The MRC vs. Scott MacFarlane
The Media Research Center hates the fact that the former CBS correspondent covered Capitol riot cases -- and it hates even more that he left CBS for an outlet it considers to be not right-wing enough.
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.
The MRC continued its nastiness against MacFarlane in a Sept. 14 post by Bonilla:
The left have been furiously spinning narrative in the wake of the horrific assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. Much of this spin is dedicated to the negation of a transgender motive behind the shooting. In service of that narrative, CBS’s Scott MacFarlane completely misrepresented statements by Utah Governor Spencer Cox.
[…]
Sounds definitive. But that’s not at all what Gov. Cox said on any of his Sunday show interviews on CNN, ABC and NBC. The most extensive exchange was on CNN, where State of the Union host Dana Bash grilled Cox as if he were an unindicted coconspirator in the shooting:
[…]
There is nothing in Cox’s responses to Bash’s badgering that is consistent with an admission that transgenderism is not relevant to motive, as reported by MacFarlane. If anything, Cox was intent in protecting the integrity of the investigation, ahead of Tuesday’s filing of formal charging documents.
[…]
Nowhere where motive was discussed across the Sunday dial did Cox rule out transgenderism as a motive. In fact, Cox repeatedly hinted that more was coming down the pike when formal charges are filed on Tuesday.
But Scottie Mac needed to keep the narrative alive, at least for another day or two. To that end, the truth seems secondary. Perhaps irrelevant, in the face of a story that is increasingly uncomfortable for the legacy media to cover.
Tim Graham similarly groused on his podcast the next day:
The liberal hosts also wanted to dismiss the notion that the shooter was inspired by a transgender roommate. They don’t want their side of the debate to be blamed for this assassination. On Face The Nation, CBS’s Scott MacFarlane completely misrepresented statements by Utah Governor Spencer Cox, who was trying not to get ahead of the official investigation.
Curtis Houck got mad that MacFarlane repeated claims linking President Trump to Jeffrey Epstein in a Dec. 22 post:
Justice correspondent Scott MacFarlane gleefully shared on the December 12 Evening News that the “nearly 100 newly released photos from” Epstein’s estate by Democrats showed him “side-by-side with Donald Trump and another with Trump flanked by a group of women.”
In the case of MacFarlane and the others from that dump, the networks held up a photo of Trump and six woman with their faces blacked out and accepted Democrats’ explanation it was done to protect their identities.
Houck went on to huff: “If they were interested in transparency instead of implicating Trump in unspeakable crimes, they would have told viewers the six women were overage and models appearing at Mar-a-Lago to promote Hawaiian Tropic, a brand of sunscreen.”
Houck returned in a Jan. 23 post to whine that MacFarlane said nice things about former special counsel Jack Smith:
CBS’s Scott MacFarlane — who eats, sleeps, and breathes anything January 6 — was on the case for Thursday’s CBS Evening News:
[…]
“With four police officers who helped stop the attack in the front row, Smith and Democrats blasted what they call a whitewashing of history by Trump and Republicans,” MacFarlane gushed.
And, on Smith’s mass seizure of years worth of Republican phone records under the guise of wanting to find communications about challenging the 2020 election results, MacFarlane leapt to his defense:
[…]
MacFarlane returned for Friday’s CBS Mornings with a nearly identical piece except for the part about the White House website on January 6, thus leaving zero doubt he included it as a jab at Dokoupil (or was given the clear to appease the liberal media meltdowns about how the newscast handled the anniversary).
Houck offered no evidence that MacFarlane is particularly obsessed with the Capitol riot, let alone explain why that’s apparently a bad thing.
Bonilla spent a Feb. 24 post whining that MacFarlane made a big deal out of FB I director Kash Patel drinking enthusiastically with the U.S. Olympic hockey team:
CBS’s Scott MacFarlane followed a similar track: Kash pounded beers with the hockey team, Kash flew the G5, Kash will reimburse personal expenses. Wash, rinse, repeat. Scottie Mac tried to stick in a Wray whataboutism, though:
Bonilla didn’t explain why he dismisses MacFarlane as “Scotty Mac.”
Leaving CBS for new home
The Media Research Center has spent years complaining about Scott MacFarlane. When he finally left CBS News, the MRC couldn’t be happier. Curtis Houck ranted in a March 9 post:
CBS correspondent Scott MacFarlane revealed shortly after Monday’s CBS Mornings that he was quitting the network in order to embrace “independence” and seek out “new spaces to share my work in line with my personal goals,” which will almost certainly include the one thing MacFarlane loves more than just about anything in a weird, crazy-ex-girlfriend manner: January 6.
And, in a totally predictable move, his final on-air report on said CBS newscast was about January 6 and a plaque hung this weekend to honor law enforcement who served that day.
So, yes, the guy who’s been almost singularly focused on January 6 is quitting the Bari Weiss-led network. Who knows if he’ll still be talking about January 6 three decades from now like that Japanese soldier who thought World War II was still going on.
Houck offers no actual proof that MacFarlane was particularly obsessed with the Capitol riot. Instead, he whined the MacFarlane’s final CBS report was “a victory lap of sorts” about getting a plaque honoring police officers for their role in quelling the riot installed inside the Capitol:
MacFarlane relayed that “federal law required the plaque to be hung by March 2023, so they are three years late when it happened unexpectedly over the weekend at 4 a.m. Saturday…on the west front of the Capitol inside the Capitol.”
The liberal partisan — who has a quick trigger finger to block on social media anyone who criticizes him — smeared tens of millions by saying the plaque was late due to “years of foot-dragging and falsehoods by Trump supporters here in Congress, but the breakthrough came because of North Carolina Senator Tom Tillis, a retiring Republican who said these delays are a slap in the face to the police responders in heroes from that day.”
“More than 140 police officers were injured. Several more died by suicide and our reporting in May 2024 about the delays triggered a federal lawsuit by two police responders who wanted a court to get involved, a judge to order the plaque be hung,” he said, adding the lawsuit will continue anyway to prevent it from being torn down.
“The families of police officers were surprised by the overnight posting of the plaque that they expect to come here for services and some tributes formally or informally, Adriana, in the days and weeks to come,” he concluded.
Needless to say, it’s a safe bet MacFarlane will be there or even emcee it since he singularly turned his career to obsessing over little else besides January 6 when he was a reporter for the Washington D.C.-area NBC affiliate, WRC.
Houck made no effort to back up his claim that MacFarlane “smeared tens of millions” by pointing out that the installiation of the plaque was delayed “years of foot-dragging and falsehoods by Trump supporter.” Indeed, he doesn’t dispute the accuracy of his claim at all, or of any other claim MacFarlane made about the riot.
Houck followed up in a March 23 post:
In not-so-shocking turn of events, former CBS correspondent Scott MacFarlane — a man with seemingly zero hobbies in life outside of January 6 — announced Monday morning he was joining the far-left Meidas Touch Network as a host and correspondent, cartoonishly insisting without a shred of irony he’s “not an opinionist” or “editorialist” but would nonetheless refuse to “platform conspiracy theories” or allow “whitewashing of history” in “such a critical moment.”
The pedantic partisan boasted to followers that, less than ten days after leaving CBS, he would become, “[e]ffective immediately,” the “chief Washington correspondent for the MeidasTouch Network” and an eponymous daily show will launch in “two or three weeks,” bringing together those who “share the same north star of communicating that when you have news to break or something important to explain, just get to it, straight to the point.”
He added his show will “simply, declaratively and conversationally explain what’s happening” in the world,” while “put[ting] aside the production theater, and the useless bells and whistles.”
[…]
Like many of these wannabe authoritarians posing as beacons of freedom, MacFarlane declared his political allegiances in the rest of the video, alluding to the “critical moment” in the country and the need for Americans to stick together “to get to the other side of whatever this is”:
Again, Houck failed to back up his attacks on MacFarlane.
Alex Christy used a March 26 post to complain that MacFarlane highlighted criticism of himself by Trump toadies:
Former CBS reporter Scott MacFarlane had an unintentionally funny defense of himself as he started his new job with the liberals at MeidasTouch. According to MacFarlane, joining the liberal outlet is actually a win for “independent journalism,” and that it is actually the people criticizing him who are the hypocrites because they are the ones with opinions.
MacFarlane read a post from White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, “And there is a lot of chatter about the chatter here. People are giving their opinions of what they think of this new enterprise with MeidasTouch. The point of this is to be a reporter and not give opinions. So, it is noteworthy that there are people throwing opinions at us. It was the White House press secretary. It was the FCC chair. Let me read to you what they said. I do have it on my phone. The White House press secretary had an opinion, and the opinion starts with ‘Veteran CBS reporter joins far-left media company MeidasTouch as anchor, says they share the same ‘north star.’”
He then read a reply from FCC Chairman Brenden Carr, who said, “Same job, new duty station.”
Apparently, MacFarlane actually believes that people whose job it is to give opinions are being hypocritical in criticizing him for giving his opinions in a job that isn’t supposed to be about giving opinions. Nevertheless, he responded to Carr by claiming, “I actually like that. It is the same job, and it is a new duty station at the Capitol in both cases, but reporting for you from a different organization. As for the press secretary saying that I’m a veteran CBS reporter, not a veteran CBS reporter. I am a former CBS reporter, but I am a veteran reporter and here to make news and break news.”
Christy did not back up any of his attacks on MacFarlane.