I’ve watched the media for around 60 years. I used to think Walter Cronkite honest until I learned he was in the tank for the anti-Vietnam War left, even providing helicopters to ferry them around for protests he’d cover. There were other signs, like NBC’s 1993 report on the side saddle gas tanks of GM pickups. NBC was grudgingly forced to admit they placed incendiary devices on the tanks to make them catch fire.

There were innumerable other breaches of faith, including the Rathergate debacle, which made Powerline.  In a clumsy attempt to defeat George W. Bush, Dan Rather pushed fake documents that claimed Bush was somehow derelict in his duties as a Texas Air National Guard fighter pilot. Quickly exposed as a fraud, that hoax gave birth to a common media meme: the documents were fake but accurate. If something ought to be true, it must be true. Rather and others lost their jobs but defend the hoax to this day.

Graphic: X Post

An allied media practice is “too good to check.” If a story damages Democrat Party enemies, even if reporters suspect it’s false, they won’t bother to verify it. The ancient journalistic standard of not running a story without two independent sources of confirmation has long been as dead as Dan Rather’s integrity.

The media’s blackly comical and desperate attempts to help Joe Biden during his dumpster fire of a debate with Donald Trump linger in public memory:

Graphic: X Post 

More recently, ABC had to pay President Trump some $16 million to settle a libel suit and CBS also paid Trump $16 million  for a 60 Minutes segment’s creative editing that tried to make Kamala Harris sound almost coherent during the 2024 presidential campaign. Most recently, Trump is threatening to sue the BBC for a billion dollars over a report that spliced together two portions nearly an hour apart in his speech at the Capitol on January 6 in an attempt to make it appear he encouraged violence. The head of the BBC and others have resigned over that journalistic lapse.

According to Pew, only 52% of Americans have “some” or “a lot” of trust in the national media, and somewhat more in local media outlets. Pew’s article doesn’t break that down, but I suspect those with “some” overpower “a lot.”  That’s damning with faint praise. I’ve long ago learned that if the media says it’s dark, I can’t believe it without trotting outside to check.

Media coverage of the recent government shutdown is a case in point:

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.

Summary of Findings

*Broadcast shutdown coverage heavily favored Democrats over Republicans (87% to 13%).

*Only 12 reports (less than one fifth) even mentioned that Senate Democrats had refused to vote for a clean continuing resolution.

*Not a single report mentioned that Democrats voted back in March to end the same Obamacare subsidies which they’re now demanding.

Democrats Routinely Shielded from Blame

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.

As with most media reports, even those few that mentioned the truth did so barely and in ways that diverted attention from the essential facts of the controversy: Democrats were not only entirely responsible for Obamacare and its inevitable financial collapse, they voted against reopening the government some 15 times. Not only that, some congressional Democrats said the quiet part out loud: they caused and maintained the shutdown because it was their only political leverage against Republicans. Also ignored was Democrat’s intention to keep Obamacare alive and to fund medical care for illegal aliens. Much of their calculation came from terminal Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Through decades of relentless effort, the media have convinced Americans they’re not to be trusted. That’s something Americans can trust.

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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.