News media’s favorable coverage of Democrats during the record-breaking government shutdown is overwhelmingly one-sided and has shielded them from blame, even though party lawmakers have voted more than a dozen times to block a bill that would reopen the government, an analysis has found.
Democrats insist the shutdown, and the pain and inconvenience that go with it, is the fault of Republicans. Few mainstream news outlets are challenging their claims.
On Friday morning, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul told angry airline passengers who faced canceled flights because of the lapse in federal funding to “thank Trump and Washington Republicans” and then called on the Republican-led House and Senate and President Trump to “end the GOP shutdown.”
It may sound like gaslighting because Senate Democrats are holding back the votes needed to pass a measure to fund the government and restart services.
Many media outlets have largely echoed Ms. Hochul’s point of view, and it is reflected in polls that show the public largely blames Republicans for the shutdown despite Democrats’ attempts to force Republicans to expand extra health care subsidies.
For the past month, ABC, CBS and NBC, where millions of Americans get their news, “have hammered both Congressional Republicans and President Trump with a wall of negative shutdown coverage, while largely shielding Democrats from blame for the now-historic gridlock,” a Media Research Center analysis found.
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Analysts who watched 67 reports about the government shutdown across the three networks during October found that the vast majority heavily favored the Democratic Party’s spin.
Just 12 reports, less than 20% of the coverage, informed viewers that Democrats had refused to vote for a stopgap spending bill that would reopen the government.
Instead, ABC News and the other networks flipped the narrative. They defended Democrats for “fighting for an extension” of enhanced Obamacare tax credits and warned that without the subsidies, health care premiums “could go up 169%.”
Dan Schneider, vice president for free speech at the Media Research Center, said the one-sided coverage exacerbates the public’s growing mistrust of the media.
“With Senate Democrats exclusively to blame for the longest shutdown in our history, one might hope that the media would try to repair their tattered reputation and shoot straight for once. But instead the evidence shows that the media are far more interested in helping Democrats retake Congress than they are in actually providing objective news to the public,” Mr. Schneider said.
The subsidies were meant to expire after the pandemic emergency. Democrats who added them to a massive COVID-19 spending bill could have made them permanent, but they opted against it to reduce the cost of the legislation.
Now Democrats want the Republican-led House and Senate to make the subsidies permanent, at a cost of nearly half a trillion dollars over the next decade. Republicans are refusing the party’s demands and say the health care law must be reformed to rein in sky-high costs.
Few mainstream news outlets are reporting the Republicans’ position. Instead, newscasts have pivoted to featuring people across the country who are battling health problems and now face higher premiums if the extra subsidies are not extended.
“Democrats want to keep Obamacare subsidies so health insurance doesn’t go up for millions, but there is no movement on this,” ABC’s “World News Tonight” anchor David Muir reported on Day 15 of the shutdown.
Print news media have also provided sympathetic coverage to Democrats, especially when compared with past government shutdowns that Republicans used as leverage.
The New York Times in 2013 ran headlines reminding readers that conservative tea party Republicans were responsible for a government shutdown because they were trying to pass a government funding bill that defunded Obamacare.
The Times’ latest coverage of the current shutdown focuses on the lapse in funding for food stamps and halted paychecks for air traffic controllers, which has disrupted hundreds of flights. No headlines are blaming Democrats.
A Nov. 6 article in The Times delves into the online coverage of the shutdown and frames it as “a blame game” that Mr. Trump and conservatives are winning on X and Fox News, while Democrats are coming out ahead on left-leaning Bluesky.
A lengthy Nov. 7 article on people struggling to afford groceries because of the lapse in government-funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program excludes any mention of Democrats voting against a bill that would reopen the government and replenish SNAP funds.
The article blames Mr. Trump, who, “because of the government shutdown … sought to stop supplying benefits for November.”
The piece does not include the Trump administration’s explanation that diverting emergency funds to SNAP would strip money from the nutrition program for women and infants, as well as the school lunch program.
The New York Times and ABC News did not immediately respond to inquiries from The Washington Times.
Democrats have capitalized on their favorable coverage, blaming the Trump administration for leaving people hungry and preventing federal workers from being paid for weeks. Few reporters are questioning their claims.
“They withheld billions in SNAP funding, they weaponized hunger in this country,” said House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, Massachusetts Democrat. “They are using their hunger as a political weapon, taking food away from people so they can take away their health care too.”
Ahead of the Tuesday elections, which resulted in sweeping victories for Democrats, public opinion polls from The Washington Post and NBC News showed that most voters blamed Republicans for the shutdown, despite Democrats’ continued votes against government funding bills.
The election results and the polls are giving Democrats new leverage in the prolonged shutdown fight. Many in the far-left wing of the party are calling on leaders to avoid a compromise with Republicans and keep the government closed until they win funding for the permanent enhanced subsidies and reverse billions of dollars in additional spending reductions that Mr. Trump signed into law in July.
“The American people understand who is responsible for this crisis,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Washington Democrat and senior leader in the House Progressive Caucus. “So let’s end it by negotiating and getting a deal that preserves health insurance premiums and the ability to cancel all these cuts, to make sure we are actually working for the American people.”
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
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