During the first few months of the 118 Congress, PBS NewsHour has reportedly covered congressional Republicans negatively 85 percent of the time.
The flagship newscast of PBS receives 35 percent of its funding through federal dollars allocated by Congress to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
The study conducted by the conservative media watchdog NewsBusters examined 484 minutes of NewsHour coverage of the Congress and respective Democrat and Republican members from January 3 to May 2, 2023.
Author of the report Rich Noyes had four key takeaways:
By a five-to-one margin, NewsHour promoted controversies involving congressional Republicans over those involving Democrats.
Discussion of the most-covered policy issues (the debt ceiling, gun rights and immigration) was skewed heavily against Republicans.
Republicans were often (20 times) branded as extremists (“far right,” “hard right,” etc.) by NewsHour correspondents or commentators; left-wing Democrats were never so labelled.
Overall, congressional Republicans faced 85% negative coverage, compared to 54% positive coverage of congressional Democrats.
The report mentioned that NewsHour spent 97 minutes focused on controversies within the Republican Party, whereas NewsHour only focused 17 minutes on controversies in the Democratic Party. Just on the January 6 riots — which took place over two years ago — the broadcast spent 16 minutes on the topic.
Before Rep. George Santos (R-NY) was indicted for wire fraud, the newscast devoted 17 minutes to the scandal. Anchors spent more time focused on Santos than on the concerning health conditions of Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) and Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA). While the coverage of Feinstein is mostly negative, February 16 coverage of Sen. Fetterman praises the freshman senator for checking into a mental health facility for depression. However, there is no mention of the viral footage showing Sen. Fetterman struggling through his first subcommittee hearing speech since his discharge.
Another key issue that Noyes noted was how anchors labeled congressional Republicans:
We tallied 20 instances when NewsHour used language to portray congressional Republicans as extremists, as anchors, correspondents and commentators referred to the “far right,” “hard right,” “hard-liners,” and even the “nihilistic wing” of Republicans in Congress. We found 13 other instances when NewsHour applied more mainstream labels to the GOP (“conservatives,” “fiscal conservatives,” “mainstream conservative” and “moderate.”)
The same cannot be said for describing congressional Democrats. The most extreme description given to a congressional Democrat was “progressive,” but that only happened twice.
Omitting the 27 negative statements of George Santo, the team found that 131 negative statements were made by the newscast about the Republican Congress. With only 28 positive comments made, this gives Republicans an 81 percent negative spin. Congressional Democrats received a 54 percent positive spin by PBS NewsHour.
In 2022, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting received $465 in federal funding, marking a 24 percent jump in funding in four years.