MRC Watchdogs churn out breaking news on a daily basis. Don't miss Today's Highlights, where you can keep up with the top MRC content, whether it's the latest study on media bias, a glaring omission from the elitist media, or how the Big Tech companies are serving up the same leftist spin as the media.  Top Stories:   MRC Submits Massive Filing with the FCC to Strip The View of Its Bona Fide News Status MRC Study Exposes Over Seven Hours of TV News Airtime Wasted on Algae Coverage MRC Exposes How Elitist Media Protect Dr. Anthony Fauci from Fresh Coronavirus Scrutiny   MRC Submits Massive Filing with the FCC to Strip The View of Its Bona Fide News Status The MRC submitted a massive filing with the Federal Communications Commission to strip the daytime talk show of its special legal exemptions. MRC researchers provided the agency with over two thousand separate pieces of evidence documenting the show's pervasive bias and overt electioneering.  The targeted filing caught ABC and Disney off guard as the corporations scrambled to launch an inaccurate on-air defense campaign to rally their viewers.  MRC documentation proves the network has long operated the program as a partisan political operation rather than a legitimate and balanced news program. MRC Study Exposes Over Seven Hours of TV News Airtime Wasted on Algae Coverage An MRC analysis found that major television networks wasted nearly seven hours of airtime covering algae in a reflecting pool.  MRC analysts tracked the coverage over a nine-day period and calculated an average of over forty-five minutes of daily airtime spent on the trivial story.  The research showed CNN and MS NOW heavily prioritized the condition of the water over meaningful policy or national interest news stories.  The establishment media completely ignored a massive international abuse report during the exact same period they chose to obsess over the park pond. MRC Exposes How Elitist Media Protect Dr. Anthony Fauci from Fresh Coronavirus Scrutiny The MRC documented how establishment networks refuse to cover a new intelligence file release regarding the origins of the coronavirus.  MRC research highlights that major networks completely ignored official document releases showing efforts to suppress the lab leak theory.  Establishment outlets and prominent fact-checkers actively rushed to shield the prominent doctor from congressional oversight and public inquiry.  The corporate media continue to suppress investigative transparency to preserve their preferred narratives regarding the handling of pandemic mandates.      

It’s routinely amazing that the Left will speak so shamelessly about how some Trump initiative or another displays authoritarian tendencies. Rachel Maddow endlessly discusses what she calls “an authoritarian takeover of our country and the destruction of our Constitution.” But we have a very recent example of authoritarianism descending on America, controlling our private lives. It was the Covid pandemic. At its outbreak, the coronavirus seemed especially deadly, and the vast majority of Americans consented to all of the mandates, the closing of our schools and our churches, the shaming of anyone gathering in a private home for a birthday or for Christmas. When the vaccines became available, many of us took them when we could. Our lives were subject to dictates by the mandarins of infectious disease. The most prominent of these was Dr. Anthony Fauci, and he remains to this day a sainted figure among our media elites. Leftists put Fauci’s face on devotional candles like he was a saint. One called him “Saint Vaccine King.” His word was supposed to be accepted as “the Science.” He would not be “fact checked.” The supposedly independent website PolitiFact has only one check on Dr. Fauci in almost twenty years of existence, from October 2021, rating him “Mostly True” for claiming “precious few religions” object to vaccines.   As time goes on, anyone can see the media will not accept any questioning of Fauci’s actions. The latest potential “news hook” was Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard releasing a trove of files on June 19 detailing how Fauci worked with intelligence officials to crush the theory that the coronavirus emerged from a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The networks avoided this story like the plague. The New York Times and The Washington Post also ignored it – which was especially weird as The Post published an enormous front-page investigative piece alleging Gabbard was long under the spell of a cult leader. CNN’s Trump-trashing fact checker Daniel Dale rushed to Fauci's defense, under the headline “Why the Covid-19 documents Gabbard released don’t prove her claims about Fauci.” Dale injected skepticism into nearly everything in this document release. He claimed no one can say Fauci lied to Congress in 2024 because Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) wasn't precise enough with his questions. This is the closest Dale came to admitting anything: “In fairness to Fauci critics, the documents do suggest Fauci wasn’t telling the full story of the CIA meeting with his next comment in the exchange,” where it’s depicted as a CIA “briefing” for Fauci, when in fact Fauci “expressed various opinions to the CIA in addition to receiving information.” In May, CNN host Jake Tapper briefly entertained Republican Sen. Ron Johnson’s objections to Fauci and the lab-leak theory, but like Dale, he found facts entirely elusive: “It seems like there's still lots of opinions but no definitive proof one way or the other.” Republican Sen. Rand Paul held a hearing on Fauci and Covid that was (typically) skipped by all the “news” networks – and The New York Times and The Washington Post. This is where journalists are frustrating. They won’t seek answers to the questions Republicans are asking. Instead, they attack Republican questioners and say they have “no evidence,” even as reporters demonstrate they have no curiosity of their own in the answers. Once the elitist media have established a narrative, they suppress all attempts to re-examine their reigning narrative. The “Saint Vaccine King” candles keep burning hot, and journalists will not engage in new investigations into Fauci’s rule during the temporary authoritarianism of a scientific elite.

You may recall the Elitist Media Evening News barely covering the attempted Antifa attack on a Texas ICE detention center last 4th of July. Surprising no one, they also neglected to cover the sentences of those involved.  First, a refresher. Here’s the initial story, as aired on the CBS Evening News on Tuesday, July 8th, 2025: This brief on the CBS Evening News was the sole item on the Antifa attack against the ICE facility at Alvarado, TX across the legacy network newscasts (a full report streamed on CBSEN+). pic.twitter.com/478JBo5i3j — Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) July 9, 2025 MAURICE DuBOIS: Ten people charged with attempted murder after allegedly staging an ambush at an immigration detention center in Alvarado, Texas. Investigators say some of the suspects lured officers outside by shooting fireworks at the building and painting graffiti. An officer was shot and is out of the hospital. Authorities are investigating whether the July 4th attack is linked to a shooting yesterday at a Border Patrol facility in McAllen, Texas. That was it. 25 seconds on CBS, absolute donuts on ABC and NBC- another instance in a long pattern of bias by omission when it comes to leftwing violence, especially violence against federal law enforcement. Those defendants have now been sentenced to lengthy terms in federal prison. Per the Department of Justice: Today, the Justice Department announced that eight North Texas Antifa Cell operatives were sentenced for their roles in rioting, using weapons and explosives, providing material support to terrorists, obstruction, and the attempted murder of an Alvarado police officer at the Prairieland Detention Center on July 4, 2025. This is the first sentencing of defendants affiliated with Antifa following President Donald J. Trump’s executive order designating the group as a Domestic Terrorist Organization in September 2025. Benjamin Hanil Song, who was convicted of the attempted murder of a law enforcement officer, was sentenced to 100 years in prison. Together, the Prairieland terrorists received a combined sentence of 450 years in prison:  Maricela Rueda was sentenced to 70 years in prison; Cameron Arnold was sentenced to 50 years in prison; Savanna Batten was sentenced to 50 years in prison; Zachary Evetts was sentenced to 50 years in prison; Bradford Morris was sentenced to 50 years in prison; Elizabeth Soto was sentenced to 50 years in prison; and Daniel Rolando Sanchez-Estrada was sentenced to 30 years in prison. “The sentences handed down today make clear that Antifa terrorists who attack law enforcement and federal facilities will face swift and uncompromising justice,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. “Their violent extremism has no place in our country, and the Department of Justice will continue to aggressively investigate, disrupt, and prosecute those who threaten law enforcement officers or undermine the rule of law.” In keeping with the earlier trend, there was zero coverage of the sentencings on any of the Elitist Media’s evening newscasts. Of course, there were other stories deemed more deserving of coverage.  Among them: A police RV chase near Orlando, Florida, an Amazon driver driving on a customer’s lawn, and a flipped 18-wheeler full of bees on ABC. On CBS: a 13-year-old who fell 50 feet after prematurely exiting a Disney ride, and a sad dog at a Miami Marlins game. On NBC: the aforementioned falling teen, ANOTHER item on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pond (ABC and CBS had given it a rest tonight), and the Miami Heat trading for Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo.  This story stands as yet another reminder that what the media don’t cover is often more important than what they do. That’s what makes bias by omission so insidious.  

President Donald Trump, master of schadenfreude? That was what MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell and Rachel Maddow suggested on Monday’s episode of The Last Word. O’Donnell, under the influence of a new book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, claimed that the indictments of his political opponents were all that Trump cared about. “It comes down to - for Donald Trump, it comes down to, just get them indicted. That is the minimum that is good enough for him. He just wants to see them go through that pain,” O’Donnell proclaimed to Maddow during their hand off. In their coverage, the two so-called journalists missed one crucial fact present in these cases - the DOJ can only indict someone if they have some evidence that the person committed a federal crime. Trump did not sit on any of the federal grand juries that passed the indictments, and he was not the one facing his political rivals in court. That was the job of federal prosecutors. But that wasn’t the sense you’d get if you listened to Maddow’s assertion that these indictments were “a window into the wizened soul of Donald Trump and what he's trying to do as he attempts an authoritarian takeover of our country and the destruction of our Constitution.”      Article III, Section Two of the United States Constitution states that “the judicial Power shall extend to all Cases. . . affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers, and Consuls.” James, as New York Attorney General, counted as a “public Minister,” so she was indeed under the Constitutional authority of “the judicial Power.” Being a leftist and/or a woman of color didn’t make her immune to accountability, no matter what the Democrat Party may wish. Any administration that didn’t investigate or prosecute people like James merely because of political loyalties would be closer to destroying the Constitution than an administration that did.  Maddow, in a delightful example of myopic hypocrisy, also accused the Trump DOJ of bringing “vindictive prosecution[s].” Call her Dory, because she seemed to have already forgotten the vindictive prosecutions brought against Trump during the interim Biden period, when Democrats brought a myriad of charges against the then-former President solely in an attempt to smear him and prevent him from running for office again. The entire liberal media adored figures like Letitia James solely for her anti-Trump prosecutions, then they made her a martyr when the DOJ indicted her in 2025 for bank fraud. Her sainthood status has remained with her even after the charges were dropped. The leftist media will fall over themselves to lavish praise over anyone who positions themselves as anti-Trump. The list was endless -- Letitia James, James Comey, Fani Willis, John Bolton, and so on. Democrats would even defend real Nazis like Graham Platner and crackheads like Hunter Biden, as long as they subscribe to their radical leftist ideology.  Whatever “pain” these indictments may cause those who hounded Trump, they were the ones who unsheathed the sword with their own ruthless prosecutions for political purposes. The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read: MS NOW's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell 6/22/26 10:01:00 (...) LAWRENCE O'DONNELL: So, Rachel, you were talking about the strain, the difficulty of being indicted in the Trump universe that - by the Trump Justice Department.  In the new book, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, which I'm going to discuss with the authors, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, they talk about exactly this. Inside the Trump White House when they're talking about getting the indictments on Letitia James. And people are saying 'It's impossible. You can't do it. You can't prove the case.' It comes down to - for Donald Trump, it comes down to, just get them indicted. That is the minimum that is good enough for him. He just wants to see them go through that pain. RACHEL MADDOW: Yeah, and if they're talking about it explicitly like that, it's potentially something that's admissible in a court motion for having a - having an indictment dismissed as a vindictive prosecution.  So it's not only a window into the wizened soul of Donald Trump and what he's trying to do as he attempts an authoritarian takeover of our country and the destruction of our constitution. It's also potentially legally actionable reporting in terms of Trump's enemies being able to turn that around and use it against them - use it against him to defend themselves. (...)

Amid the media tour for the new mega-book Regime Change by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, the pair of authors appeared on MS NOW’s Morning Joe to sell their new book on the Trump Administration. In part of the interview, co-host Jonathan Lemire posed a question on Trump’s feelings on “mortality,” especially after the Kirk assassination and, as Lemire described it, “the threats he perceived to be out there.” Haberman later insinuated that the aftermath of the Kirk assassination and the heightened security measures for government officials, including some now residing on military bases, led to the unrest and ICE-involved shootings in Minneapolis. About 30 minutes into the interview, Lemire turned to talk about recent political assassinations and the attempts on Trump, in a way he described as an “accelerant” to Trump actions. He also labeled the threats against Trump as “perceived”: And, Maggie, I want to ask you about the idea of how Trump is thinking about his own mortality. Which is an animating theme in this book, too. (...) But how that seems to be almost an accelerant - the threats on his life, the threats he perceived to be out there, the ballroom, yes, but a lot of what he's trying to do.   In continuation of the ‘Regime Change’ book tour, Jonathan Lemire posed a question on Trump’s feelings on “mortality,” especially after the Kirk assassination and, as Lemire described it, “the threats he perceived to be out there.” Co-author Maggie Haberman later appeared to… pic.twitter.com/mVmLftabaw — Nick (@nspin310) June 23, 2026   Haberman responded with the reported line on how Trump found out about the assassination through his son, Barron Trump, someone who was attacked by the host of the first stop of the Haberman and Swan book tour for not enlisting in the military. Haberman said the assassination reminded Trump of his “mortality,” and made a connection of Trump actions to the reaction of the Kirk assassination. She said it was Trump’s “impulse,” along with Stephen Miller’s and others, that “it’s time to crack down on the left. We have to actually start going after people who are going after us.” The NYT writer then rhetorically scoffed at the whole situation and increased threats against cabinet members, as she briefly called the post-Kirk assassination reaction something that “escalated this siege mentality that they are under.”  Haberman’s large insinuation that she ended her comments on connected the high security of cabinet members with Secret Service details and, sometimes, residences at Military bases, led to an isolation from the world that led to the Minneapolis ICE activities and ensuing unrest: But you are talking about an administration where so many of these officials are living on military bases now. There are so many officials who have Secret Service details, who have intense security, and that just separates them further from the city they're living in and from the government that they're serving and the public that they're serving. And so it was another point in our reporting. And again, we spent a fair amount of time on this, on how it becomes an escalation that in some ways helps get closer to what we saw in Minneapolis later in the year. Lemire’s “perceived threats” line and Haberman's blame on Minneapolis unrest on needed security for officials who have been under threat, partially due to language by the media that labels Republican officials as fascists and Nazis, seemed to try to minimize the now three assassination attempts against Trump and all of the threats of violence against him and other conservatives. The transcript is below. Click "expand": MS NOW’s Morning Joe June 23, 2026 7:29:01 AM Eastern (...) JONATHAN LEMIRE: And, Maggie, I want to ask you about the idea of how Trump is thinking about his own mortality. Which is an animating theme in this book, too. There's Butler, of course, but also the Charlie Kirk assassination, you know, and that's some new reporting here that we've never heard before, how he sort of learned about that, you know, frankly, flashing anger at Kash Patel about that investigation. But how that seems to be almost an accelerant - the threats on his life, the threats he perceived to be out there, the ballroom, yes, but a lot of what he's trying to do. MAGGIE HABERMAN: Yeah, there's no question that the security aspect of this comes up over and over and over again in the book, in our reporting has for some time, the day that Charlie Kirk was killed was - it was not a turning point for this White House, but it was something of a demarcation line. So, in our reporting, he hears about it because his son, Barron, calls and was very upset watching what had happened. And it is a reminder, A, of mortality. It is a reminder of everything that people see in the lives of elected officials and this White House, many of whose members were close with Charlie Kirk, are learning about it in real time. There's a Signal group chain where people are texting, you know, “Charlie, are you okay?” Because they've heard there's a shooting and he doesn't respond.  And Trump is sort of spending the day absorbing it. But his impulse was, we are going to - and the impulse of others in the White House, to be clear. And it was not just Stephen Miller, which is often the view on that one. There were others who really agreed that it's time to crack down on the left. We have to actually start going after people who are going after us.  It emphasized putting that part aside about, you know, whether they were focused on the people who are actually, you know, going after Trump and his advisors or not. It escalated this siege mentality that they are under. There are a number of aides who have had real threats against them. There are others where we’re less clear about what the security threats are.  But you are talking about an administration where so many of these officials are living on military bases now. There are so many officials who have Secret Service details, who have intense security, and that just separates them further from the city they're living in and from the government that they're serving and the public that they're serving. And so it was another point in our reporting. And again, we spent a fair amount of time on this, on how it becomes an escalation that in some ways helps get closer to what we saw in Minneapolis later in the year. (...)