PBS Fails at Debate Fact-Checking, Adores Taylor Swift Dem Endorsement

September 12th, 2024 2:16 PM

PBS’s coverage of Tuesday night’s Trump-Harris debate included live fact-checking from its partner PolitiFact, which has racked up a liberally slanted record. But when Harris falsely claimed Trump had promised a “bloodbath,” no one at PBS or PolitiFact corrected her. PBS has made the same fake claim on numerous occasions. Then it was on to abortion, when Donald Trump claimed “radical”…

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Hating GOP, Hailing Democrats: PBS’s Very Biased Convention Coverage

September 4th, 2024 10:00 AM

The Republican and Democratic conventions are over, and it’s clear which party was the favorite of taxpayer-supported PBS. Not even the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump quelled the overwhelming negativity with which the PBS panel greeted the Republican Party Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee in July. Yet a month later, Vice-President Kamala Harris and a familiar crew of…

Silly PBS: Harris Makes Dems ‘Feel Seen,’ ‘Trump Derangement’ Not Real

August 24th, 2024 8:54 AM

PBS opened its fourth and final night of coverage from the Democratic National Convention in Chicago with reporting from the PBS News Hour, with congressional reporter Lisa Desjardins, reporting from D.C. a segment on the Republican’s “counterprogramming” of the convention. She proceeded to defensively explain Trump rhetoric to her viewers as if they were toddlers. Once the actual…

PBS Hurls Bad Fact Checks; Vote Concerns May Stir ‘Political Violence'

July 18th, 2024 9:47 PM

PBS’s biased coverage of Night Three of the Republican National Convention began even before the main event, on Wednesday evening’s PBS News Hour, aiming not only to fact-check the Republicans but even to suggest some Republican voting “misinformation” was dangerous. The tax-funded network’s first fact-check target was…reality TV star, Savannah Chrisley, who discussed her family’s…

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PBS RNC Night 2: Echoing 'White Supremacist Notions,' No 'Illegals'

July 17th, 2024 5:15 PM

Night Two of coverage of the Republican National Convention was “Make America Safe Once Again,” with politicians and ordinary Americans making speeches relaying stories about crime and the illegal immigration that causes some of that crime. PBS reporters and anchors sounded the alarm from the start, warning that Republicans are trying to instill unwarranted fear and anxiety in voters. At 7:08…

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PBS Avoids Networks' Pro-Biden Optimism, Reveal Democratic Agonizing

July 11th, 2024 9:39 AM

On Tuesday’s edition of the PBS News Hour, White House reporter Lisa Desjardins sounded unconvinced that President Biden had settled the waters among his Democratic caucus after his awful debate performance, pessimism that stood in contrast to the national news networks, whose White House reporters have hastily leapt back on board the Biden train after a day or so of relative calm on…

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After Disastrous Debate, PBS Reporter Parrots Team Biden's Happy Talk

June 28th, 2024 4:01 PM

Taxpayer-supported PBS kept its News Hour crew on deck for Thursday night’s first (and only?) Trump-Biden debate of the 2024 presidential election cycle, airing on CNN and simulcast on PBS. While other liberal networks were loaded with panic, PBS's White House reporter stuck to repeating the desperate campaign talking points. 

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PBS 'Washington Week' Panel Rushes to Defend DOJ on 'Weaponization'

June 17th, 2024 6:08 AM

On Friday's Washington Week with the Atlantic on PBS, News Hour reporter Lisa Desjardins brought up Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland (whom the House Republicans voted to hold in contempt) and the earth-shattering news that he’d penned a Washington Post op-ed calling Republican criticism of the Biden Justice Department “baseless, personal, and dangerous.”

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PBS Uses Hostile TV Clips to Warn Trump Veep Picks Threaten Democracy

June 10th, 2024 10:13 AM

Friday's PBS NewsHour featured a discussion with congressional reporter Lisa Desjardins on what Donald Trump is looking for in a vice-presidential running mate (“loyalty….including whether the 2020 election had fraud in it or not”). But it took a turn into PBS’s new pro-Biden campaign angle, protecting American “democracy” from Trump’s potential vice-presidential picks. PBS put…

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PBS Mocks Non-Protesters: No Right to 'Convenient Path to the Library'

May 11th, 2024 12:22 PM

Tuesday’s PBS NewsHour actually brought on a critic of the pro-Hamas protesters currently infesting college campus quads across the country, which so far have gotten a nearly free ride from scrutiny (there’s certainly been little scrutiny of the pro-Biden groups funding them). New York Times columnist David French is no hard-core conservative, but his opinion that the “…

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PBS: Republicans ‘Were Not Listening to That Speech....Disrespectful'

March 8th, 2024 6:23 AM

PBS congressional reporter Lisa Desjardins after the speech: “You may have seen this on the screen. House Republicans were not listening to that speech, by and large. Not just out of defiance, they just seemed not to be paying attention. They were almost only here physically, almost bordering on a disrespectful way, and is something I've never seen to this degree before.”

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Ready for ‘24? Here’s a Look at 2023’s Most-Read Items on NewsBusters

December 31st, 2023 2:53 PM

2024 is bound to be not only one of the most monumental years in American history, it ventures to be among the most chaotic. So, before we dive head first into 2024 at midnight, let’s look back one last time at 2023 to look at what stories you, the readers, visited the most on NewsBusters. As always, we can’t thank you enough for not only your readership, but also financial support. Amid a…

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PBS Swipes at GOP’s ‘Anger Caucus’ and ‘Dehumanizing’ Mike Johnson

November 25th, 2023 12:40 PM

The antipathy most inside-the-Beltway journalists have for conservatives was on display on Friday’s Washington Week on PBS. Viewers heard how the Republicans’ “anger caucus” was “willing to blow things up” in Washington, while new Speaker Mike Johnson was a “deeply, deeply religious conservative” who has “dehumanized the LGBTQ population in this country.”

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PBS vs. PBS? NewsHour Assumes Trump Phone Call Guilt, Amanpour Doesn't

August 17th, 2023 9:30 PM

So just what was then-president Trump thinking when he called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in early January 2021, and asked him to “find 11,780 votes” in Georgia, which if really there, would have put Trump over Biden in the close Georgia race? NewsHour congressional reporter Lisa Desjardins seemed confident she knew just what Trump was thinking in her Tuesday evening…