic gridlock.
MRC analysts examined every evening newscast on ABC, CBS, and NBC between October 1 and October 31, 2025. Across the 67 reports and news briefs which discussed the government shutdown, 87 percent of the coverage favored Democrats. Analysts found 83 evaluative statements in which anchors or reporters were critical of Republicans, but just twelve criticizing Democrats.
[…]Coverage across all three networks was conspicuously vague about how the shutdown even had occurred. There were only 12 instances in which any of the three outlets hinted that Senate Democrats had voted repeatedly against a continuing resolution. On both ABC and CBS, only 12.5 percent of reports on either network mentioned this basic detail. On NBC, that fact was included in just 31 percent of newscasts.
Reports often included lines about the Trump administration “pressuring Democrats,” or soundbites of Republicans demanding Democrats “fund the government,” but usually stopped short of explicitly acknowledging that Senate Democrats were the ones preventing a funding bill from passing.
D’Agostino offered no reason why Republicans share no blame whatsoever, given that they are the kmajority party in control of the federal government.
Later that day, Clay Waters denied there was a food crisis just because Republicans wouldn’t do their part to fund the government:
The PBS News Hour devoted the first 14 minutes of Monday’s show to the supposedly dire emergency that Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP benefits, known colloquially as food stamps) ran out two days ago during the ongoing federal government “shutdown” before a ruling that the government must fund the food aid.
First up, a Lisa Desjardins report from various food banks across the country and found long food lines just two days afterward, after a month of harbingers that this might happen.
[…]Co-anchor Amna Nawaz next spoke with Cindy Long, former deputy undersecretary of the USDA’s SNAP program, to speak about the nationwide picture. Nawaz invited Long to use emotional blackmail, and Long responded with the usual liberal template concerning the awful choice between buying food and [other vital thing].
Waters did not explain why expecting the government to fund its obligations equated to “emotional blackmail.” Instead, he hammered home the blame-Democrats narrative:
The thrust of the News Hour’s ongoing partisan shutdown coverage is encapsulated by Bennett’s question to former Trump official Marc Short on October 28: “Is that message landing, do you think, the Republican argument that, even though they control every lever of power in Washington, that this is somehow a Democrat shutdown?”
It is of course a Democratic shutdown, given that the Democrats are the ones demanding the extension of COVID-era Obama-care subsidies (which Bennett admitted to earlier in October).
Jorge Bonilla further pushed the narrative in a Nov. 7 post:
For the past 37 days, the Acela Media have done everything in their power to frame the ongoing government shutdown as a Republican shutdown. But, despite their best efforts, some cracks are beginning to form giving way to a glimmer of truth.
Watch the end of NBC Nightly News’ report on the shutdown. If you listen closely, you will hear a tacit acknowledgement of Democrat shutdown origins:
[…]The purpose of that portion of the report was to convey the pain that the shutdown is inflicting across the board. And then comes the close.
Correspondent Ryan Nobles provides an update on SNAP payments and then goes live with anchor Tom Llamas, who asks for any sign of progress on The Hill. Here’s where it gets interesting, because it is at that point that Nobles says the Democrats are not satisfied with what Republicans are offering to end the shutdown.
The party identified as refusing to end the shutdown is usually who started it in the first place. Such is the state of the media, that to openly acknowledge this seems almost revolutionary. But here we are.
That’s not what happened at all — note the lack of quotes by Nobles, who actually pointed out that “some Democrats say the offers by Republicans to end the shutdown do not go far enough.” He made no effort to explain why Republicans should not have worked harder to end the shutdown.