The Media Research Center has long hated former CBS correspondent Scott MacFarlane. For instance:
- Jorge Bonilla groused in October 2024 that MacFarlane “lecture[d] former President Donald Trump on climate during his most recent visit to Valdosta, Georgia on occasion of the passage of Hurricane Helene,” adding: “You never see a Regime Media Reporter run behind a prominent Democrat to ask them whether they’ve reconsidered their stance on immigration after a migrant murder. Whether on guns, abortion, climate change or anything else on the leftwing policy platter, the “will you reconsider” questions go in only one direction.” Of course, Bonilla is part of Trump Regime Media, so he would say that.
- Tim Graham huffed in a January 2025 post that MacFarlane “has long sounded like a Pelosi-Picked Publicist” for pointing out the truth about the Capitol riot: “The only violent death that day was Capitol cop Michael Byrd shooting Ashli Babbitt. The other deaths were Trump supporters who collapsed from medical problems. Those facts are omitted. What was highlighted was 1,600 protesters prosecuted, as if that wasn’t an overwrought and partisan exercise from Team Biden.” Yes, Graham really thinks that prosecuting people for crimes they committed during the riot is a “partisan exercise.”
- Another January 2025 post, by Curtis Houck, cheered that President Trump pardoned the Capitol rioters, saying of MacFarlane that he “has made January 6 his life’s work and source of worth (and maybe the only reason why he got this job at CBS after years at the local NBC affiliate). Take that into consideration as you watch this video in which he concedes it’s all gone poof with the stroke of a pen.”
- A March 2025 post by Houck grumbled that MacFarlane “expressed concern during Monday’s CBS Mornings Plus for Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employees being subjected to lie detector tests and investigations into leaks about Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) raids to find and arrest dangerous illegal immigrants. Oh, poor Scott. But who will leak to Scotty now if they’re going to end up caught by Secretary Kristi Noem?” Houck also weirdly likened MacFarlane’s focus on Capitol riot prosecutions to “an obsessed ex-girlfriend.”
- Houck grumbled further a couple weeks later: “With January 6 cases having evaporated, CBS’s Scott MacFarlane has been looking for a new area to channel himself and being the Justice correspondent (i.e. Deep State liaison) has suited him well. But Thursday’s CBS Evening News showed MacFarlane dismissing the Trump administration’s labeling of drug cartels as terror groups, denouncing it as a “controversial,” “provocative,” and potentially harmful.”
It was Alex Christy’s turn to whine in a July 17 post:
The media’s desire to make themselves the main character in the story reached the Platonic level on Wednesday as CBS correspondent Scott MacFarlane joined former moderator of NBC’s Meet the Press, Chuck Todd, on his appropriately named podcast: The Chuck Toddcast. According to MacFarlane, he was diagnosed with PTSD after the first assassination attempt against President Trump, not because of the shooting, but because of the reaction of Trump supporters. Meanwhile, Todd thought this was a completely reasonable thing to claim.
MacFarlane recalled, “For those of us there, it was such a horror because you saw an emerging America. And it wasn’t the shooting, Chuck. This was—I got diagnosed with PTSD within 48 hours. I got put on trauma leave, not because, I think, of the shooting, but because, you could, you saw it in the eyes, the reaction of the people. They were coming for us. If he didn’t jump up with his fist, they were going to come kill us.”
Jorge Bonilla returned to grouse in an Aug. 19 post:
On last night’s CBS Evening News, a bias by omission twofer via Justice Correspondent Scott MacFarlane. In addition to airing citations of the well-debunked D.C. crime statistics MacFarlane omitted key details of an arrest in Northwest D.C., all in service of furthering narratives adversarial to the federal takeover of D.C. police.
Watch as MacFarlane serves up the cooked data with no fact-check or mention of the local police commander suspended for altering statistics:
Bonilla continued to whine a week later:
CBS’s Scott MacFarlane is on an extended whine session regarding the Trump administration’s deployment of National Guard personnel to the nation’s capital in order to solve a persistently high crime problem. In so doing, MacFarlane defends D.C.’s questionable crime data with the ferocity of Lt. Hiroo Onoda defending the Philippine jungles for decades after the end of World War II.
Seems like Bonilla is the only one on an extended whine session here. And all this whining is leading up to MacFarlane leaving CBS. More on that soon.