For the last decade or so, American evangelicals have been a punching bag. Condescending think pieces in The Atlantic and the New York Times and best-selling books such as &#8220;Jesus and John Wayne&#8221; have all converged on the same narrative: a movement of rich, white, power-hungry hypocrites for whom politics comes first and faith is an afterthought — or worse, just a disguise. The question Bonnie Kristian&#8217;s &#8220;In Defense of Evangelicalism&#8221; asks is a simple one nobody else is asking: Is any of that actually true?
Kristian, an editor at Christianity Today who grew up inside evangelicalism, wrote the book after watching her faith tradition summed up into a single data point — the percentage of white evangelicals who voted for President Donald Trump. Then, we were held collectively responsible for everything he did next. 
In the aftermath of 2016, she notes, non-Trump-supporting Christians and secular critics alike were quick to charge evangelicals with &#8220;total corruption&#8221; and &#8220;individual responsibility for every evil Trump commits.&#8221; It became fashionable to treat some 80 million Americans as a monolith — like indefensible, immoral hypocrites. 
The trouble starts, Kristian argues, with the word itself. &#8220;Evangelical&#8221; has been stretched so far past its religious meaning that it barely functions as what it once was. In the book, she highlights the fact that many people who actually identify as evangelical are black, and roughly 90% live outside the United States. These are inconvenient facts for pundits who&#8217;ve redefined the term to mean nothing more than &#8220;white Republican.&#8221; 
Pollsters, pundits, and critics, Kristian notes, compound the problem by “accepting self-identification of people who aren&#8217;t evangelicals as evangelicals.” For example, <a href="https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/322052/update-evangelicals-trump-election.aspx">Gallup found</a> that many people — particularly white Americans — who don&#8217;t hold evangelical beliefs or attend church regularly nonetheless tell pollsters they’re evangelical. This could be a direct result of pollsters politicizing the term. 
The same critics will discount “the self-understanding of those who are evangelical, and particularly those whose evangelicalism is typical of the movement.&#8221;
Kristian spotlights several self-described evangelicals in the book — people in ministry who did vote for Trump, but often for lack of a better option on the issues they cared about most. 
If you ask actual churchgoing evangelicals what their faith means to them, she reports, they don&#8217;t mention Donald Trump. They talk about Jesus. But critics rarely speak to those folks.  
The book is particularly effective in its willingness to name specific critics. Kristian doesn&#8217;t just complain about &#8220;the media,&#8221; but she opens the most popular books on this topic and checks their weaknesses. 
Authors such as Kristin Du Mez and Beth Allison Barr, she argues, build sweeping indictments of evangelical patriarchy and &#8220;militant masculinity&#8221; but ignore that most evangelicals today are actually egalitarian on gender roles. That data point alone undercuts an important portion of their arguments before they even begin. 
And Kristian calls the authors out where they reveal their own sensationalism. She notes that Du Mez herself concedes, some 300 pages into her own book (&#8220;Jesus and John Wayne&#8221;), that the patriarchal militarism she&#8217;s describing does not &#8220;define the whole of American evangelicalism.&#8221; 
Critics like Du Mez often take the fringe and present it as the center. For example, an attention-seeking figure such as Doug Wilson is treated as representative of evangelicalism precisely because he&#8217;s an outlier. But a genuinely mainstream, racially reconciling movement such as the uber-popular Promise Keepers gatherings, for example, often goes unmentioned. 
Kristian is blunt in her response to the anti-evangelicalism propaganda: &#8220;It&#8217;s impossible to go to an evangelical church on a Sunday morning and come away honestly convinced that faith is irrelevant there.” 
She writes that “evangelicalism makes sense only if folks really believe it — and for all our flaws, we do.&#8221;
The book&#8217;s most important section may be its handling of the &#8220;Christian nationalism&#8221; charge — the accusation that evangelicals want to “legislate their morality” onto everyone else. As Kristian points out, evangelicals — like every other perceivable demographic out there — of course want their values reflected in public life. This is simply what political participation looks like.
&#8220;Everyone involved in American politics is, at some level, doing the same thing,&#8221; she writes, &#8220;seeking power to advance the moral and political vision they believe is good and prudent.&#8221; 
The double standard, she says, is obvious: Activist groups of every stripe lobby for their worldview, but only when evangelicals do it does the press reach for words like &#8220;dominion&#8221; and &#8220;theocracy.&#8221; As she puts it, the label is really just &#8220;a handy shorthand&#8221; — something scary-sounding, headline-ready, and largely empty when you probe a little deeper.
At no point does Kristian claim that evangelicalism is beyond criticism. Her goal is &#8220;not to exempt it from fair scrutiny,&#8221; but to clear away &#8220;specious and spurious attacks so we can conserve what is valuable and make room for real repair.&#8221; 
That distinction really sums up the entire book. Real critique is welcome, but caricature is not. It’s important in 2026, given that a recent Pew survey cited in the book found that evangelicals are viewed more negatively than any other major religious group in America. 
&#8220;In Defense of Evangelicalism&#8221; won&#8217;t end that hostility overnight, but anyone who reads it honestly will find the old stereotypes a lot harder to believe.
***
Ericka Andersen is the author of “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Freely-Sober-Rethinking-Alcohol-Through/dp/1514013363/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Freely Sober: Rethinking Alcohol Through the Lens of Faith</a>” (InterVarsity Press, 2026).
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

GettyImages-626184790

Media Built A Myth About Evangelicals. A New Book Completely Dismantles It.

bonnie kristian

christian nationalism

donald trump

evangelicalism

lifestyle

media bias

Conservative documentary filmmakers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney have <a href="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzQhWLGwdNlCPfNnnJXhNMvqdmJH?projector=1&amp;messagePartId=0.1">announced</a> a national journalism competition offering $17,500 in prize money to young reporters who uncover stories they believe mainstream media outlets have ignored.
The Shillman Journalism Prize seeks original, independent reporting and will award $10,000 to the first-place winner, $5,000 for second place, and $2,500 for third place. The competition is open to legal U.S. residents who will be under 25 on December 31, 2026.
“If you’re under 25 and you think you’ve found the story everyone else missed — or the one the media actively wants covered up — this is your moment,” McAleer and McElhinney said.
Married investigative journalists <a href="https://yaf.org/people/phelim-mcaleer/">McAleer</a> and <a href="https://yaf.org/people/ann-mcelhinney/">McElhinney</a> have reported from around the world, covering conflicts, exposing criminal networks, and holding powers to account that often get a free pass in the dominant media. Their work has also drawn threats and violence, with McAleer saying they have been “spat at, locked out, slapped, shut down, threatened with a gun, kidnapped” and faced situations where he thought he might die.
The couple said their new project is designed to inspire the next generation of journalists to pursue independent reporting as America’s public confidence in mass media <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/695762/trust-media-new-low.aspx">falls to historic lows. </a>
“The mainstream media are biased, and their bias and activism is damaging America and the world,” McAleer said in a statement to The Daily Wire. “Too often mainstream journalists seem more interested in covering up the news than covering it. That has to change.”
The contest is looking for old-fashioned journalism — original, fact-based reporting built on interviews, documents, public records, FOIA requests, and other firsthand research. Organizers will look for stories mainstream outlets have missed, ignored, or failed to report properly.
McAleer and McElhinney have encouraged applicants to look for stories in their backyard, urging young reporters to “ask awkward questions” and uncover stories that may be hiding in plain sight.
“We want a story that hasn’t been told, or hasn’t been told properly — the kind of story that is often sitting right on your doorstep, in your town, or in your state. You don’t need to travel to exotic locations. The best stories are frequently the ones closest to home,” McAleer said.
The competition will be conducted entirely through Substack. An expert panel will select the top 10 submissions. Then, the public will vote to determine the three winners.
McAleer and McElhinney have built a reputation for advancing conservative-minded causes in the traditionally left-leaning worlds of theater and the arts. 
The Irish couple recently produced a play examining the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel that was featured at the <a href="https://www.kennedy-center.org/whats-on/explore-by-genre/theater/2025-2026/unreported-story-society-october-7/">Kennedy Center</a>. They also produced <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3722234/">Gosnell</a>: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer, a film based on the case of convicted Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell.
The Shillman Journalism Prize is designed to encourage young reporters to pursue original reporting at a time when many aspiring journalists enter an industry increasingly dominated by flailing established news organizations. In 2025, Americans’ confidence in mainstream media dropped to 28% – a new low and down 12 percentage points from <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/321116/americans-remain-distrustful-mass-media.aspx">40% five years earlier</a>, according to Gallup. 
Voters across the ideological spectrum remain largely distrustful of the media, with just 8% of Republicans, 27% of independents, and a bare majority of Democrats (51%) reporting confidence in the American news media.
“Journalism doesn’t have to be dangerous or require huge resources,” McAleer said. “Sometimes the truth is simply good news that needs to be amplified. Sometimes life-changing stories are just the ones that have never been told properly — or never been told at all. And right now, those stories are everywhere.”

Conservative Filmmakers Launch Journalism Prize To Highlight Stories Mainstream Media Won’t Cover

ann mcelhinney

journalism

phelim mcaleer

shillman journalism prize

Netflix is rolling out the red carpet for the latest entry in media navel-gazing: a documentary detailing the absolute &#8220;horror&#8221; of reporters being left on a plane with the window shades lowered.
The streaming giant announced Tuesday that &#8220;Instadocs: The Decoy Plane&#8221; will premiere Friday, September 4. The documentary examines the July incident where the Secret Service pulled off a slick maneuver in Ankara, Turkey. Facing credible assassination threats from Iran against President Donald Trump, security officials quietly shuttled the commander-in-chief off Air Force One via a catering truck and onto a secure military transport plane.
Left behind on the main 747 was the White House press pool, blissfully unaware that Trump wasn&#8217;t aboard, only to erupt in a collective panic upon realizing they’d played the role of unwitting decoys. <a href="https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/instadocs-the-decoy-plane-what-to-know">According</a> to Netflix, &#8220;a plane full of reporters and the public they answer to were left flying blind.&#8221;
The documentary promises &#8220;firsthand accounts&#8221; from shell-shocked journalists detailing their harrowing experience. One AP photographer dramatically recounted shooting &#8220;the sh*t out of&#8221; a catering truck before receiving the horrifying command to pull down his window shade, instantly triggering his &#8220;spidey sense.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
This July, while flying back from a NATO summit in Turkey, President Trump slipped off Air Force One in a catering truck and secretly boarded a different aircraft — leaving traveling reporters to fly on, unaware the president was no longer with them.
Instadocs: The Decoy Plane,… <a href="https://t.co/iuADnXxMoV">pic.twitter.com/iuADnXxMoV</a>
&mdash; Netflix (@netflix) <a href="https://x.com/netflix/status/2094779811935715344?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 1, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Other reporters have <a href="https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2026/trump-air-force-one-decoy-reporters-threat/#:~:text=The%20New%20York%20Times'%20Maggie%20Haberman%2C%20Eric,staff%20members%2C%20to%20serve%20as%20unknowing%20decoys.%E2%80%9D">openly whined</a> about being treated as &#8220;expendable,&#8221; while the White House Correspondents’ Association fired off private notes wringing their hands over &#8220;press safety&#8221; and reporting integrity.
Because if there’s one thing the White House press corps excels at, it’s making a life-saving military operation all about themselves.
Enter reality.
Former Clinton military aide Lt. Col. Robert &#8220;Buzz&#8221; Patterson <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/man-carried-clinton-nuclear-football-reveals-scares-hell-air-force-one-story">torched</a> the media’s melodramatic narrative, calling the Secret Service’s high-stakes shell game &#8220;brilliant&#8221; and routine.
Patterson pointed out that presidential decoys, stealth plane swaps, and catering-truck tactics are standard operating procedures administrations have used for decades, including Clinton’s, to protect the presidency in high-threat environments. He scoffed at the media&#8217;s safety outrage, noting the decoy jet carried senior Cabinet officials, full Air Force crews, and was escorted by U.S. fighter jets.
&#8220;We do it all the time,&#8221; Patterson said, warning that the media&#8217;s hyperventilating and dangerous leaks about classified security protocols actually put future presidents and military personnel in harm&#8217;s way. He stated, &#8220;I hope that they prosecute this to the fullest. Whoever leaked that, in my opinion, and having been involved in this, was highly placed in that process. There’s only a few people who actually know exactly what’s going down, and that’s by design. So if somebody leaked it, it was somebody involved in the process, and that scares the hell out of me.&#8221;
While the press corps treats a routine, successful counter-threat operation like a traumatic thriller, Netflix is more than happy to cash in on the drama.
Don&#8217;t forget to close your window shades.

CORRECTION / TURKEY-NATO-SUMMIT-DEFENCE

The Crying Game: Netflix Announces Doc On Reporters Left ‘Flying Blind’ Aboard Trump’s Decoy Plane

netflix

politics

secret service

white house correspondents association

In preparation for the twenty-fifth anniversary of 9/11, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation sent a memo to its staff with instructions on how to refer to the 2001 terrorist attacks — specifically, not to call the events terrorist attacks.
“Do not refer to September 11 attacks as terrorist attacks,” the memo read. “The hijackings led to passenger jet crashes in Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania and Manhattan. The World Trade Center (WTC in second reference) was destroyed.”
The memo was attributed to “BB” — identified by the Toronto Sun as Basem Boshra, the senior director of journalistic standards and public trust at CBC News.
Rachael Thomas, a conservative member of Canada’s Parliament, slammed the outlet’s memo and argued it was attempting to rewrite its southern neighbor’s history. “Refusing to call it an act of terrorism dishonours the victims, their families, the survivors, and the first responders who witnessed the horrors of that day,” she wrote on X. “Trying to sanitize or rewrite that history is deeply offensive and does a disservice to everyone who was affected by the attacks.”
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) reacted in a post on X, writing, “Maybe we shouldn’t call Canada a ‘friendly country.’&#8221;
Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI) offered a similar take, adding, “Wow, The Canadian Broadcast Center told staff NOT to call 9/11 a terrorist attack. 9/11 is one of the darkest days in our history — nearly 3,000 Americans were murdered by terrorists. Say the word terrorism.”
In a statement defending the outlet, CBC director of public affairs Kerry Kelly pointed to a 2023 editor&#8217;s blog that argues using labels like “terrorist attacks” would make the outlet appear less impartial.
“Our focus is to report the facts of such atrocities with accuracy, clarity and detail; to convey the scale and scope of violent acts wherever they occur; to quote the people affected, and to convey the views of officials and experts on these events. We bear witness,” CBC Editor-in-Chief Brodie Fenlon wrote in the blog. “But CBC News does not itself designate specific groups as terrorists, or specific acts as terrorism, regardless of the region or the events, because these words are so loaded with meaning, politics and emotion that they can end up being impediments to our journalism.”
CBC <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/guantanamo-khalid-sheik-mohammed-trial-date-9.7322450">published</a> an article Thursday titled, “Khalid Sheik Mohammed, accused of masterminding 9/11 attacks, set for military tribunal trial in 2028.” The word “terrorist” appeared only once in the article — in a description of Al-Qaeda that read, “Al-Qaeda, which the U.S. designated a terrorist entity in 1999, claimed responsibility for the attacks.”

September 11

News Outlet Tells Staff Not To Call 9/11 A ‘Terrorist Attack’

canada

canadian broadcasting corporation

september 11 attacks

world

Support females. Unless they dare speak out against men playing in their sport, in which case, ruin them. Women should run the world. Unless they have a baby, then they’ll probably undergo acute psychosis and strangle their kids, and that’s fine. Empower all women. Unless they’re blonde and work in the Trump administration. Then it’s open season.
The latter is prescient this week, as the Left has found a new young, attractive woman to terrorize in Natalie Harp, now that Karoline Leavitt isn&#8217;t in their line of sight.
The 35-year-old special and executive assistant to the president was launched into the news cycle after Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff (Democrat, dweeb, professional douche) read a scripted line at a rally insinuating that Trump &#8220;doesn&#8217;t want to do the job,&#8221; preferring instead to &#8220;build his ballroom and travel with Natalie&#8221; on a plane gifted by the Emir of Qatar.
The small, beta, estrogen-filled half-feline was being about as subtle as a brick through a window. The implication: the president and his aide are having some sort of love affair, based on the fact that when there was a bomb threat from Iran, she was one of a few people who snuck onto another escape flight with the president (the sole target of the attack). Journalists are still incredibly upset that after years of libeling, defaming, and belittling the president and his administration, he didn&#8217;t sacrifice his safety for them by telling Iran exactly where he was.
This empowered Maggie Haberman of The New York Times to describe Harp as Trump&#8217;s &#8220;binky&#8221; during a podcast devoted to making this story something that it isn&#8217;t, the Daily Beast to publish her private letters, CNN&#8217;s Erin Burnett to primetime Harp&#8217;s estranged brother to trash her, and Maureen Dowd, who should perhaps <a href="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/02/05/arts/TO_MELANIA-DOC_0205_Clip-1_MD/TO_MELANIA-DOC_0205_Clip-1-Social-Still_Textless_0205-jumbo.png?auto=webp&amp;quality=75">cool it on the botox</a>, to compare Harp to the crazed girlfriend from “Obsession.”
Believe all women. Support fellow females. Be a girl&#8217;s girl. Unless she&#8217;s pretty, successful, and votes red — then, evidently, the sisterhood becomes a firing squad.
But this Natalie Harp must have done something unusual to stoke their ire, right? Like how Kamala Harris legitimately slept her way into the District Attorney’s office or how Hillary Clinton looked the other way as her husband ushered in a revolving door of women to stay close to power? Wrong. She&#8217;s a California native from a conservative Christian family who studied business and real estate, went public in 2019 with her Stage 2 bone cancer diagnosis, and is alive today because a doctor was willing to try an off-label immunotherapy — treatment access made possible, as she tells it, by Trump&#8217;s 2018 Right to Try Act. Her father died by suicide in 2020. Her brother, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DUKCzhyAGZ3/?img_index=1">an anti-American</a>, gringo sandinista, man-bun activist who goes by &#8220;Spirit.wagon&#8221; on Instagram, doesn&#8217;t speak to her. Nobody&#8217;s heard from the mother in years.
Despite her apparent family shortcomings and lack of nuclear support, she’s made a highly impressive career for herself in political media, gaining the attention of President Trump after she credited him with saving her life, and earning a spot within his campaign and inner circle. Not because of nefarious reasons, but because she is incredibly hard-working, devoted, and loyal to a fault, sometimes forgetting to eat and sleep. She’s unmarried, single, and dedicated to the craft at 35. The Left should be proud.
Instead, because she once wrote that Trump was her &#8220;guardian and protector&#8221; and compared him to George Bailey in a campaign speech, she&#8217;s being cast as unhinged. A woman who has survived cancer, a father&#8217;s suicide, and a commie brother finding stability and purpose in her work is not evidence of instability. It&#8217;s evidence of exactly the opposite. He&#8217;s an 80-year-old man she may well see as a father figure. Or “Unc,” as the kids say. That&#8217;s not a scandal. That&#8217;s just how humans process grief.
It isn’t surprising that the same cadre of people who excuse a psychotic mother for strangling her three children to death, look the other way when a nazi-tatted communist allegedly sexually assaults a woman because he’s running for office as a D and the victim was an R, and forgive female genital mutilation and forced burqa coverage because it’s “their religion,” are also misogynistic towards successful conservative women.
The Left is showing us, day after day, that they will loudly defend the idea of female empowerment while quietly deciding, case by case, which actual women deserve it. A cancer survivor with a tragic family history and an unglamorous work ethic doesn&#8217;t fit the &#8220;victim&#8221; narrative, so she gets recast as the &#8220;obsessive aide&#8221; who’s sleeping with an 80-year-old instead.
Feminism sure looks different nowadays, doesn’t it?
Harp will survive this slander, just as she has capably survived worse than cable news, but there is a broader insult here, to every woman the Left claims to speak for. Record female appointments in this administration, the youngest female press secretary, women succeeding without checking a single progressive box — and none of it counts, because counting it would mean admitting conservative women can win on merit. So instead, they fixate on a new blonde villain every cycle with the same tired verdict: she must be sleeping her way into relevance.
It&#8217;s cruel, and it&#8217;s pathetic. Even Bill Maher is tired of it: &#8220;I don&#8217;t know why you have to go after her… She had bone cancer in her 20s. She liked Trump because he sped up experimental treatment, which she believes helped her. But, you know, in America it&#8217;s just like, &#8216;Oh good, someone new to hate.&#8217; … Let the man have one f*cking friend.&#8221;
Let the man have a friend. And let the girl have a father figure.

US-POLITICS-TRUMP

The Left Found A New Leavitt

jon ossoff

karoline leavitt

natalie harp

opinion

Trust in media is at an all-time <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/695762/trust-media-new-low.aspx">low</a>. Only 8% of Republicans have trust in newspapers, TV, and radio to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. This compares with a whopping 51% of Democrats who trust mass media.
Why the discrepancy? The short answer is that Democrats tend to pretend bias doesn’t exist, while Republicans tend to embrace it. Here is the long answer.
Right after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in 2024, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/cnn-initially-downplays-trump-assassination-attempt-earning-conservative-lawmakers-ire">CNN</a> touted this headline: Secret Service Rushes Trump Off Stage After He Falls at Rally. And one from the <a href="https://x.com/AP/status/1812251472454689112">Associated Press</a>: Donald Trump has been escorted off the stage by Secret Service during a rally after loud noises ring out in the crowd. Soon after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/us/politics/charlie-kirk-dead.html?fbclid=PAb21jcATgsbZleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZA81NjcwNjczNDMzNTI0MjcAAacZrP00w7m69VnMWCb8GZHhxQl8WIb5Sh5wzkyUHNvSt7g8yMMEBLpZz_h7Pg_aem_9KZPoqFWgbCEd-NVQl7OpA">New York Times</a> published a story with this headline: Charlie Kirk, Right-Wing Force and a Close Trump Ally, Dies at 31.
The problem with these headlines is not that they are factually inaccurate, but that they are incredibly biased, leaving out critical information on purpose. These are the same newsrooms that <a href="https://www.judicial-discipline-reform.org/6TextAuthorities%20Cited%20toeC71/J%20Prof%20respon%20lawyrs%20journlis/22%20AP%20Statement%20of%20Values.pdf">claim</a> to only produce <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/editorial-standards/ethical-journalism.html">objective</a>, <a href="https://www.astrogrowth.com/blog/cnn/">unbiased</a> reports.
I investigated the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) in a summer project in 2024 with the National Journalism Center. <a href="https://campaignlegal.org/about">CLC</a> is a “nonpartisan legal organization dedicated to solving the wide range of challenges facing American democracy.” They are supposedly <a href="https://campaignlegal.org/about">focused</a> on “democracy, not particular political parties or electoral results.” Any ounce of research into the organization proves otherwise. In fact, on a call with a source who asked to remain anonymous, I was given a <a href="https://clc-fact-sheet.tiiny.site/">data sheet</a> proving the Center disproportionately attacks Republicans by a wide margin. They are almost completely partisan, and their website is lying.
The CLC is emblematic of many other liberal organizations — pretending to be nonpartisan and unbiased when they are not.
In direct contrast, many conservative outlets are completely unafraid to embrace their bias. Andrew Breitbart started <a href="https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2013/03/01/andrew-breitbart-and-the-true-meaning-of-war/">Breitbart N</a>ews with this exact intention: to combat Left-wing reporters pretending to be objective. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/about">The Daily Wire</a> “does not claim to be without bias. We’re opinionated, we’re noisy, and we’re having a good time.” <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/about/">National Review</a> was founded explicitly as an ideological project with the intention of sharing only conservative opinions. The Spectator’s <a href="https://spectator.com/about/?edition=us">motto</a> is: “firm, but unfair.” They make no “pretence at being impartial.”
There are, of course, exceptions to this rule. But generally, bias is embraced by Republicans and ignored by Democrats, and Trump’s election illustrates this exact point. Many talking heads dubbed the election “<a href="https://theweek.com/politics/podcast-election-harris-trump-media-voter-outreach">The</a> <a href="https://www.emarketer.com/content/2024-election-demonstrated-untapped-potential-podcast-advertising-beyond-politics">Podcast</a> <a href="https://www.thecurrent.com/media/political-presidential-election-2024-podcasts">Election</a>.” Trump’s three-hour Joe Rogan <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBMoPUAeLnY">interview</a> garnered 62 million views and more than half a million comments.
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s attempts to get on podcasts mainly resulted in embarrassment. Walz tried to be a man’s man but<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhpiCVYfj_M"> struggled to load his own shotgun</a>. Harris spent <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/11/09/media/harris-campaign-reportedly-spent-6-figures-on-call-her-daddy-podcast-with-episode-failing-to-break-1m-views/">six figures</a> for an appearance on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast for a seven-minute <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KCRsjPCiCI">interview</a> that has now finally reached one million views. Harris was invited on Rogan’s show in exactly the same way as Trump. She <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve5UWT7DuVo">ultimately</a> declined, although ABC, of course, reported it was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve5UWT7DuVo">Rogan’s</a> fault she didn’t appear.
Trump garnered more <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/demographic-profiles-of-trump-and-harris-voters-in-2024/">young voters</a> in 2024 than in previous elections; Harris gained older voters — which is not typical of Republican and Democrat demographics. But these data aren’t surprising if you listen to the podcast (ironically) where Harris’ campaign chiefs explained how they blew through $1 billion dollars. &#8220;<a href="https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/11/harris-campaign-chiefs-give-pathetic-excuses-for-blowing-1-billion-to-lose-election/">We</a> put her on the Weather Channel. In part, because that’s where people were watching.” The last time I watched the Weather Channel was probably when I was helping out at a rest home. Unfortunately for Harris, the young kids are on TikTok and YouTube, and apparently, voting for Trump.
These reports are illustrative of a trend: conservatives want people who are honest about who they are, even if it means that person is incredibly biased. Whether or not the news they are reading and the people they are voting for are actually honest is up for debate — but they would rather have a wolf than a wolf in sheep&#8217;s clothing. Liberals want to believe that because most traditional, well-established news outlets side with their point of view and are often marked “center,” their view must be objectively true, unbiased, and bipartisan.
This trend pinpoints exactly why Republicans tend to trust the media far less than Democrats do. And for 2024, that’s more than half of voters who mistrusted The New York Times more than they mistrusted Rogan — even when, supposedly, Rogan is far more biased and subjective.
This is the lesson all journalists should learn from 2024: stop promoting unbiased and nonpartisan reporting. Yes, even for news outlets marked “center” by AllSides bias checker, a biased source in and of itself. Objective reporting doesn’t exist. It’s sterile. It’s not entertaining to read. It hides behind lies. And it will ultimately create more distrust and division in society because it is founded on deception.
***
Ella Dawson is a freelance journalist and history writer living in Utah.

Collage with woman pushing a wall with the inscription bias.

The Real Reason Trust In Media Collapsed

charlie kirk

donald trust

kamala harris

trust in media

Repeating a claim long and loud enough doesn&#8217;t make it true. But nowadays, many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the United Nations apparently prefer advancing fraudulent narratives over pursuing facts. The UN’s latest Commission of Inquiry report targeting Israel offers a revealing example.
It works like this: an obviously partisan NGO propagates a claim that demonizes Israel, citing unfalsifiable generalizations and anonymous sources. Legacy media and the UN parrot the NGO accusation, erasing and sanitizing its original pseudo-sourcing with their own glossy letterhead and implied authority.
This happens often, but rarely so explicitly as with the new June <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session62/a-hrc-62-crp-2.pdf">UN Human Rights “Commission of Inquiry” paper</a> on Palestinian children’s welfare. In heavily citing allegations of Israel’s use of quadcopters — remotely operated propeller drones — the Commission exemplifies the violation of basic evidentiary standards that has become commonplace in coverage of Israel.
The report recycles the libel that Israel is &#8220;deliberately targeting Palestinian children,&#8221; but with a new twist. It claims the IDF targeted a nursing, 10-day-old baby in Gaza with a remote-controlled “sniper rifle mounted on a quadcopter.” The commissioners said they found “reasonable grounds” for this conclusion after reviewing images of the bullet.
The basis for the supposed “reasonable grounds” is hard to ascertain. The UN provides no publicly available forensic analysis, no technical explanation for how photographs of bullets (which may or may not be connected to the incident in question) can establish the weapon used, no operational evidence that rifle-equipped quadcopters were deployed in the manner alleged, and no independent corroboration of deliberate intent. The report names neither the baby, nor the mother, nor the doctor relating the story, nor the hospital that supposedly treated the baby, nor the source of the photo. Nothing is falsifiable or verifiable.
“Trust us,” the report asks. But it has not earned any such trust. For an allegation this specific (and consequential), such a lack of available evidence — replaced by a sloppy appeal to authority — should have given journalists pause.
Instead, the story illustrates an increasingly familiar pattern vis-à-vis reporting on Israeli and Palestinian affairs: an allegation originates with an activist. An NGO publishes it. Major news organizations cite the NGO. UN investigators build on NGO and media attention. Institutional repetition substitutes for independent verification.
In this case, the apparent origin of the quadcopter narrative is British-Palestinian doctor <a href="https://quillette.com/2025/12/10/the-humanitarian-mask-medecins-sans-frontieres-doctors-without-borders-gaza-israel/">Ghassan Abu-Sittah</a>, whose testimony has repeatedly misdirected coverage of the Gaza war. The good doctor is perhaps best known for <a href="https://www.doctorswithoutborders.ca/msf-condemns-bombing-of-ahli-arab-hospital-in-gaza/">claiming</a> that the October 2023 Al-Ahli hospital explosion was an Israeli strike that killed 500 Palestinians. In reality, the blast was caused by a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket, a fact confirmed by governmental and media investigations that caused several major outlets to retract their stories. Not so Abu-Sittah (or his sponsor, <a href="https://ngo-monitor.org/reports/ngo-malpractice-msf-doctors-without-borders-and-the-gaza-genocide-campaign/">Doctors Without Borders</a>), who continued <a href="https://quillette.com/2025/12/10/the-humanitarian-mask-medecins-sans-frontieres-doctors-without-borders-gaza-israel/">repeating the canard</a> in media tours for months following.
Another Abu-Sittah highlight: Long before the Commission&#8217;s report, he publicly <a href="https://x.com/GhassanAbuSitt1/status/1757681720009068613?utm_source=">declared</a> that Israel &#8220;fears Palestinian children” and is a &#8220;child killer regime.&#8221; When a public advocate makes such grave allegations, the bar for journalists trusting them as a source should immediately rise.
That never happened. In November 2023, Abu-Sittah claimed that Israeli forces were operating remote-controlled quadcopters that fired “<a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/terror-and-security/armed-drones-israel-hamas-war-gaza-hospitals-gunshots/">single bullets</a>” at civilians near hospitals. No forensic or technical evidence accompanied the allegation. No photographs of such weapons were produced. No recovered systems were presented.
That absence of corroboration didn’t seem to bother anyone. Before long, the claim spread.
A fringe NGO called Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor incorporated <a href="https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6357/Gaza:-Israeli-army-expands-its-use-of-quadcopters-to-kill-more-Palestinian-civilians">similar allegations</a> into submissions to UN officials before publishing reports asserting that Israel was systematically using quadcopters to execute civilians. These reports likewise relied almost entirely on anecdotal testimony rather than independently verifiable evidence.
This is the same <a href="https://ngo-monitor.org/ngos/euro-med-human-rights-monitor/">Euro-Med</a> whose fanciful <a href="https://euromedmonitor.org/uploads/reports/En-Another-Genocide.pdf?ref=quillette.com">blood libel</a> that Israeli soldiers used dogs to rape Palestinians was infamously <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/11/opinion/israel-palestinians-sexual-violence.html">echoed</a> earlier this year by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times. It is the same NGO whose senior leadership has been dogged by <a href="https://ngo-monitor.org/ngos/euro-med-human-rights-monitor/%23tiestoterror">credible questions</a> regarding ties to Hamas. Yet its claims continue to circulate through international institutions with remarkably little scrutiny.
By late 2024, NPR had devoted a <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/11/26/g-s1-35437/israel-sniper-drones-gaza-eyewitnesses">lengthy feature</a> to alleged Israeli &#8220;sniper drones,&#8221; relying heavily on secondhand or anonymous testimony from medical personnel and repeating many of the same claims that had already circulated through activist and NGO networks. Finally, in summer 2026, those allegations matured into “findings” by a UN Commission.
Notice what did and didn’t change. The number of institutions repeating the allegation increased. The amount of independently verifiable evidence never did.
The problem extends beyond one doctor, one NGO, or one UN report. It is a failure of institutional skepticism. Allegations concerning Israel frequently receive a level of deference that would be unthinkable in almost any other context.
Reporters and political figures should resist this laundering process. A claim&#8217;s source does not become more reliable because it has passed through more institutions. If anything, it becomes more opaque. Before accusations of war crimes shape international opinion, journalists should be expected to ask: Where is the evidence?
***
Naftali Shavelson is an international spokesperson at the NGO Monitor research institute.

UN Flag

How The NGO-Media-UN Pipeline Launders Falsehoods When Israel Is Involved

gaza war

ghassan abu sittah

israel

united nations

“I wasn’t part of the problem” during Covid-19, insisted CNN’s Dana Bash in an interview with Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Sunday. “Let me just say, for the record, that I am not saying that the entire Covid reaction was accurate. It was a scary time, and people made mistakes.” Bash later added that “What we were doing in Covid… is getting the best information, the best science that we can and putting it out there.”
But Dr. Anthony Fauci’s diary shows that the media was more interested in pushing specific narratives and promoting Fauci than it was in getting the “best information” to the public. On April 17, 2021, for example, Bash herself texted Fauci, “I just watched the whole Jordan thing. Again, you’re a better man than I&#8230;. As our friend Wolf Blitzer said to me yesterday – no one would have blamed you if you said simply ‘Mr. Jordan, go f&#8212; yourself.’”
Bash was referring to a House Oversight Committee hearing in which Representative Jim Jordan pointed out many of the “mistakes” Bash now admits were made.
The next day, Bash sent Fauci another text “pointing out that Vanity Fair recently had a headline that said: Jim Jordan trips over his own asshole trying to debate Anthony Fauci.”
Since Senator Rand Paul released Fauci’s diary, journalists have claimed that he had no real authority to impose lockdowns or mandates, suggesting it wasn’t their job to hold him accountable. “Dr. Fauci did not have the authority to force anyone to do anything,” the New York Times <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/1de9a5f6-7f9b-447d-a6cf-454f3904954f?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">stated</a>.
But his diary shows how members of the media worked to help Fauci win policy debates against President Donald Trump. As early as March 11, 2020, Fauci was aware that the press was heavily on his side, noting, “the CNN commentators (Chris Cuomo, Anderson Cooper, David Gergon, David Gregory) all discussed me as the adult in the room and the person [we] should all trust.”
In this way, the media worked to undermine the authority of the democratically elected president by upholding Fauci, an unelected bureaucrat, as the ultimate expert and truth-teller. While today they claim that Fauci had no power, six years ago they insisted he be granted nearly unlimited power.
When Trump said Fauci disagreed with a decision in May 2020, Fauci noted that “Chris Cuomo, and Jake Tapper are trying to clarify this in my defense on their shows.” In October 2020, Kaitlan Collins contacted Fauci about a campaign ad and tweeted out a statement for him, which “went totally viral on twitter [sic] and several networks and cable reported it.”
Fauci had personal relationships with several members of the press. On April 13, 2020, he noted that CNN’s Jake Tapper called him “to make sure the interview did not cause me any problems.” On July 1, 2020, Fauci wrote that he had dinner with Tapper and his wife. “Terrific couple. Friendship building.” In October, they had dinner again at Fauci’s home.
Journalists didn’t try to hide their affection for Fauci. Chris Cuomo “gave a wonderful explanation to viewers how close and good friends we are and how I checked in on him every night including weekends for weeks during his COVID illness,” Fauci noted in May 2020. “Never saw something like that on TV.”
It’s no coincidence that much of Fauci’s diary is spent recording his various appearances and interviews. Under pressure from the media, political leaders deferred to Fauci when crafting policy, including on issues like school closures, his diary <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/145efd6c-86b7-482c-b4b8-f7635507796e?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">shows</a>.
Rather than, as Bash claimed, sharing the “best science” with viewers, TV and print journalists aired Fauci’s views without examining the evidence. If they had examined it, they would have reported on the publicly available data Fauci privately discussed in his diary. Fauci knew, for example, that vaccines <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/85c12387-d7b7-4030-9098-eb5104e7c211?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">did not prevent</a>infection and transmission and that natural immunity <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/2b5df709-c1c1-49d3-90cc-0b2576248bcc?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">was protective</a>. These facts made vaccine mandates unnecessary, yet he <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/4ac32575-f61a-43e6-a09b-a020e21d056e?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">relentlessly</a> <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/a2d50c08-d88d-42bf-bfd7-7a0b31cd3cc4?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">sought</a> to implement them.
Years later, news outlets have failed to accurately report on Covid, even retrospectively. For instance, they ignored documents <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/4d90b8be-87d4-4ddb-ab36-06c0df3989fc?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">revealing</a> that the CDC received concerning reports about vaccine-induced myocarditis in 2021, and that the CDC Director lied about it. And in 2023, mainstream media outlets did not cover extensive records showing that Fauci and other scientists initially believed Covid originated from a lab in Wuhan before <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/071fc69c-b472-40f6-bb19-2e2b08a7a310?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">collaborating</a> to dismiss the lab leak as a “conspiracy theory.”
While news anchors like Bash may still believe that Covid was well-managed despite a few “mistakes,” it is by now undeniable that their preferred policies created enormous backlash not just against Fauci personally, but against medical institutions, the Democratic Party, and the media itself.
Much of this backlash is due to the kind of duplicitousness displayed in Fauci’s diary. Scientists and officials privately acknowledged the realities of gain-of-function research, vaccine-induced myocarditis, and natural immunity, all while giving the public entirely different messages and using censorship to enforce compliance.
The liberal media’s response to the Fauci hearing shows a broad lack of understanding, or lack of desire to understand. With defending Covid lockdowns and mandates still a political liability, it would be strategically wise for journalists to avoid doubling down. So why do they continue to insist that criticism of Fauci is baseless? Why can’t they reckon with what really happened during Covid?
In 2020 and 2021, The New York Times and Washington Post published article after article in support of school closures. They claimed Covid could <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/87cced0f-80ec-4740-b2f5-0309b35815e1?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">“soar”</a> if schools reopened, that it was <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/46423805-72cc-495a-97eb-3f1831066983?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">risky</a> for children to play together, and that virtual learning provided black families a <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/ee52dc86-25b1-4acc-a595-f959dd34929a?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">relief</a> from racism. They published headlines like <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/c96a5af3-f7d9-4416-93f3-35fe13a398f9?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">“Can We Stop Telling ‘Corona Kids’ How Little They Are Learning?,”</a> <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/d349090c-ca97-4d2a-a95b-6a23e88b0142?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">“The Racist Effects of School Reopening During the Pandemic—By a Teacher,”</a> <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/c272127a-2785-4a4b-bf44-b16f84308569?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">“Does It Hurt Children to Measure Pandemic Learning Loss?”</a> and <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/a1c9c63a-ac68-4be5-a707-431dbd7c1ef1?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">“Actually Wearing a Mask Can Help Your Child Learn.”</a>
This was all despite the fact that European nations had safely reopened their public schools in 2020 and education ministers in the European Union announced that they saw no negative consequences from reopening schools. As David Zweig <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/c387c76e-9078-450c-8c6c-5193f63a498a?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">points out</a>, no one in legacy media reported on this.
At first, when the Chinese government imposed a lockdown in Wuhan, China, many in the liberal media questioned the approach, <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/d7592799-bbab-40e9-bea6-9347ae1257c4?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">noting</a> that it would violate human rights and be ineffective. Democratic politicians <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/555f575b-3cbe-44fc-a08e-e8600245cfb1?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">encouraged</a> people to go to Chinatown and said that concern about Covid was <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/efee174c-e87b-49ff-9e9b-c09977d01ec7?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">racist</a>.
But when it became clear that Covid offered unprecedented power for the professional expert class, the media and the broader Left changed their approach. “Many progressives see the coronavirus response,” <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/1be47999-c7b5-4554-be92-3b6d21143db6?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">noted</a> NPR in May 2020, “as a chance to prove that policies they support can work and should be made permanent… Now there is a crisis, and Democrats want to use this moment to remake the system.”
Covid could thus be used for social restructuring, locking in government spending, and continuously attacking Trump as a mass killer. Before Covid, Trump had remained politically resilient. In January 2020, the percentage of Americans satisfied with “the way things are going” went up to <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/fe4735fd-16d0-4f6e-8a2c-39ab27d4d56a?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">45 percent</a>, the highest since February 2005. And Trump had signaled that if he achieved a second term, he would take aim at many of the Left’s core achievements, including in the areas of education and immigration.
Covid offered a chance to thwart this trajectory while cementing the authority of the managerial class over democratic institutions in the name of “safety” and “saving lives.”
The Left equated wrongthink and “misinformation” with murder, justifying unprecedented censorship. When three epidemiologists from Stanford, Oxford, and Harvard simply suggested an alternative approach in the Great Barrington Declaration, the New York Times called it “dangerous” for not supporting lockdowns. Journalists denounced dissenters and “the unvaccinated” in increasingly dehumanizing terms.
<a href="https://substack.com/redirect/ae808a81-31bc-47b3-8e97-e7e4e1dc3086?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">“I’m Furious at the Unvaccinated,”</a> one column was titled in The New York Times. <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/fed65b3d-1936-42f2-83dc-7137eeee445c?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">“Unvaxxed, Unmasked and Putting Our Kids at Risk,”</a> read another. <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/2da283db-7774-45c6-aa93-eecfce685cdf?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">“The Unvaccinated Are a Risk to All of Us,”</a> a Bloomberg headline stated.
The unvaccinated, explained CNN’s Don Lemon, were <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/f578a6c0-ebb5-4da9-9611-15ef58896575?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">“idiotic and nonsensical.” </a>It was time to “start shaming them” or “leave them behind,” he said. Wrote a columnist in the Los Angeles Times, <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/8fe97ded-98ab-4af4-a043-f216a8f0c036?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">“Mocking anti-vaxxers’ COVID deaths is ghoulish, yes, but may be necessary.</a>” Others warned of “compassion fatigue” for the unvaccinated and platformed doctors who said they would refuse to treat them.
Liberal politicians who the media supported denounced their own citizens. President Joe Biden <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/5a22104a-7e52-4313-a378-24e7e5884122?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">said</a> in the fall of 2021 that his “patience [was] wearing thin” and that we needed to “protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated coworkers.” He declared a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” and <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/a8932eea-429a-4907-97e5-5b66354d89ed?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">warned</a> “the unvaccinated” that they would face a “winter of severe illness and death.”
“Do we tolerate these people?” <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/5ae06228-5b4f-4110-aade-80d5c82d7052?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">asked</a> Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, about the unvaccinated. They “are very often misogynistic and racist.” French President Emmanuel Macron <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/ba52db55-af3a-4c3c-ae01-5c74e4e71974?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">vowed</a> to put “pressure on the unvaccinated by limiting… access [to] social activities.” Someone who refuses the Covid vaccine, he said, is “not a citizen.” <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/347e4a6d-8101-4cd4-9e90-805d751c1172?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">Said</a> a commentator in The Washington Post, “Macron is right: It’s time to make life a living hell for anti-vaxxers.”
So-called “anti-vaxxers” and “anti-maskers” represented resistance to rule by experts, and their very survival was evidence that the experts, and the journalists who endorsed them, were wrong.
***
This is the first section of the author’s full essay. You can read the rest on Public <a href="https://www.public.news/p/journalists-are-still-defending-fauci">here</a> and <a href="https://www.public.news/">subscribe</a> to the newsletter.
Alex Gutentag is a Senior Editor for Public and writes about censorship, government abuse of power, and other topics. She has been a columnist for Tablet and a contributing editor for Compact. She is based in California.

Meet the Press – Season 73

COVID Bitter Clingers In The Media Will Never End Their Fauci Love Affair

anthony fauci

covid19 pandemic

dana bash

health

vaccine mandate

In a stunning revelation, Dana Bash <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/rfk-jr-torches-cnn-anchor-dana-bash-press-malpractice-covid-coverage-explosive-clash">admits</a> that it&#8217;s her job to tell the American people the truth. Where has that attitude been the last five years?
On CNN&#8217;s &#8220;State of the Union&#8221; this weekend, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the network&#8217;s chief fact-checker-in-residence got into it over how America responded to the COVID pandemic, and the two obviously had grievances to get off their chests. The conversation looked less like an interview and more like a holiday dinner after one too many eggnog martinis.
Things got heated when Bash pushed the line she&#8217;s pushed for years: Trump bears the blame, governors closed things because hospitals were overrun, Fauci didn&#8217;t shut down America.
RFK correctly called BS. 
 
Fauci&#8217;s own private diary entries show him actively engineering the closures he later denied under oath. March 9, 2020, Fauci advised New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to close schools in Westchester’s Orthodox Jewish communities. Six days later, he &#8220;convinced&#8221; Mayor Bill de Blasio to close New York City&#8217;s schools (de Blasio, per Fauci&#8217;s diary, &#8220;had already decided based on what I was saying on TV&#8221;), then went further, telling the mayor he should close the bars and restaurants too. De Blasio said he&#8217;d base it on Fauci&#8217;s recommendation.
I’m sure the “most famous scientist in the world” was giggling, penning that into the burn book.
Days later, Fauci advised de Blasio to push full shelter-in-place for the entire city over Cuomo&#8217;s objections, promising to lean on the governor himself. He privately celebrated convincing Trump to extend &#8220;15 Days to Slow the Spread&#8221; into a 30-day lockdown, calling it a &#8220;good outcome&#8221; that avoided ending mitigation &#8220;prematurely.&#8221; By October 2020, on CBS, he&#8217;d said the quiet part out loud: he recommended the president shut the country down.
Yet by 2022, once the learning-loss data and the empty ICUs became impossible to ignore, Fauci pivoted: he&#8217;d had nothing to do with school closures; the &#8220;default position&#8221; was always to keep kids in class. Wrong — the diary is the receipt. He was the top-down architect leaning on mayors and governors to do his bidding, while the press treated their compliance as spontaneous local wisdom.
Now Bash is doing damage control for the media’s image, but the damage is already done. Lockdowns shuttered 3.5 million businesses, cratered childhood education, and left the U.S. with some of the worst excess-mortality numbers among developed nations, because one man&#8217;s private certainty got laundered into public consensus, and nobody in the press box asked him to show his work.
Then Bash asked what RFK would do differently when the next pandemic hits (because, according to her experts, it’s going to happen within 10 years).
RFK quickly remarked that he’d protect constitutional rights and end the censorship that silenced dissenting doctors the first time around. Bash tried to pivot. RFK didn’t let her. “That was the job of CNN,&#8221; he told her. &#8220;To put the chyrons up on how many people are dying, to get people to comply.&#8221;
“You were part of the problem. There was absolute press malpractice. Your job is a fierce skepticism towards authority, and you weren’t doing that. You were beating up people who were dissenting.”
Boom.
And he’s absolutely correct. Take the lab-leak theory for example. Fauci privately noted the Wuhan market was an “amplifier,” not the source, and scientists on a February 2020 call he joined raised serious concerns about lab manipulation at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Publicly, the “Proximal Origin” paper (shaped with input from the Fauci circle) declared a lab origin “not plausible.” CNN ran with it. Lab leak was a “conspiracy theory,” “comic book” stuff, “widely debunked,” a “Trump talking point.” Then-CNN president Jeff Zucker reportedly ordered staff not to chase it. When former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield said it was most likely a lab origin, CNN framed it as “controversial” and “without evidence.” Only years later, <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/02/28/new-york-times-msnbc-cnn-slammed-over-debunked-lab-leak-theory/">once</a> FBI and court documents leaned toward the lab theory, did the network quietly soften the ridicule.
Because ostensibly it’s their job to “tell the truth to the American people,” once the truth becomes convenient.
CNN did the same with the mortality numbers. Fauci&#8217;s own February 2020 diary put the case fatality rate at 0.2%–0.3%, closer to a bad flu once mild and asymptomatic cases were counted. Weeks later, in congressional testimony, he told lawmakers the rate was 2%–3%, settling near 1% — 10 times deadlier than seasonal flu. The scarier number is the one that stuck; CNN ran the catastrophe models and sidelined the seroprevalence data that quickly told a calmer story.
The network also frightened parents silly into vaccinating their healthy kids. Which RFK rightfully pointed out. He charged that CNN’s job was “scaring people.” From late 2021 on, CNN treated pediatric vaccination as an unalloyed moral imperative; “Kids 5 to 11 can now get vaccinated. Here’s why it’s safe.” Segments pushed shots for children under 5 the moment the FDA authorized them. Jill Biden’s CNN op-ed urged parents that the vaccine was “the best way” to protect kids. Anchors and experts framed hesitation as dangerous, citing every hospitalization while downplaying the extremely low risk of severe disease in healthy children and the emerging myocarditis signal in adolescent males.
By 2022, Florida’s health department, citing the data, said healthy five- to 17-year-olds “may not benefit.” Randomized trials showed the shots reduced short-term symptomatic infection but offered negligible absolute risk reduction against severe outcomes for low-risk kids. Transmission benefits evaporated with variants. Yet CNN kept up the pressure, treating parental caution as anti-science. RFK asked Bash to present a single study proving net benefit for children. She pivoted to “data upon data” about adult mortality and “misinformation deaths.”
A master of misdirection.
If the world does see another pandemic, it’s good to know certain scientists won’t have their First Amendment right stripped away for saying an uncomfortable truth. Take Jay Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff, and Sunetra Gupta. In October 2020, the trio authored the Great Barrington Declaration, arguing for focused protection of the vulnerable instead of blanket lockdowns. NIH Director Francis Collins wanted a &#8220;quick and devastating&#8221; takedown. Fauci called it &#8220;nonsense and very dangerous.&#8221; On CNN, a former Harvard professor announced that herd immunity was &#8220;another word for mass murder.&#8221; The chorus followed, branding the authors reckless cranks.
Today, Bhattacharya runs the NIH. The &#8220;crazies&#8221; keep getting promoted; the experts who got it catastrophically wrong still want the benefit of the doubt.
Look, reporters get things wrong sometimes; so do experts. But there&#8217;s a difference between an honest miss and five years of &#8220;trust the experts&#8221; deployed as a gag order, while the experts secretly admitted they weren&#8217;t sure.
Fauci privately knew mortality was far lower and later walked back school closures. CNN treated lab leak as taboo and pediatric vaccines as non-negotiable. Dissenters were “beaten up.” And now that the diaries, the excess-death data, the learning-loss studies, and the intelligence assessments are public, the same network hosts are rightfully getting grilled for gaslighting us all for years.
And RFK called them on it live, to a quivering, culpable Bash. The ultimate fact-check. And it felt good to watch.

Microplastics Event at EPA

RFK Jr. Owns Dana Bash Proving Media Fed COVID Hysteria

robert f kennedy jr

CBS News unveiled its first major slate of &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; hires under Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss on Tuesday, tapping New York Times columnist Ross Douthat as the network presses ahead with its overhaul of the iconic news magazine.
Executive producer Nick Bilton announced in a memo that Douthat will join the program as a correspondent, while bestselling author and filmmaker Sebastian Junger, former VICE News and CNN journalist Gianna Toboni, and British broadcaster Trevor Phillips will serve as contributors. Former CBS Evening News anchor Norah O&#8217;Donnell, who has contributed to &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; for more than a decade, has also been elevated to full correspondent.
&#8220;An exceptional lineup of journalists will be joining &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221;, carrying on its tradition of fearless, independent and impartial reporting,&#8221; Bilton wrote. &#8220;I can&#8217;t wait for them to get started.&#8221; 
The hires are the first major on-air additions since Weiss took control of CBS News and began restructuring &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; after several longtime correspondents and senior producers departed earlier this year.
Douthat joined the Times in 2009 and has become one of the paper&#8217;s best-known conservative opinion writers. Bilton praised him as &#8220;one of the preeminent public intellectuals in America today, a thinker of uncommon rigor and a journalist of deep empathy.&#8221;
Bilton also announced that Junger, the author of &#8220;The Perfect Storm&#8221; and co-director of the Oscar-nominated Afghanistan war documentary &#8220;Restrepo,&#8221; will join the program as a contributor
Toboni, whose reporting has included investigations into ISIS, Mexican cartels, mass shootings, and the death penalty, will also join as a contributor, while Phillips — recently hired as CBS News&#8217; senior global affairs correspondent — will contribute to 60 Minutes from London. 
Bilton praised the whole group as &#8220;entrepreneurial journalists who understand how to reach modern audiences.&#8221;
Earlier this year, Weiss removed longtime executive producer <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/05/28/bari-weiss-ousts-tanya-simon-60-minutes-favor-nick-bilton/">Tanya Simon</a> and several senior producers before dismissing veteran correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi, Cecilia Vega, and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/longtime-60-minutes-reporter-fired-after-attacks-on-new-leadership">Scott Pelley</a>. <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/celebrating-anderson-cooper-60-minutes/">Anderson Cooper</a> later departed the program voluntarily.
The personnel changes followed <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/longtime-60-minutes-reporter-fired-after-attacks-on-new-leadership">years of criticism</a> that &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; had abandoned its reputation for impartial journalism, including backlash over its heavily edited 2024 interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, which ultimately contributed to CBS parent company Paramount settling President Donald Trump&#8217;s lawsuit for $16 million.
Since taking over, Weiss has pledged to restore trust in the network while broadening the program&#8217;s appeal. Bilton, a former technology journalist and author who was tapped to lead &#8220;60 Minutes,&#8221; has likewise promised to modernize the nearly six-decade-old broadcast without sacrificing its journalistic standards.
&#8220;My responsibility is not just technological transformation,&#8221; Bilton previously told staff. &#8220;It is also our trust with the public. Above all, that means a commitment to fairness—in story selection, in the edit room, and in the broadcast.&#8221;
Season 59 of &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; is scheduled to premiere September 13.

Preparations Ahead Of Vice Presidential Debate

CBS News Shakeup Continues As ’60 Minutes’ Adds New Correspondents

60 Minutes

bari weiss

cbs news

Legacy Media

media

new york times

News

Scott Pelley

The New York Times

While publicly urging Americans to avoid family gatherings and maintain &#8220;social distance,&#8221; Dr. Anthony Fauci was also busy behind the scenes cultivating a chummy friendship with CNN anchor Jake Tapper.
Fauci&#8217;s meetings and family dinners with the longtime CNN personality were revealed in a series of <a href="https://www.paul.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/2026.07.24_Tonys-Diary-Package.pdf">diary entries</a> made public on Saturday by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who uncovered them during his lengthy and thorough investigation into Fauci and the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The former White House chief medical adviser thoroughly documented his actions throughout the pandemic — with a heavy focus on his own media appearances and coverage, particularly when it was overly flattering — and referenced an interview with Tapper that took place on April 12, 2020. During that interview, Fauci conceded that Tapper had asked tough — but reasonable — questions, and then had called him directly afterward to make sure that the interview had not caused him &#8220;any problems.&#8221;
&#8220;Potential big problem (we shall see). NY Times reporting on an answer to a question that I gave on CNN yesterday (see above). Jake Tapper asked me if we had closed down earlier, whould (sic) that have saved lives. I said it is complicated; he persisted and I said obviously, if you close earlier there would have been lives saved, but the decision was complicated,&#8221; Fauci wrote. &#8220;I could have answered the question better and with more clarity, but the Times is now saying that I was implying that the POTUS was to blame for additional deaths according to me. The far right is tweeting to fire me. The POTUS even re-tweeted the tweet that said to fire me. We shall see how the day goes &#8230;&#8221;
Fauci said that he later met with President Donald Trump, who said that he did not have an issue and business continued as usual.
Of the press briefing that followed, he said, &#8220;I went out and explained that I was being hoest (sic) in my answer to Jake, but that I was not implying that anyone was responsible for more deaths &#8230; Phone call with Jake Tapper. Jake wanted to make sure the interview did not cause me any problems.&#8221;
Later that month, Tapper spoke with Fauci about an interview he&#8217;d done with Coronavirus coordinator Deborah Birx. Of that exchange, Fauci wrote, &#8220;I was not on Sunday shows. Deb was on CNN with Jake Tapper and did not answer the question of whether it was a mistake for the POTUS to talk about injecting or swallowing bleach. Jake wrote me a text afterwards and said: “Birx has lost her way I fear. She has chosen to focus on defending the president and attacking the press. Odd.&#8221;
On May 4, 2020, Fauci referenced a CNN interview in which Tapper had been hard on the Trump administration&#8217;s &#8220;inadequate&#8221; response to the pandemic — but had spared him the ire reserved for the president: &#8220;Jake Tapper did a segment last night on the inadequate response of the Trump administration to the pandemic. I came out relatively well.&#8221;
Later that month, when Katie Miller, a spokesperson for Vice President Mike Pence, tested positive, and Fauci was directly exposed to SARS-CoV-2, he got a call from Tapper making sure that he was all right.
&#8220;Jake Tapper called me and asked whether I was going inot (sic) quarantine. I explained to Jake that I would do a “modified quarantine” since I was a low risk exposure to Kstie (sic). Thid merans (sic) that I will get tested every day, would wear a mask ontinually (sic), and would spend most of my time either alone in my home office or alone in my NIH office and would go to White House or Congress with precautions of universal mask wearing and phycial (sic) distancing. I tested negative yesterday and will get tested every day for 14 days and then 1 time per week,&#8221; he wrote, adding in a subsequent entry that Marc Short was not taking enough precautions.
&#8220;Marc Short (whom I resally (sic) like) practically sits on Katie’s lap and he is vey (sic) close to the VP. Yet he is not even wearing a mask. He actually should be self-quarantining. He was at a much greater risk than I.&#8221;
On July 1, Fauci mentioned a dinner with Tapper and his wife: &#8220;Had dinner over Jake Tapper and Jen Tapper’s home in DC. Terrific couple. Friendship building.&#8221;
By late July, Fauci was feeding questions to Tapper ahead of interviews with other officials: &#8220;Brett Giroir on Tapper (State of the Union) talking bullsh*t about testing with Jake pressing him. I gave Jake some questions to ask him.&#8221;
And Tapper was calling Fauci to complain about President Trump: &#8220;Jake Tapper woke me up at 11:23 AM (I went to bed early) furius (sic) at POTUS for tweeting about the fact that Jake severly (sic) questioned Brett Giroir on SOTU CNN show today. Jake was really pissed at the craziness of it all.&#8221;
In later entries — into the fall of 2020, as Americans were preparing to host holiday dinners via Zoom — Fauci mentioned another dinner at the Tapper home: &#8220;Had dinner at my home with Jake and Jennifer Tapper. Relaxed, good time. Jake clearly believes that Trump is totally nuts.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Tapper texts Fauci to attack Laura Ingraham and defend the integrity of Dartmouth <a href="https://t.co/pLW5c1zuja">pic.twitter.com/pLW5c1zuja</a>
— Emily Jashinsky (@emilyjashinsky) <a href="https://x.com/emilyjashinsky/status/2081488487337906438?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 26, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
In a later exchange, after Fauci appeared on Fox News with host Laura Ingraham, Tapper texted to mock Ingraham, saying it was a shock that she&#8217;d graduated from Dartmouth.

Anthony Fauci

Inside Fauci’s Behind-The-Scenes Bromance With Jake Tapper

COVID-19

jake tapper

Mainstream Media

Pandemic

rand paul

The Trump administration has issued subpoenas for four New York Times journalists, requiring them to testify before a grand jury in a criminal investigation. 
The subpoenas come after the Times reported on security concerns involving Trump’s new presidential aircraft — a gift from Qatar. The purpose is to compel the journalists to reveal their confidential government sources in the investigation.
The media is, of course, outraged by Mr. Trump’s actions. Most leading outlets, including ABC, The Washington Post, and the Associated Press, have labeled the subpoenas “unprecedented” executive overreach. They are not.
Let’s examine the darling of the press: the Obama administration. President Obama prosecuted more leakers under the Espionage Act than any administration in history.
Mr. Trump’s actions are problematic. They raise genuine questions about press independence and government overreach. But let’s add some historical context.
As with so many things Mr. Trump does, the subpoenas are not actually a departure from the norm. They only look that way because everyone else did it in the shadows while he does it in broad daylight — and this largely has to do with a hostile media (toward Trump) versus a sympathetic one (toward any and all Democrats).
Much of the Obama surveillance was conducted in secret; the affected organizations learned about it later, after records had already been collected. In 2012, the Justice Department obtained two months of telephone records from the Associated Press without providing notice of any kind.
If anything, this secrecy is all the more troubling from a free-press standpoint. Trump obviously believes (in error) that he is fully legally justified in his actions — hence his pride and publicity in them. It’s harder to make that case about Obama, whose subterfuge implies at least a certain degree of doubt that he had the right to do what he did.
Even more notably, in 2009, Fox News reporter James Rosen published a story on North Korean nuclear weapons. The story was based on an intelligence report that had been leaked by an administration official.
In order to obtain a warrant for Rosen’s personal emails, phone contacts, and communications information, the affidavit baselessly characterized him as a possible “aider, abettor, or co-conspirator.” While Rosen was not charged, the criminal language allowed prosecutors to obtain his material with no advance notice.
Would someone like to explain to me how exactly that’s different, let alone milder, than Trump’s subpoenas?
When pressed with these facts, many Democrats will be quick to respond, “Sure, it was a problem when Obama did it, and it’s a problem now. Let’s bring it to a swift end.” I don’t disagree.
This response, however, is hugely disingenuous.
Only now that Obama is out of public office can it become an unforgivable action. You can tell me all you want that it&#8217;s a red line, but it never kept you from endorsing Obama. It doesn’t keep you from pining for the days when the president was an upstanding, humble citizen. What’s different this time?
While Obama did eventually draw the criticism of the mainstream media, it was far from a comparable reception. Obama’s abuse of the Espionage Act was treated as a mere footnote in his presidency. Meanwhile, Trump’s actions are an “unprecedented” threat to the democratic process.
This is selective memory at its finest. How many people, especially younger people, even know about the Obama scandals? It seems the media did such a good job running cover that they even forgot about them themselves.
To be clear: The Trump subpoenas are wrong. The Obama scandals were wrong. But the press is also wrong for its incessant fearmongering and selective crucifixion. If it wasn’t the end times then, it’s not the end times now.
You don’t get to pick and choose. This is another case where the press — and its blatant bias — has become the story rather than a pursuit of the truth.

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