The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: media matters
Fox News Presents GOP Midterm Convention As A Very Special Episode Of 'Hannity'

Fox News Presents GOP Midterm Convention As A Very Special Episode Of 'Hannity'

“‘The vibes are very bad’ in Texas” was the headline of Politico Playbook’s dispatch from Dallas, where the GOP’s “Trump-a-palooza” midterm convention had Republican attendees fearing “what could transpire on the stage — and what it might mean for lawmakers back home.”

But let not your heart be troubled, Fox News had the solution on hand — more Sean Hannity.

The Fox brass has decided to give its 10 p.m. timeslot during the convention to the network figure closest to President Donald Trump, “to make sure all the key speeches and anti-Dem video montages are seen,” CNN’s Brian Stelter reported Wednesday. That’s a shift from its coverage of the 2024 Republican National Convention, when Fox assigned chief political anchor Bret Baier and The Story’s Martha MacCallum to host a nightly special featuring a panel of the network’s political contributors

Hannity’s selection was a clear signal that Fox aimed to produce a GOP infomercial, and was functionally equivalent to simply letting the Republican National Committee program the coverage. Hannity is a confidant and adviser to Trump who uses his show to propagandize on the president’s behalf. Over the years, the host has appeared in a Trump campaign video; spoken at a Trump rally; scripted a Trump campaign ad; served as a White House back channel; sought, received, and carried out marching orders from the Trump White House about what to say on Election Day 2020; and strategized with Trump family members and White House aides.

Hannity and colleagues try to manifest a GOP vibe shift

On the eve of the midterm convention start, Hannity and his colleagues were trying to raise Republican spirits by sheer force of will, highlighting Trump’s purported successes and warning of dire consequences if Democrats muster election victories.

Hannity opened his Fox primetime show on Tuesday with a segment on the convention, promising viewers that “we will be there” and urging them not to read anything into the numerous Republican candidates in tough races who aren’t appearing at the event. He assured the audience that he “was able to get confirmation” that the candidates attending “were invited and they're the most competitive races in the country. … Not every Republican that's running for office was invited.”

He went on to give viewers a pep talk, urging them to “take nothing for granted” because “the stakes have never been higher during a midterm election” and instructing Republican candidates to “treat every single day with the proper amount of urgency.”

Hannity reeled off a list of “promises made, promises kept by President Trump and his Republican allies,” which he contrasted to “what the radical socialist Democratic Party is now offering the country. They want to completely upend our way of life. They want to strip you of your very humanity. If they get their way, you — you will have domain over nothing. Not even your own family.”

“In 56 days, this November, the choice will be very simple,” he concluded. “You can vote for Democrats who believe America is fundamentally evil and want to humble and humiliate the American people, or you can vote for liberty, freedom Republicans, albeit many Republicans, far from perfect, but they're not DSA members. And by the way, they believe in lifting everybody up through the concepts of liberty and freedom and safety and security and opportunity.”

Laura Ingraham and Jesse Watters similarly touted Trump’s leadership and emphasized that the midterm elections will be a referendum on his performance on their Tuesday broadcasts.

“Tomorrow in Dallas, Republicans kick off that first-ever midterm convention, and gavel to gavel, the Angle will be there,” Ingraham said. “We'll broadcast live from the American Airlines Center. Cannot wait. President Trump will headline both nights. Now, what's the goal? To fire up the base with his vision, the Republican vision for continued economic growth and rigorous border enforcement.”

While she spoke, on-screen text read, “History in the making in Dallas.”

Ingraham later claimed that “we always take these polls with a grain of salt … I mean, at this point, you don't even know what's what with the polls, but there does seem to be some pro-GOP movement in some of these polls, especially the ones that came out today.”

Watters launched his own broadcast with fulsome praise for the convention and the president at the top of his show the following hour.

“We're less than 24 hours from Trump-a-palooza where the Republicans are going to hold their first ever midterm convention right in the heart of Texas,” he said. “President Trump will be there, so will JD Vance, Bobby Kennedy, and a long list of big-name Republicans. The goal of the convention: You make this election between communism and common sense, and the commies are making it too easy.”

Watters then offered a paean to what he portrayed as a laundry list of Trump accomplishments — over a chyron that read, “Republicans have a record to show off.” The host’s litany included that “jobs market has never been hotter for people with just a high school diploma”; “people took home big refund checks and realized if you start a family and open Trump accounts, your children will retire as millionaires”; “we just captured the world's largest oil reserves in Venezuela”; “the border sealed, crime all-time low, and doctors aren't giving sex change surgeries to kids anymore”; and “MAHA is cleansing what we eat.”

He went on to praise the Iran war, saying, “Republicans will have to tackle high gas prices but they'll argue that President Trump stopped Iran from nuking up, killed the ayatollah, took out the world's No. 1 state sponsor of terror, and our Navy in the strait [is] bringing prices down.”

“So the election is going to come down to Republican results and whether voters are going to buy what Democrats are selling,” Watters concluded. “They have no record to run on, no new ideas, just a mix of TDS with a whiff of communism. Republicans have to lock in these gains because there's a lot at stake.”

Watters and his Fox colleagues will be doing everything they can over the next few days — and weeks, and months — to ensure that happens.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Bari Weiss

Bari Weiss' CBS News Frames El-Sayed With Islamophobic 9/11 'Analysis'

CBS News published an August 31 article linking Democratic Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed with the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the latest example of the news organization’s rightward shift under editor-in-chief Bari Weiss. In reality, El-Sayed's comments, which he made on social media, were sober and well within the bounds of typical political discourse.

The piece’s headline appeared designed to suggest that El-Sayed, who is Muslim, had disrespected the victims of the attacks or had somehow justified them. Even by CBS News' account, El-Sayed simply invoked the 9/11 death toll while discussing surging deaths during the pandemic and hoped for a strong response across the country to help Americans.

In one of the posts reported by CBS, El-Sayed “compared the nearly 3,000 Americans killed on Sept. 11 to the mounting COVID-19 death toll and argued for a response commensurate with the nation's post-9/11 mobilization.” A different post similarly called for the United States to “spend the next ten years fighting a war for public health & against poverty” in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In another, El-Sayed mourned the loss of life on 9/11 and in the United States’ reaction to the attacks, which devastated countries across the Middle East.

Contrary to CBS News’ innuendo, many public figures compared the death tolls of COVID and 9/11.

  • In April 2020, President Donald Trump’s surgeon general said the pandemic would be “our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment.”
  • Andrew Cuomo, then governor of New York, said in March 2020 that COVID “reminds me of 9/11 where one moment, which was inconceivable, just changed everything.”
  • In May 2020, Trump said: “This is worse than Pearl Harbor, this is worse than the World Trade Center. There's never been an attack like this.”
  • In January 2021, Dr. Robert Redfield, then the outgoing director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said “that we were going to be in for day after day after day — back in early December, of losing more people than we lost in Pearl Harbor and 9/11 every day.”
  • Fox News’ Neil Cavuto: “Yesterday, we had a record number of deaths in this country, more than died on 9/11.”
  • Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld: “In that case, this virus is much like 9/11. … So we have to think about this the same way we think about terrorism and thinking about 9/11.”
  • Like El-Sayed, comedian Chris Rock hoped that the government would respond forcefully to the pandemic. “I just hope that all that’s happened, that this whole year was not in vain, and that people and the government doesn’t just go back to business as usual,” he said in December 2020. “Like, basically, there’s a 9/11 every day.”

CBS News’ Islamophobic framing comes amid a rising wave of anti-Muslim animus in right-wing media, and illustrates how that kind of bigotry can easily migrate to once-respected media organizations. The outlet has lurched to the right under its new owner, David Ellison, and Weiss, a conservative journalist with no experience in broadcast news.

The Ellison-Weiss smash-and-grab has resulted in low morale at CBS News and several high-profile resignations, including veteran journalist Scott Pelley from 60 Minutes. In an interview with The New York Times, Pelley claimed that Weiss had asked him to revise a February segment on demonstrations against Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s deadly crackdown in Minneapolis to “make the protesters look more violent.” Weiss had previously spiked a segment on the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador in a move many interpreted as her attempt to kill a story that made the Trump administration look bad. (The segment eventually aired in early 2026.)

Ellison’s company, Paramount Skydance, is currently attempting to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of CNN. Should the deal eventually go through, there is every reason to believe Ellison would introduce the kind of chaos and political bias at CNN that he and his deputies have brought to CBS News.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

Declaring Iran 'Victory,' Delusional MAGA Shills Enter Full Gaslight Mode

Declaring Iran 'Victory,' Delusional MAGA Shills Enter Full Gaslight Mode

By any objective metric, the Trump administration has failed in its war of aggression against Iran. Once maximalist goals of destroying Iran’s nonexistent nuclear weapons program have been tabled. In the United States, energy costs — especially diesel fuel — are skyrocketing, while missile stockpiles are dwindling. Iran has exerted control over the Strait of Hormuz, an outcome U.S. war planners had long predicted in the event of an extended conflict. Reports that the U.S. military has wrested control of the waterway should be taken with a shipping-freighter-sized grain of salt, as recent data shows that traffic through the strait dwindled on Thursday, and even days with the most activity only reached to about half of pre-war levels.

But what if all of that wasn’t the case? What if President Donald Trump had already won the war, and the only thing that was missing, geopolitically speaking, was the recognition of that fact? That would really be something. And, thanks to a set of especially sycophantic pundits aligned with the White House, that alternate reality is just one livestream or TV show away.

Fox News’ Sean Hannity, as reliable a hack for the Trump administration as you can find on cable news, argued on August 19 that the president hadn’t gotten enough “credit” for stopping Iran’s ability to build a nuclear bomb. (Of course, an obvious consequence of bombing a country, assassinating its leadership, and threatening to destroy its entire civilization is that the new government, entirely rationally, is more interested than ever in developing a nuclear deterrent to avoid such attacks being repeated.)

Hannity also claimed that Iran was “breaking financially,” though close observers believe it is well-positioned to withstand even escalated U.S. sanctions.

The next day, CNN contributor Scott Jennings — currently auditioning for the role of White House press secretary — was even more obsequious.

“It may be time for the president to declare victory in this war because it's obvious that we've won,” Jennings said on his YouTube show.

MAGA media influencer Benny Johnson was similarly shameless, titling an August 21 segment: “Iran's President SURRENDERS | Calls To 'End The War' With America Immediately As US CONQUERS Hormuz.” Then, on August 22: “Iran Thought They Won…Now It’s All OVER | How Trump Secretly DESTROYED Them Without a Single Bomb.”

On August 24, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a series of punishing sanctions on Iran — a so-called “economic D-Day” — and much of the right-wing media coverage framed it as the latest sign of victory.

That morning, Fox News’ Lawrence Jones, echoing a recurring theme in right-wing media, argued, “You know what’s worse that no new wars — and this is not a new war, this has been going on 47-plus years — is losing. And we're winning right now."

The chyron referenced a New York Post editorial headlined: “Trump is winning the Iran war— stay the course.”

From the wensite of the New York Post, publisehd on August 23, 2025

Citing Bessent’s comments, Newsmax’s Rob Finnerty claimed, “Despite what they’re saying about this war on CNN or MS NOW or in The New York Times, this war's about to end and America is about to win.”

Back on his YouTube show, Jennings offered a list of accomplishments the United States had not in fact accomplished.

“The United States has won the war against Iran,” Jennings said, arguing that “many in our political class refuse to acknowledge” this fact.

“Iran entered this war with four great pillars of strength: its nuclear program, its missiles and drones, its regional terror network, and its ability to hold the world economy hostage through the Strait of Hormuz,” Jennings said. “Every one of those pillars has been severely damaged or outright destroyed.”

On August 26, Trump posted an image on Truth Social reading, in part, “Mission Accomplished 2026.”

Like with Bessent’s announcement, the administration’s media allies ran with it.

Johnson once again painted a rosy picture of the conflict. “Iran is effectively admitting defeat,” he said. “The Iranian leadership is saying what we all know to be true, which is that you cannot fight a war if you cannot feed your army.”

Hannity boasted that “we have a nuclear-free Iran” among a list of Trump’s supposed successes — a thin accomplishment given that Iran has never had a nuclear weapon and U.S. intelligence agencies determined as recently as last summer it was not pursuing one.

Within the first few days after the United States and Israel attacked Iran in late February, right-wing media figures were eager to declare victory. Half a year later, that outcome remains easier said than done.

Fight, Don't Fold: Trump FTC Concedes Defeat In War On Media Matters

Fight, Don't Fold: Trump FTC Concedes Defeat In War On Media Matters

Media Matters has secured a complete and total victory in its case against the Federal Trade Commission (Media Matters v. FTC).

In an effort to avoid another damaging decision from a federal court of appeals, the FTC sought to withdraw its appeal of the preliminary injunction awarded to Media Matters to halt the FTC’s retaliatory actions. Media Matters made clear that it would oppose that gamesmanship. Facing the prospect of a loss from what’s often considered the nation’s second highest court, the FTC ultimately submitted to a legally binding settlement agreement with Media Matters, withdrawing its blatantly retaliatory demands and committing to forgo ever reissuing or issuing a substantially similar Civil Investigative Demand to Media Matters.

The FTC also stated — in writing — that Media Matters is not the target of any investigation and that any similar future litigation would occur in D.C. The agreement — and the decisions Media Matters won in the district court and the court of appeals — offers a roadmap for other newsgathering and nonprofit organizations facing, or at risk of, government retaliation.

Nathaniel Zelinsky, Senior Counsel at the Washington Litigation Group, explained: “At issue in the case was whether the Trump administration’s Federal Trade Commission could misuse the machinery of the federal government to investigate, exhaust, and ultimately silence the nonprofit watchdogs that hold government and powerful platforms accountable. Media Matters won legal decisions in the District of Columbia District Court and the D.C. Circuit that provide a roadmap for anyone who is similarly targeted. This historic victory shows that the rule of law matters — and that courts can and do hold this government accountable.”
Media Matters President Angelo Carusone said: “The FTC agreed to this historic settlement agreement after it became clear the FTC had misled the courts. Our victory shows the importance of holding power to account and the importance of fighting instead of folding.
“This extends well beyond Media Matters, though. Washington Litigation Group’s excellent lawyering helped to secure this victory and establish precedent that will protect others targeted with retaliatory investigations in nakedly unlawful ways.”
Thomas Berry, Director, Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies at the CATO Institute, who observed the appeals proceedings, said: “It is likely that the injunction against the FTC will be affirmed by the panel, which would be a win for free speech and a blow against the use of burdensome information requests as a tool of government intimidation.” He added, “It now appears the FTC is afraid of setting a bad precedent for themselves based on how oral arguments went."

In June of 2025, Media Matters for America sued to block the U.S. FTC's retaliatory investigation into the organization. Subsequently, MMFA filed for a preliminary injunction to block the FTC investigation from moving forward, documenting ongoing, irreparable harm to its ability to exercise its First Amendment rights. In August 2025, the U.S. District Court for Washington, DC, granted a temporary injunction blocking the FTC from enforcing a civil investigative demand against Media Matters, ruling, among other things, that the agency likely acted with “retaliatory animus,” and that “Media Matters engaged in quintessential First Amendment activity when it published an online article criticizing Mr. Musk and X.”

In October of 2025, the U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit declined to stay the lower court decision, temporarily preventing the investigation from moving forward. Circuit Judges Patricia Millett and Robert Wilkins found the FTC had not shown it was likely to win on the merits. In April, at a brutal oral argument for the government in which the judges relentlessly grilled the FTC’s counsel, Judge Millett demanded that the FTC explain whether there was something “radically left” “about being anti-Nazi.” Shortly thereafter, the FTC sought to withdraw its own appeal, and Media Matters stated it would oppose strategic gamesmanship. In response, the FTC ultimately agreed to a binding agreement that guarantees it will never reissue the investigative demands to Media Matters and confirms that Media Matters is not a target.

Media Matters president Angelo Carusone discussed the organization's victory on MSNOW on May 4:

Shop our Store

Constitution Cork Coaster

Constitution Cork Coaster

Democracy Mug

Democracy Mug

Make America Think Again Hat

Make America Think Again Hat

Constitution Rocks Glass

Constitution Rocks Glass

Headlines

jon husted

Backing Data Centers, Ohio Republican Took Over $600K From Big Tech

Macron and Trump

Enraged By Rate Hike, Trump Threatens To Expand Trade War Again (Huh?)

David Jolly

Shock Poll Shows Democrat Jumping Ahead In Florida Governor's Race

As Measles Outbreak Claims Lives Of Unvaccinated, RFK Jr. Warns Of 'Vaccine Injuries'

As Measles Outbreak Claims Lives Of Unvaccinated, RFK Jr. Warns Of 'Vaccine Injuries'

Editor's Blog

Ignorance Plus Arrogance: What The Real 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' Has Wrought

What We Never Learned From 9/11 Now Jeopardizes Our Security Every Day

Will The Supreme Court Majority Enable Election Theft To Protect Itself?

The World's Most Powerful Man, Still Stuck In America's Most Stupid War

Trending

Backing Data Centers, Ohio Republican Took Over $600K From Big Tech

Enraged By Rate Hike, Trump Threatens To Expand Trade War Again (Huh?)

Shock Poll Shows Democrat Jumping Ahead In Florida Governor's Race

World

Right-Wing Media Mock AI Concerns By Citing Climate 'Alarmism' And COVID 'Hysteria'

The World's Most Powerful Man, Still Stuck In America's Most Stupid War

Trump's Most Humiliating Lie In Election Speech Wasn't About U.S. Elections

In Mideast, Dropping Diplomacy For Bloodshed Is Bad Policy And Stupid Politics

Trump Opens NATO Summit By Renewing Demand To Annex Greenland

Chinese Investor With Military Links Secretly Acquired SpaceX IPO Stake