ABC, NBC, CBS provide Democrat-friendly coverage of shutdown: study

ABC, CBS and NBC have provided Democrat-friendly coverage of the 2025 government shutdown, according to a new study from the Media Research Center. 

The conservative media watchdog examined ABC’s “World News Tonight,” “NBC Nightly News” and “CBS Evening News” from Oct. 1-31, and found that the networks 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.”

The study found that 87 percent of the coverage on the trio of evening newscasts “heavily favored” Democrats over Republicans, according to MRC senior research analyst Bill D’Agostino. 

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“Across the 67 reports and news briefs which discussed the government shutdown, 87 percent of the coverage favored Democrats. Analysts found 83 evaluative statements in which anchors or reporters were critical of Republicans, but just 12 criticizing Democrats,” D’Agostino wrote. 

The study also found that only 12 of the 67 reports mentioned that Senate Democrats had refused to vote for a clean continuing resolution, and none informed viewers that Democrats voted back in March to end Obamacare subsidies.

“Coverage across all three networks was conspicuously vague about how the shutdown even had occurred. There were only 12 instances in which any of the three outlets hinted that Senate Democrats had voted repeatedly against a continuing resolution. On both ABC and CBS, only 12.5 percent of reports on either network mentioned this basic detail. On NBC, that fact was included in just 31 percent of newscasts,” D’Agostino wrote.

“Reports often included lines about the Trump administration ‘pressuring Democrats,’ or soundbites of Republicans demanding Democrats ‘fund the government,’ but usually stopped short of explicitly acknowledging that Senate Democrats were the ones preventing a funding bill from passing,” he added. “Analysts identified 21 instances in which reporters tried to justify Democrats’ demands while also omitting that those demands were the reason the government was not being funded.”

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The MRC also found that ABC, NBC and CBS reporters “frequently laundered common Democrat talking points as their own objective.” 

“For example, we found twelve instances in which House Speaker Mike Johnson’s refusal to call the House back into session was framed as a major cause of the shutdown — a frequent argument by congressional Democrats,” D’Agostino wrote.

“Republicans received no such friendly treatment,” he continued. “Not a single journalist on any of the three networks voiced the popular Republican talking point that Senate Democrats earlier this year had voted in favor of a continuing resolution which contained the same cuts to healthcare subsidies for which they were now keeping the government closed.”

ABC News, NBC News and CBS News did not immediately respond to requests for comment by Fox News Digital. 

Republicans have for weeks pushed a short-term extension of fiscal year 2025 federal funding levels called a continuing resolution (CR), aimed at giving lawmakers until Nov. 21 to strike a deal on FY2026 spending.

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The measure is largely free of unrelated policy riders, save for an added $88 million aimed at enhanced security funding for lawmakers, the White House and the Supreme Court. 

But Democrats have said they will reject any federal funding bill that does not also extend enhanced Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire at the end of 2025. The enhanced subsidies were a COVID-19 pandemic-era measure that a majority of Republicans say is no longer needed.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., have said they are open to discussing a reformed version of those subsidies, but they’ve rejected pairing the two issues together.

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Fox News Digital’s Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.