The Media Research Center continued to gush over Fox News spreading its preferred right-wing narrative throughout 2025. For instance:
- Greg Gutfeld Rips Media on Biden Decline: ‘Truth Took a Backseat’ for the ‘Biggest Lie’
- Fox’s Bill Melugin Bodies Liberal Journalist Over Biden’s Handling of the Border
- NOT NEWS? Fox Highlights Plummeting Border Crossings, Fewer Migrant Deaths
- WATCH: Gutfeld Destroys MSNBC’s Scarborough for a Pathetic Change of Heart on Biden
- DOH! MSNBC & CNN Ratings Imploding, While Fox News Now Beats ABC in Prime Time
- Fox Covers Illegal Alien Who Killed Three After California Gave Him Drivers License
- MSNBC Spreads Fake News That ICE Zip-Tied Children, Fox Debunks
- MSNBC Buries Ambush Against Immigration Agents as Fox News Covers It
- Fox News Highlights Anti-ICE Attack in Chicago and Illegal Alien Gunman
- Fox Covers Illegal Who Caused DUI Death After Not Being Deported
- Report: More UC SD Freshmen Can’t Do Math, ABC, CBS, NBC Evening News Skip, Fox Covers
- Fox News Highlights New York Times Sympathy for Illegal Alien ID Fraud Perpetrator
Notice how many of those items are centered on demonizing im migrants, something both Fox News and the MRC agree on.
Tim Graham defended Fox News hiring Lara Trump in a February 2025 column:
The Poynter Institute for Media Studies is a left-wing hive of activists badly disguised as journalists. They run the very biased “fact checker” PolitiFact, and one of their executives (Kelly McBride) moonlights as the baldly boosterish “Public Editor” making excuses for National Public Radio.
Tom Jones – not the hip-swaying British pop singer – is their resident Brian Stelter, penning a daily media newsletter. Check out this headline: “Fox News goes all in on MAGA by adding a Trump to the payroll…The network continues to peddle itself as a legitimate news outlet. Hiring the sitting president’s daughter-in-law makes that claim indefensible.”
Fox News is creating a Saturday night show hosted by Lara Trump, the daughter-in-law of the sitting president. Just like Stelter, Jones ripped Fox as “simply an extension of the Republican Party and, in particular, a megaphone for Donald Trump and the MAGA movement…’News’ really doesn’t belong in the network’s name.”
He underlined it, with rhetorical Hi-Liter: “If Fox News really does see itself as a legitimate news outlet, then the hire of Lara Trump is just baffling…. Don’t they see the obvious conflict of interest?”
It’s very easy to point out that NBC News hired Chelsea Clinton as an “objective” reporter. NBC still pays Jenna Bush as a morning-show host. But Jones said that’s different – Trump is in office now, as opposed to the former First Daughters. Chelsea was making $600,000 a year for doing less than one fluffy feature story a month as her mother prepared for a 2016 run for the White House. She resigned before it became too obvious.
Well, yes, Clinton worked for a few years for NBC — nearly a decade after Bill Clinton left office — and she left because she was having a baby and to take a larger role at the Clinton Foundation, not because her mom was running for president. Graham sounds disappointed that she quit before he and his fellow MRCers could make it an issue. Graham concluded by huffing:
This is why conservatives don’t take the Democrat defense team of Stelter, Darcy, & Jones seriously when they preach about “legitimate” news outlets and media ethics. Everything is situational on the Democrat side. Apparently, there are no conflicts of interest when everyone is allied in “saving democracy” from Trump. “Journalism” and Democrat messaging are indistinguishable.
Graham, of course, has never questioned the legitimacy of right-wing outlets like Fox News — it’s not in his job description.
Meanwhile, the MRC refused to address any scandals at Fox News, such as its recycled whitleblowers, or its attempted burial of Trump’s links to Jeffrey Epstein, or how host Brian Kilmeade called for the execution of homeless people (for which he eventually apologized).