According to a CBS News/YouGov poll, Americans believe the blame for the ongoing government shutdown should be spread out pretty evenly between President Donald Trump, Democrats, and Republicans — but if legacy media outlets were not doing yeoman’s work on behalf of the Democrats, might the people see the situation differently?
According to a study published by the Media Research Center, broadcast coverage on the three major networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) went out of the way to avoid any commentary that might suggest the Democrats were in any way responsible for the shutdown.
MRC pulled data from the evening news broadcasts across all three networks throughout the entire month of October — the first 31 days of the shutdown — and found that there had been 67 reports that addressed the topic. On those 67 reports, the overwhelming majority of the coverage — 87% — presented a positive view of Democrats. That imbalance translated to 83 statements that criticized Republicans over their role in the shutdown, versus only 12 statements that delivered similar criticisms of Democrats.
In addition, the networks appeared wholly disinterested in digging into how the shutdown had begun — and largely avoided addressing the number of times Democrats had voted to keep the government shut down despite being offered the opportunity to vote for a “clean” Continuing Resolution (CR), as well as separate legislation that would fund payment for members of the military or SNAP benefits.
“On both ABC and CBS, only 12.5 percent of reports on either network mentioned this basic detail,” the MRC report read, referencing the Democrats’ repeated votes against a clean CR. “On NBC, that fact was included in just 31 percent of newscasts.”
When votes were mentioned, occasionally the parties were left out entirely, leaving the viewers to draw their own conclusion about where the roadblocks lay. Correspondent Tom Costello, for example, delivered the following line on October 30, as fears began to mount about travel disruptions due to a shortage of air traffic controllers: “Delta and United [Airlines] also urged Congress to pass a clean resolution, known as a CR, to end the shutdown,” he said – but his statement leaves out the fact that a clean CR has already come up for a vote in the Senate more than a dozen times – and that Democrats were the ones voting against it.
Costello did finally point out the fact that the airlines were backing the Republicans on this particular issue — but not until he made an appearance the next morning on “TODAY,” MRC noted.
Even CNN’s Jake Tapper had to marvel at just how effective the messaging had been — and he conceded that Democrats were largely responsible for the shutdown, even if they’d managed to convince the people otherwise.
WATCH:
CNN exposes Democrats for shutting down the government and trying to mislead the American people.
JAKE TAPPER: “Democrats are the ones that are not voting to fund the government…” pic.twitter.com/9sTlM9hCwI
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) November 5, 2025
“Democrats are the ones that are not voting to fund the government. Now, I understand why they’re doing so, they’re doing so because of health care and they want to fight, and they want Republicans to negotiate, et cetera, et cetera,” Tapper said on Tuesday. “The messaging by Democrats around this shutdown has been sharper than I’ve seen Democrats on any issue in a long time.”
“They have convinced voters, Democratic voters and independent voters, that it’s the Republicans’ fault. And just on the numbers, that might not be actually accurate in terms of who’s voting to open the government and who isn’t,” he added.
.png)
.png)
