The MRC's Favored NewsNation

The Media Research Center gets quite upset when it's pointed out that NewsNation -- founded with former Fox News folks behind and in front of the camera -- has a clear right-leaning bias.

The Media Research Center's Curtis Houck has long been a fanboy of upstart channel NewsNation, portraying it as "delightfully objective and refreshing" though the presence of former Fox News executives and on-air talent suggest a right-leaning bias (which is really why Houck praises the channel).

Houck spent a February 2022 post gushing: "NewsNation (formerly WGN) has spent the past year and a half as a genuine, substantive outlet based in professional and unbiased journalism. We saw the latest example this week as, between Monday and Thursday, NewsNation’s evening shows spent 36 minutes and 16 seconds on the bombshell filing from Special Counsel Robert Durham into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe." Houck didn't mention that NewsNation was developed and staffed by former Fox News executives and personnel -- chief among them Bill Shine, who also worked in the Trump White House -- since that would put the lie to his claim that NewsNation offers "professional and unbiased journalism." (Plus, the channel’s morning show, “Morning in America,” takes its name from a 1984 campaign commercial for noted Republican Ronald Reagan.) Still, Houck also laughably complained that NewsNation "treaded close to CNN and NBC territory" by noting the false takes in right-wing media on the filing; in the MRC's bubble, right-wing narratives can never be criticized as wrong, even if they are.

Still, there was some bumpiness early on. When NewsNation hired Chris Cuomo to host a show, Nicholas Fondacaro melted down in a July 2022 post:

Back from the dead and starved for brains, disgraced former CNN host Chris “Fredo” Cuomo would be getting a second chance at hosting a primetime cable news show on NewsNation. The move was announced on Tuesday night’s edition of Dan Abrams Live on NewsNation where Cuomo suggested he was “going to try very hard to be fair,” wasn’t out to “hurt anybody,” nor “play gotcha.” Off to a dishonest start.

The move, which will likely cripple NewsNation’s credibility as an honest news source, came after a lengthy and pressing interview between Abrams and Cuomo, with the former being an admitted long-time friend of the latter.

Bill D’Agostino groused in a June 2023 post that the channel ran a “curious graphic” that was “counting down the hours before passengers trapped in the OceanGate submersible ran out of oxygen”; the submersible ultimately imploded more than a mile beneath the ocean’s surface while voyaging to see the wreckage of the Titanic.

But the MRC was quickly on board with Cuomo and the rest of NewsNation. Houck wrote in a May 2023 post that NBC’s “Dateline” show claimed “breaking news about the alleged murderer of four University of Idaho students. The only problem was it was aired nearly a month ago on NewsNation by Chris ‘Fredo’ Cuomo,” declaring that NBC “should have given NewsNation the credit, no matter their stature.”

In an August 2023 post, Houck gushed that “NewsNation had an hour-long special to continue its dogged reporting on the whistleblowers coming forward with information they allege is a massive, decades-long government cover-up of aliens (aka unidentified flying objects or UFOs). Not surprisingly, the network still in its early stages pulled in strong ratings and beat out CNN in the key 25-54 demographic.” In line with his vicious hatred of all things CNN, Houck cheered the show got better ratings than a CNN documentary on “black comedy and culture.” He closed by declaring that “By covering topics the establishment broadcast and cable networks have refused to cover or downplayed, NewsNation undoubtedly has an opening to give viewers another alternative in the form of the network that actually delivers the news.”

When the Daily Beast pointed out the channel’s bias and Fox News pedigree, Houck had a meltdown in a September 2023 post, arguing that NewsNation also has people who didn't used to work for Fox News:

The Daily Beast has always had a reputation as not only a leftist publication, but a contemptuous band of pricks buffered by layers of juvenile smugness. So, it was no surprise when they had writer Joe Berkowitz spend a week watching NewsNation and, on cue, he concluded with a piece dripping with disdain that was so thick he must of forgotten to get basic facts right, including who hosts what show and where many of them used to work.

Berkowitz opened with a whining about the existence of On Balance with Leland Vittert, calling it “a nightly opinion fabfest” and opposite of “‘fairest’ in the Snow White sense” and no different than content on Vittert’s former channel, Fox News. He then added Vittert was one of “many...Hannityville refugees” like former executive Bill Shine, but a basic consulting of their hosts would show a diversity of previous stops.

“Sometimes the NewsNation hosts seem to go out of their way to avoid saying anything bad about Republicans, as if doing so would put them in danger of being mistaken for Rachel Maddow,” he whined.

But who’s the showrunner for Vittert’s show. Oh, it’s a former executive producer for CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper.

Yes, Chris Stirewalt is their political contributor and he came from Fox News (as did fill-in anchor Elizabeth Prann), but who’s NewsNation’s Washington bureau chief? Mike Viqueira, former correspondent at CBS, NBC, and al-Jazeera.

Houck then seved up a "current breakdown of hosts and their previous stop(s) prior to NewsNation, from AM to PM. It includes a former World News Tonight anchor and, yes, Chris 'Fredo' Cuomo from CNN (and ABC before that)." He also went on to highlight correspondents who didn't previously work for Fox News (a couple of whom hail from right-wing outlets like OAN and the Daily Caller) as well as a list of liberal contributors, though he didn't mention that the Daily Beast pointed out that one supposedly liberal contributor ghost-wrote a book for Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie.

All that list-making obscured the fact that Houck refused to address the substance of the Daily Beast article -- that NewsNation has a right-leaning bias. Here's one example it cited:

In a typical segment, Morning in America host Marni Hughes welcomes strategists from both sides to discuss Donald Trump’s glowering mugshot. Hughes asks the GOP strategist his opinion on why Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis insisted Trump take a mugshot, which prompts the strategist into a nearly two-minute tirade of MAGA talking points. When Hughes finally interrupts him, it’s not to push back on any falsehoods or mischaracterizations—that first Trump interview on NewsNation apparently having crystallized “zero pushback” into house style guidelines.

Instead, she turns to the Dem strategist to ask whether he agrees that Trump is the victim of a double standard, given that recent NewsNation guest Alan Dershowitz—who, Hughes stresses, did not vote for Trump—thinks Al Gore reacted after the 2000 election pretty much the same way as Trump did after 2020. The Dem strategist offers a cogent 40-second rebuttal before Hughes throws it back to the GOP stooge for a long rant on Hilary Clinton’s emails and similarly relevant topics. End of segment.

It’s as if the host, the GOP strategist, and Alan Dershowitz for some reason, are all on the same side, with the Dem strategist on hand just to play devil’s advocate.

Houck continued to whine:

We’re approaching dead horse territory, but Berkowitz seemed hellbent on embarrassing himself in the piece that he claimed was merely “a Yassified Fox News—with all unseemly biases artificially buffed and ironed into a centrist façade” and fixating on how some of the first hires left the network.

Was that NewsNation focuses on the border? Or drug addiction? Or other topics Americans actually care about, and not just all Trump scandals, all the time? He wouldn’t say.

Of course, "the border" and "drug addictions" are Houck's whitewashed descriptions of right-wing talking points -- "the border" is typically labeled at NewsBusters as "Biden border crisis," and "drug addiction" is essentially fentanyl crossing the border, which the MRC also loves to blame on Biden even though most drug smugglers are Americans.

Meanwhile, here's how the Beast article described NewsNation's Trump coverage:

NewsNation treats Trump’s indictments like potential baggage; as though he stood accused of mild tax evasion decades ago, rather than recently plotting to overturn an election, obstructing justice, mishandling nuclear secrets, and dozens of other extremely serious charges. Everyone on-air seems to regard the GOP’s continued love affair with him as a questionable quirk, not an unmistakable sign of rot from within the party.

Networks like MSNBC and CNN may get too bogged down in the melodrama of Trump’s alleged criminal activity, but to avoid acknowledging the gravity of these charges—and to provide friendly cover for alternative facts about some of the dead-to-rights evidence supporting them—is a massive overcorrection. It’s not unbiased; it’s untethered to reality.

Houck did note the latter paragraph, but his response was to cherry-pick criticism of Trump on the channel and present it without context:

A simple perusing of their coverage from said time period found all kinds of guests saying the Georgia charges (and the other three cases) against Trump were serious. It included historian Douglas Brinkley, who’d never be confused with being pro-MAGA.

Also that day, criminal defense attorney Jon Sale said: “If I were his lawyer, I would really cringe.”

NewsBusters -- of which Houck is managing editor -- regularly attacks channels that have on guests exposing such Trump-critical opinions. But he'll never criticize NewsNation for doing the same thing because he can use it as cover to attack anyone, like the Daily Beast, who points out NewsNation's right-leaning bias. As we've seen with Fox News, peddling right-wing talking points buys a lot of brownie points from the MRC, which comes in handy when you're accused of, say, lying to your viewers.

Besides, Houck has effectively admitted NewsNation's bias by being so aggressive to defend the channel when that bias is pointed out. He would not do so if that bias wasn't there.

'Real journalism' = bashing Biden

Houck's embarrassing fawning over NewsNation for purportedly being objective (despite actually having some right-wing bias) continued in a September 2023 post:

On Tuesday night, NewsNation continued its commitment to real journalism by holding a town hall with primetime host Chris Cuomo in East Palestine, Ohio on continued fallout from the February 3 toxic train derailment. Put aside whatever one might think about Cuomo and his past for a moment and what’s left was a true example of what journalism should be.

In this case, it’s keeping the spotlight on the lack of answers from all levers of government power and the economic, health, and societal impact its had on residents, something few in the media of all stripes have done.

As became mmediately clear, though, Houck's idea of "real journalism" involves bashing government in general and the Biden administration in particular:

Cuomo ended with the simple fact that “President Biden has still not come” despite smirking and smiling on March 2 that he would “be out there at some point.”

In contrast, Cuomo responded by painting East Palestine as “like a lot of small places in America” that seem “easy to forget” though, “as you drive through here and you talk to the people, they know that they’ve been forgot and what matters to them, they will never forget.”

Throughout the hour, Cuomo called on longtime investigative reporter Rich McHugh, who said at one point that residents were “so confused about the messages” from agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and thus “not sure who to trust.”

[...]

Despite having an hour, Cuomo told viewers that officials from the White House to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on down to the state level were invited to participate, but no one agreed.

[...]

Cuomo turned back to Biden to close out the hour, challenging him to sign “an emergency declaration” from months back that’s still “on his desk.”

And yet, Biden not only hasn’t moved, but he flew over Ohio on Tuesday “on his way to Detroit”:

ConWebWatch has documented how the MRC weaponized the derailment for partisan purposes to attack the Biden administration for purportedly not sufficiently reacting to the derailment, while remaining nearly silent about the railroad's central role in the derailment. If Cuomo talked about the railroad's responsibility for the derailment and the cleanup afterward -- as the EPA ordered it to do -- Houck did not mention it.

If Cuomo and NewsNation are pushing right-wing narratives, they're not doing "real journalism." But Houck is too biased and too desperate to embrace those narratives to understand the difference.

A Nov. 7 post by Nicholas Fondacaro cheered NewsNation pushing right-wing talking points on the Israel-Hamas war:

Throughout the current Israel-Hamas war, NewsNation has taken several opportunities to put the liberal media in its sights and call them out for their terrible coverage of the conflict. And during Monday’s Dan Abrams Live, Abrams was joined by fellow NewsNation host Leland Vittert and together they landed mighty body blows against their liberal competitors for parroting Hamas-generated talking points about the number of civilians supposedly killed in the fighting.

During his opening monologue, Abrams noted the obvious “if the Israelis wanted to kill civilians, it would make getting Hamas leaders a lot easier, and many, many more civilians would be dead already.” There was also the obvious double standard of which side was called “war criminals” despite the fact that “Hamas is intentionally operating out of the hospitals and the mosques…”

[…]

Vittert joined Abrams and proposed that the outlets that insisted on using the “Health Ministry” as a source “want to believe this and it plays into the narrative of Israel is the aggressor in this terrible civilian death toll inside of Gaza.”

He made the point that when the liberal media reported those numbers, they never reported “how many Hamas fighters have died.” “You never see anybody in the Hamas uniform brought into a Gazan hospital. And that's because the Hamas fighters always fight in civilian clothes,” he pointed out.

“You know Hamas is lying by the fact that their lips are moving,” he added.

Neither Vittert nor Abrams offered any reason to trust numbers from the war coming from the Israeli Defense Forces.

Debate dissent, then more of the same

Surprisingly, the MRC turned on NewsNation regarding the December 2023 debate it hosted for (non-Trump) Republican presidential candidates. As ConWebWatch documented, MRC writers complained about technical snafus during the debate and that the channel was a little too self-congratulatory afterward, but Jorge Bonilla eventually concluded that NewsNation “delivered a more substantive debate with a better panel asking more of the kinds of questions you’d expect in a Republican primary debate.” Given NewsNation’s Republican pedigree, that shouldn’t have been a surprise.

That concern was short-lived, however. Houck gushed over the channel again in a May 10 post:

In an hour-long primetime special Thursday night called Crisis on the Border, NewsNation did something the liberal media — and TV news in general — needed to emulate, which was a more accurate, consistent, and raw depiction of the Biden border crisis from the side of law enforcement and the dangers unfettered illegal immigration posed to the public. 

Hosted by Dan Abrams, it featured three different reporters live in the field, new reporting, facts about the border, and interviews with four police chiefs on how open-border policies have harmed their communities.

Abrams opened by declaring this won’t be “about politics.” Instead, NewsNation’s goal was to inform viewers “about what is actually happening at our southern border and maybe — maybe — even spur some change.”

[…]

Bradley also taped a bombshell interview with an anonymous border agent, who told her what Americans don’t realize was “we do not control the border, the cartel controls the border” and “[e]verything that we do is a reaction to things that they have planned” with those apprehended merely “pawns while the kings and queens are doing whatever they want.”

They added “[n]o one” from the government will be able “to protect you” since “[e]ven at the local law enforcement level, we’re seeing them be defunded and overwhelmed to where your life has to be threatened for them to make you a priority.”

In part two, Bradley asked if they’re “scared to do your job.” The agent said while they are from “a more earthly” perspective with “policies changed” that endanger agents and place “illegals…before us,” they’re a Christian who knows God “has my back”.

Bradley’s last question about whether they’re more scared of the government or the cartels drew a surprising answer: 

Look at the way you have me presented to do an interview when I’m off-duty. I’m terrified to talk to the media because I’m sacred of what, you know, the government could do, which obviously, would be losing my job, right, which I don’t think is fair.

At three different points, Abrams brought out charts about apprehensions, gotaways, and key border sectors to show “what our border patrol agents are up against” with the first showing “2.5 million encounters for the whole of last year,” “up from 1.7, just two years before” and 1.3 million already this year.

Note that this is very much a right-wing take on the border crisis, in which only people in law enforcement are featured and interviewed — not any sort of fair and balanced examination. Houck’s framing of the show as being about “Biden’s border crisis” and “the”open-border policies” undercuts Abrams’ claim that it isn’t “ablout politics.”

Houck concluded with one final gush: “By giving viewers a raw, live sense of what a day on the border looked like (as opposed to a sanitized, pro-illegal-alien perspective), it was an absolute home run by NewsNation.” If the show didn’t have a clear, pronounced bias toward is preferred political narratives, Houck wouldn’t be treating it as a “home run” and declaring in a front-page promo, “This is how it’s done.”

Fondacaro cheered NewsNation’s conspiratorial take on the selection of Tim Walz as the Democratic vice presidential candidate in an Aug. 7 post:

Much like CNN’s Van Jones did earlier in the day, NewsNation spent part of their Tuesday night wondering if Vice President Kamala Harris picked Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) to be her running mate out of fear she would lose the votes of the anti-Semitic wing of the Democratic Party if she chose Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro (D).

During his opening monologue, On Balance host Leland Vittert noted that picking Walz was Harris’s “first executive decision” and that it. “Gives us great insight into how she will govern as president.” According to his analysis, the choice of Walz “makes Democratic Twitter happy.”

“Twitter is not real life. It is the most extreme and petty part of life. It is the most extreme and petty part of a political party,” he warned. “But in humor, we found truth,” he declared after reading a Babylon Bee headline quipping: “Democrats worry choosing Jewish vice president may cost them the all-important death to America vote.”

Adding: “She did not pick Josh Shapiro. Even Van Jones on CNN said Harris caved in to the darker parts of her party.”

Vittert did not talk to anyone involved in the Harris campaign — or any Democrat, period — regarding the choice of Walz, meaning that his rant is based in right-wing conspiracies, not reality. But that’s the kind of “news” coverage the MRC prefers.