Establishment Media Admit Denying Republicans Airtime After January 6

Key figures across the establishment media have confirmed denying Republicans who voted against certifying the Electoral College results airtime is a daily routine on their broadcasts.

CNN’s Jake Tapper recently said during a podcast interview on the New York Times’ “Sway” that he is engaging in the practice of not even inviting such Republicans on his show.

“It’s not a policy, but it’s a philosophy where I just don’t want to deal with it,” Tapper said.

He then added he’s willing to have only “about a third of the House Republican caucus” on his show. Ultimately, as Politico Playbook reported, this means he doesn’t agree with the “philosophy” or “want to deal with” any of the Republican leadership. That means no House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), no House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA), and no recently elected House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY) on Tapper’s show. Tapper said he believes they could lie to his audience, so he will not even let them appear on his program and is not even trying to invite them on.

Hosts of the MSNBC show Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brezinski, have made similar statements regarding the media blackout on Republicans with whom they disagree. Brezinski had recently called out media outlets for, according to Politico Playbook, “booking Republicans who supported the big lie and tiptoed around it just because they’re so grateful to have a Republican on to talk about other things.” Reportedly, there has not been a single Republican that Morning Joe has invited onto the show since January 6.

Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace, meanwhile, has reportedly looked at the establishment media ban a different way. Wallace told Politico Playbook that he does not “think moral posturing goes well with news gathering.” Wallace said he has tried to be “tough” on “Republicans who voted against certifying the election” and noted he has been a critic of former President Donald Trump even during his presidency. In a statement, Wallace added that “[t]here are plenty of people I would like to have on Fox News Sunday that voted to challenge the election — House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy for one.” Wallace had also said he does not “have any rule about what the first question has to be,” noting he has asked “plenty of guests about voting to challenge the election and about Trump’s role in the January 6th insurrection. But I cover the news, wherever that takes me.”

After Politico Playbook obtained this information from Wallace, Tapper gave the outlet an additional comment:

“This isn’t a policy, it’s a discussion I think everyone in the news media should be having. Should those who shared the election lie that incited the deadly attack on the Capitol and that continues to erode confidence in our democracy be invited onto our airwaves to continue to spread the Big Lie? Can our viewers count on these politicians to tell the truth about other topics? This isn’t an easy conversation for some folks — especially for journalists who work for organizations where the Big Lie was platformed — but that’s all the more reason to have this conversation.”

NBC’s Chuck Todd, who hosts Meet the Press, meanwhile, has said in the past that “he doesn’t ban categories of guests,” but apparently that changed after the events of January 6. Since then, according to Politico Playbook, Todd has yet to have a single Republican on his broadcast. When Todd had a guest column in a January edition of Politico Playbook, he wrote: “No matter the reason, the silence [from Republicans] only ended up reinforcing the belief that only Democrats and members of the media were feeling outrage at the president’s actions.”