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: Big Four News Apps Flood Users with Cruise Virus Stories—Bury Disney/ABC Cruise Scandal BLACKOUT: ABC News SILENT on Disney Cruise Employing Alleged Pedophiles Big Four News Apps Flood Users with Cruise Virus Stories—Bury Disney/ABC Cruise Scandal OMISSION: Nets Ignore Dem Mayor Charged with Being an Agent for China, Those Who Covered Suppressed Party Affiliation Staged Trump Attacks? WashPost Turns to Lefty Experts to Dismiss Conspiratorial Democrats     Big Four News Apps Flood Users with Cruise Virus Stories—Bury Disney/ABC Cruise Scandal Major news aggregators are flooding user feeds with repetitive coverage of a cruise ship virus to distract from significant political developments.  Apple News and Google News prioritized health scares over breaking news regarding government accountability and economic shifts.  This saturation of trivial health news serves as a digital smoke screen to keep voters uninformed about critical policy failures.  The coordinated push of these stories across multiple platforms suggests a systemic effort to manipulate the public consciousness through algorithmic bias.   BLACKOUT: ABC News SILENT on Disney Cruise Employing Alleged Pedophiles ABC News has remained completely silent on the arrests of up to ten Disney cruise ship employees in a child pornography ring. The arrests took place between April 23 and 27 as part of a Customs and Border Protection operation and became national news by May 6. During this period ABC instead aired multiple segments praising former Disney CEO Bob Iger and promoting other Disney content. Disney ownership creates a clear conflict that leads ABC to protect the company image over covering a serious scandal involving alleged predators.   Big Four News Apps Flood Users with Cruise Virus Stories—Bury Disney/ABC Cruise Scandal Major news aggregators are flooding user feeds with repetitive coverage of a cruise ship virus to distract from significant political developments.  Apple News and Google News prioritized health scares over breaking news regarding government accountability and economic shifts.  This saturation of trivial health news serves as a digital smoke screen to keep voters uninformed about critical policy failures.  The coordinated push of these stories across multiple platforms suggests a systemic effort to manipulate the public consciousness through algorithmic bias.   OMISSION: Nets Ignore Dem Mayor Charged with Being an Agent for China, Those Who Covered Suppressed Party Affiliation The major broadcast networks have completely ignored the federal indictment of a Democratic mayor accused of acting as an illegal agent for China.  This media blackout stands in stark contrast to the aggressive coverage typically given to any investigations involving Republican officials.  ABC, CBS, and NBC failed to dedicate even a single segment to a significant national security threat involving a high ranking local politician.  The refusal to cover this foreign influence scandal demonstrates a protective bias toward the Democratic party by mainstream news outlets.   Staged Trump Attacks? WashPost Turns to Lefty Experts to Dismiss Conspiratorial Democrats The Washington Post continues its pattern of using biased academic experts to frame legitimate political criticism as dangerous rhetoric. Major news publications rely on a recurring group of left wing activists to provide a veneer of scholarly authority to partisan attacks.  The media frequently labels conservative concerns about election integrity as baseless while ignoring evidence that contradicts their preferred narrative.  By laundering political opinions through liberal professors, the press avoids providing objective reporting on the current political climate.    

One of the games in scandal politics is about “optics" -- when a public official does something that just looks bad. Barack Obama fans pretend that his only scandal was wearing a tan suit to a press conference in the summer of 2014. The latest example is Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy filming a video series for YouTube with his family over seven months called The Great American Road Trip, all to celebrate the 250th birthday of America this summer. NBC’s Julie Tsirkin provided the Democrat talking points: “This road trip is facing backlash...at a time when many Americans are struggling with high prices at the pump...and amid a number of crises during Duffy’s tenure, including record TSA lines and the recent Spirit Airlines shutdown.” ABC morning host Michael Strahan seconded the emotion: “As gas prices soar…backlash this morning over Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s series being called The Great American Road Trip.” Reporter Jay O’Brien underlined the series was privately sponsored, including by Boeing and United Airlines, which Duffy is in charge of regulating. On the PBS News Hour, anchor Geoff Bennett brought the “backlash” talk to his Monday night pundit panel: “Sean Duffy is facing backlash for this new, I guess we can call it reality series. It's launched on YouTube and it's basically -- as he says, it's a way to get out on the highway for America's 250th birthday. But this is coming at a time when Americans, as we say, are frustrated by prices. He's also facing criticism from Pete Buttigieg, who says -- in a social media post, he called the series 'brutally out of touch'.” Both NPR’s Tamara Keith and political analyst Amy Walter agreed the optics weren’t good. Reliably liberal PBS @NewsHour joins other networks in finding SCANDAL over Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy filming a "Great American Road Trip" series to celebrate America's 250th anniversary, quoting his liberal predecessor Pete Buttigieg calling it "brutally out of touch." pic.twitter.com/On2sIoDXAU — Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) May 12, 2026 So speaking of “brutally out of touch,” how did PBS handle the optics problems of Buttigieg under Biden? Their interviews were shoeshines, in July 2021, December 2022, and February 2023. They were facilitators, not investigators. In the summer of 2021, Buttigieg went out on “paternity leave” for several months when he adopted black twins. Optics were out of the question. ABC News shamed conservative critics: “Criticisms of paternity leave, like those Buttigieg faced, show the stigma that still remains in the United States around men taking time off work to care for their children.” Instead, CBS Sunday Morning in 2024 did a seven-minute Fathers Day puff piece on the two Buttigieg dads. Optics were optimal.  Then consider the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, on February 3, 2023. PBS aired a promotional interview with Buttigieg the night before the hazmat-spilling accident. But outside the liberal bubble, it became an optics issue when Buttigieg took 20 days to show up at the scene.  When he finally showed up, PBS aired a clip of him denouncing the railroad company: “Norfolk Southern and the other freight rail companies need to stop fighting us every time we try to do a regulation.” Then Bennett briefly noted: “He also acknowledged he may have waited too long to travel there, saying he wanted to let the EPA and NTSB deal with the emergency first. The federal response has become a partisan flashpoint.” Another optics issue came in January 2024, when it was exposed that Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had vanished without notifying anyone of his absence when he underwent prostate removal at Walter Reed Hospital in DC. PBS yawned and offered two brief and bland anchor statements over two nights, no pundits required. Optics scandals are an easy way to measure how these networks are partisan. They tout “backlash” and “brutally out of touch” actions for Republicans, and paper over the “partisan flashpoints” Republicans push. 

The other shoe has dropped on the ongoing wrap-up smear of FBI Director Kash Patel. The original item published in The Atlantic drew its initial round of Elitist Media coverage. Now, an additional round due to Congressional hearings on the article, setting Patel up to be grilled regarding the allegations. With anchor Tom Llamas being the first to arrive to China to cover the Trump-Xi summit, there was related coverage that bumped the hearings off the Nightly News. ABC and CBS, anchored by fill-ins as David Muir and Tony Dokoupil make their way to Beijing, were all too eager to wallow in the mud. ABC’s Jay O’Brien literally worked “pounding beers” into his coverage of the hearing: DRINKING GAME: Part II of the wrap-up smear of Kash Patel ran today. Here's ABC's Jay O'Brien, literally working "pounding beers" into his report on today's hearing pic.twitter.com/Q7dDFcs2fH — Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) May 13, 2026 ABC WORLD NEWS TONIGHT 5/12/26 6:41 PM JAY O’BRIEN (shouted at Kash Patel): Do you still have the confidence of the president? Tonight, the fireworks on Capitol Hill. FBI Director Kash Patel grilled by Democrats about reports he has a drinking problem. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: Episodes of excessive drinking, unexplained absences, and behavior that concerned current and former FBI and DoJ officials. (VIDEO SWIPE) Is it your testimony that those allegations are categorically false? KASH PATEL: Unequivocally, categorically false. (VIDEO SWIPE) VAN HOLLEN: And so there have been no occasions when your security detail had difficulty waking or locating you. Is that right?  PATEL: Nope. It's a total farce. I don't even know where you get this stuff but it doesn't make it credible because you say so. VAN HOLLEN: I'm not saying it, Director Patel, it's been written and documented. PATEL: You are literally saying it. VAN HOLLEN: No, I’m saying that these are reports, Director Patel. O’BRIEN: Patel drawing scrutiny after he was seen celebrating and pounding beers at the Olympics with the USA men's hockey team. The director insists he was in Milan on separate official business. He's now suing The Atlantic magazine after it reported on alleged bouts of excessive drinking. The CBS Evening News wasn’t much better than ABC, dutifully pushing out the smear: CBS runs Part II of the wrap-up smear against Kash Patel. Here's Chris Van Hollen saying "it's written...", a key element of the wrap-up smear (originally published in The Atlantic) pic.twitter.com/gKLAaiqToA — Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) May 13, 2026 CBS EVENING NEWS 5/12/26 6:41 PM CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: You cannot perform those public duties if you are incapacitated. CAITLIN HUEY-BURNS: Democrats grilled FBI Director Kash Patel about claims made in a recent "Atlantic" magazine article, including allegations of excessive drinking and unexplained absences. VAN HOLLEN: And so there have been no occasions when your security detail had difficulty waking or locating you, is that right? KASH PATEL: Nope. It's a total farce. I don't even know where you get this stuff but it doesn't make it credible because you say so. VAN HOLLEN: I'm not saying it, Director Patel, it's been written and documented. PATEL: You are literally saying it. HUEY-BURNS: Patel denies the claims. His personal behavior has been heavily scrutinized since he was seen drinking with the men's Olympic hockey team in Italy, and after a report that he gives out personalized bourbon bottles engraved with his name and title. As we noted when the networks initially jumped all over the unproven allegations published in The Atlantic: The Atlantic has a history of running Trump-deranged fiction that won’t play anywhere else. The most notorious example of this genre is the despicable Suckers and Losers Hoax. Patel’s defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic will endure as a story long after this operation fades from the headlines. Meanwhile, the Elitist Media continue to remind us why trust in media is at an all-time low. The fiction remains unproven, but it still has political use, as is demonstrated here by ABC and CBS.  

Last Friday, leftist Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) appeared at a University of Chicago's Institute of Politics event, where she left open her political options, while stating, "My ambition is to change this country." She didn't hold back spewing her radical views, which has led to the left wing media raising the pedestal that she had already been placed on, and that was on full display Monday on CNN's State of the Union, while in contrast, Fox News's Hannity called AOC out for what she is. CNN Host Dana Bash asked, "What does Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez want to do next? She could stay in the House, challenge Chuck Schumer in the Senate, or run for President." She then played a clip of AOC. AOC CLIP: They assume that my ambition is positional. They assume that my ambition is a title or a seat, and my ambition is way bigger than that. My ambition is to change this country. Presidents come and go, Senate, House seats, elected officials come and go, but, single payer health care is forever. A living wage is forever. Worker's rights are forever. Women's rights, all of that. Sounds like a desire to be Queen of socialism. First to weigh in was CNN's Chief Congressional Correspondent Manu Raju, who seemed optimistic about most of the possibilities in the Congresswoman's future.  RAJU: If she ran in the Senate in 2028, she would have a very good chance of defeating Chuck Schumer in a Democratic primary. .... But can she win a general election? She could win a primary, potentially in a presidential race in 2028. She's got the energy. She's got social media following. She can raise money. But a general election. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, totally different question. Bash then turned to Semafor White House Correspondent Shelby Talcott, "I totally agree with all of those points [from Raju]. The question is, what is she trying to say?" TALCOTT: I think she's talking about the direction that the Democratic Party should be going to. She's talking about here are the policies that our party should stand for. When I talk to people close to the President and Republicans about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and those comments, they're hoping that she ends up running for president because their belief is that she is too much of a progressive for the Democratic Party and will bring them down a path that will ensure another Republican victory. After CNN Senior Politics Reporter Stephen Collinson wondered if AOC could benefit from serving in the Senate before any Presidential run, Bash responded, "It worked out okay for a guy named Barack Obama." He was in the Senate for about two years before the presidential run began.  Was Bash actually equating AOC with Barack Obama on any level? Does she believe their IQ's are close? Let's hope not, for her sake.  The only doubts expressed on this segment about AOC, was in her ability to appeal to the masses in an actual presidential election. Of course no mention was made about what else she claimed on Friday, for the third time, that the American Revolution was against. "the billionaires of their time." Talk about IQ. They never mentioned her providing tips to illegals on how to evade ICE, or stating that marginalized communities 'have no choice but to riot', or that her district has seen an enormous increase in crime. Of course not. Later that evening on Fox News, Host Sean Hannity unveiled a completely different AOC than the one the CNN crew was talking about. HANNITY:  The true leader of the radicalized Democratic Party, AOC, continues to demonize wealthy job-creating taxpayers. How many times have I said I never got a job from a poor person? She is going so far as to claim the Revolutionary War was fought against the billionaires of their time. Wasn't about freedom, wasn't about independence. No. Taxation without representation, if you learned that you went to a real school, she obviously did not. Hannity did actually play the American Revolution clip. AOC CLIP: The American Revolution was against the billionaires of their time. We are declaring independence from such an extreme marriage of wealth and power. HANNITY: Exhibit A on how government schools are so disgraceful and such a failure, but even worse than that, she also said her ambition goes way beyond just becoming president one day. Essentially saying she wants to instill her communist vision in this country. Remember, every elected Democrat, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Mamdani, Kathy Hochul, probably even Gavin Newsom, all fear her. The difference in segments was the difference between the truth and fake news by omission.

On Tuesday’s Morning Joe, former MSNBC host Chris Matthews acknowledged Iran has always used the “help of American media” to peddle images of war back to the American audience to hurt the opinions of American presidents, including his former boss, President Jimmy Carter, amid the Iranian hostage crisis. But, of course, Matthews helped peddle that same Iranian propaganda further in their discussion as he said any future U.S. military actions in Iran would be “war crimes.” Morning Joe regular Mike Barnicle asked Matthews about the experience with Iranians amid the Carter hostage crisis. “Iranians seem to have been playing their tune for us, and we've been going along with it for a long, long time,” Barnicle said.   On Morning Joe, Chris Matthews said the Iranians get "the help of the American Media," as he compared the current coverage of the Iran War to the Iranian Hostage Crisis under Jimmy Carter, whom Matthews worked for. Of course, after saying that, Matthews echoed war crime claims. pic.twitter.com/3PaLtVvKph — Nick (@nspin310) May 12, 2026   Matthews followed with a story of the 1980 presidential campaign amid the crisis. He recounted that there was a moment in the campaign when it seemed the Iranian mullahs might release the hostages, but they were “tricked.” He then remembered the coverage by Walter Cronkite as he started to allude to media coverage of Iran in that crisis as a comparison: The ayatollah and all that gang knew they were going to screw Carter one more time. And so the day before the 1980 election, Walter Cronkite led with the hostage crisis anniversary. It wasn't even the next election the next day, it was the anniversary of the hostage taking. And American held hostage was on every night at 11:30. It never stopped. Then, Matthews recalled the coverage then as the Iranians hurting Carter, with “the help of American media”:  They kept the heat on him in the media, day after day after day, with the help of the American media, and he could never get past it. So, I look at Trump and what he's facing right now when you talked about this morning, and these options aren't there. What Matthews discussed in terms of American media around 1980 was very similar to coverage today, in the media’s usage of Iranian State Media as primary sources, as seen on CNN and other mainstream networks. Just as he talked about the media, he echoed a constant Democrat and media talking point of war crimes:  You can't go back and start committing war crimes, attacking power plants and desalination facilities, and all that. You can't do that. You're going to start killing people, and it's going to be all over the news. And guess how we're going to know about it? The Iranians will make sure we'll know about every girl’s school that gets hit, every hospital that's hit, everything we do wrong, every war crime that looks like a war crime, we'll know all about it because they're really good at this. After Jonathan Lemire and Joe Scarborough talked about Iranian A.I. LEGO propaganda memes, Matthews joined back in and feared of a girls’ school being hit among other war action:  If we do that again, and we will do that again, if we start doing saturation bombing and we start hitting critical facilities that affect people's lives, we're going to get into killing people. And I think Trump must know that.  Even after Chris Matthews illustrated how Iranians manipulate U.S. media, Matthews and the Morning Joe crew proceeded to demonstrate it firsthand. The transcript is below. Click "expand": MS NOW’s Morning Joe May 12, 2026 7:08:34 AM Eastern (...) MIKE BARNICLE: Chris, listening to David and listening to the conversations that have been taking place here this morning around the table about Iran, and for the past couple of weeks about Iran. Let's talk about another president, a president who you served, Jimmy Carter. And let's talk about the hostage taking by the Iranians.  The Iranians seem to have been playing their tune for us, and we've been going along with it for a long, long time.  CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well, I was listening to Joe yesterday morning, and I was thrown back 46 years, almost a half a century, to being on Air Force One with President Carter on the Saturday before the election of 1980.  And of course, we went to - back in those days, we were still, Democrats were still trying to get Texas. We spent five different stops at the airports. We have 10,000 people waiting for you at the airport, in the stands there. And we went all through Texas the day before, and that, on Saturday. Then we went to Milwaukee late that night, and then we - Carter threw on an Italian sports heroes program about midnight because Marty Russo, the congressman, got him to do that. And then at two in the morning, Hamilton Jordan showed up in Chicago to say, “the mullahs are voting. It looks like there might be a chance we'll get the hostages back before the election.”  And there it was, an opportunity. We flew back to Washington. And, once again, the mullahs tricked us. The ayatollah and all that gang knew they were going to screw Carter one more time. And so the day before the 1980 election, Walter Cronkite led with the hostage crisis anniversary. It wasn't even the next election the next day, it was the anniversary of the hostage taking. And American held hostage was on every night at 11:30. It never stopped.  The Iranians knew exactly how to screw Carter. They kept the heat on him in the media, day after day after day, with the help of the American media, and he could never get past it. So, I look at Trump and what he's facing right now when you talked about this morning,, and these options aren't there.  You can't go back and start committing war crimes, attacking power plants and desalination facilities, and all that. You can't do that. You're going to start killing people, and it's going to be all over the news. And guess how we're going to know about it? The Iranians will make sure we'll know about every girls school that gets hit, every hospital that's hit, everything we do wrong, every war crime that looks like a war crime, we'll know all about it because they're really good at this, Mike.  They really keep up with our media and how to screw an American president, and they're going to do it again. JOE SCARBOROUGH: Well, and let's compare what happened in 79 and 80. They would always make sure, and Chris talked about this before when he was here, and always make sure they would burn an American flag in front of American television cameras to make sure that American flag being burned would be shown in the United States, make the president look even weaker. They would parade out hostages with blindfolds.  They would do all of these horrific things that would enrage Americans, knowing that the American president couldn't do anything about it. And they would just keep - MIKA BRZEZINSKI: They were ruthless. SCARBOROUGH: - pulling the string and pulling the string. And it cost Carter the presidency. They're doing the same thing now. And I'm not being glib when I say this. They're not burning American flags. They're doing memes.  JONATHAN LEMIRE: Yeah.  SCARBOROUGH: They're hitting where it hurts the most now in this new culture. And like Legos and teletubbies and all of these things that actually burning an American flag would play into Trump's strength to say, we're going to fight, we're going to do this. But now they're mocking him ruthlessly because they understand that that's how you get to him the most. LEMIRE: And how many times have we heard Donald Trump over the last ten years complain that the world is laughing at the United States right now? Iran is laughing at him. They do know what buttons to push. It's a very online presidency. It's an online nation right now. And people are seeing these memes, and the president doesn't have a great way of responding - SCARBOROUGH: Like, how about the example of like when he said something like, I need an answer by eight, or we're going to destroy your civilization? They quickly responded and said, that's not a good time for us. How about two in the morning? Yeah. And so it's a - even when he's trying to be tough online, the Iranians know how to mock him and ridicule him.  And again, this isn't just about Donald Trump. This is what we're saying here is this is about every American president that crosses them. They know how to pull the strings. And now, as Doctor Brzezinski warned, as everybody else warned about for decades, now they have the straight. LEMIRE: Yeah. Tehran has specialized in humiliating American presidents for a long time. And just a few more examples here. Let's remember they've blown off deadlines. They've ignored threats. The time where the foreign minister was in Islamabad and the U.S. negotiating team was heading to the airport to fly to Islamabad to meet them. And the foreign minister simply left like they knew. They're poking, you know, the president where it hurts. (...) 7:15:45 AM Eastern MATTHEWS: So I think it's the fear of another girl's school being hit, because we all got tremendous clearance as media people to go in there and get that story. One thing the Iranians are good at is letting Americans know the bad stories about themselves, and they will let the country know how bad it was that we accidentally hit that girls' school.  If we do that again, and we will do that again, if we start doing saturation bombing and we start hitting critical facilities that affect people's lives, we're going to get into killing people. And I think Trump must know that.  I think Admiral Stavridis, his third option, seems like the one going to keep trying to open the straits, just limited warfare just in one part of the country, the strait itself. Try to open that up. It seems like that is what he was recommending, I think. (...)