NewsBusters Time Machine

Fifteen years ago this week, left-wing cable networks employed adolescent jokes to belittle the grass roots anti-Obama Tea Party movement, while the broadcast networks decried it as a front for “corporate interests.”

Two years ago, the U.S. Senate voted to confirm federal Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. Eighteen months earlier, liberal journalists fumed when a nearly mirror-image Senate vote elevated federal Judge Amy Coney Barrett, but Jackson’s confirmation was a time for “celebration” of a new Justice who “represents excellence” and the “American Dream.”

After Pope John Paul II died 19 years ago this week, liberal journalists praised his “charisma” and “magnetism” but rejected what they characterized as his “extremely conservative” policies, as if long-standing Catholic Church doctrines were merely one Pope’s personal opinions that could be discarded on a whim.

Five years ago this weekend, a confused and disoriented liberal media was forced to deal with the fact that Robert Mueller had ended his investigation of the Trump campaign’s alleged “collusion” with Russia without recommending any charges against the then-President.

Sixteen years ago this weekend, Illinois Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign was in real trouble, after ABC exposed the radicalism of Obama’s longtime pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Liberal journalists, however, adored Obama, so over the next several days the media elite became the candidate’s personal rapid-response team.

Tonight is Hollywood’s biggest night, the 96th Academy Awards,  so it’s a good time to dig out the absolute worst quotes we’ve collected over the years from the “stars,” as they championed their favorite liberal politicians and badmouthed conservatives.

Eight years ago this week, as the nation mourned the loss of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, left-wing pundits unleashed an appalling storm of hateful comments about the longtime conservative jurist, slashing him as “regressive,” “cruel” and “reprehensible.”

25 years ago, the U.S. Senate voted to acquit President Bill Clinton at his impeachment trial. At the time, journalists sneered that the trial of was a pointless waste of the Senate’s valuable time, while viewers heard it was an attempted “coup,” something “Stalinist” that evoked memories of Nazi Germany. Republicans were like KKK “night riders,” motivated by racism in their vendetta against a…

Instead of respectfully permitting conservatives to honor a cherished leader, media liberals felt compelled to unleash a nasty stream of rhetoric tarring Rush Limbaugh as a bigot, a “racist,” and a “misogynist” mere hours after he disclosed what would turn out to be a fatal cancer diagnosis.

Sixteen years ago, so-called reporters giddily celebrated the confluence of the ultra-liberal Kennedy family (a.k.a., “Camelot”) and the hard-left Obama campaign.

Since 2008, the NewsBusters archives shows the intensive political coverage surrounding the New Hampshire primary has been a chance for journalists to take gratuitous potshots at conservative candidates, while liberals (often referred to as “moderates”) are treated to rock-star treatment.

In coverage of past Iowa caucuses, the media elite have mocked religious conservatives like Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and Ted Cruz, yet always seem to be thrilled by their Democratic choices, spinning radicals as “moderates.”

The sweeping conservative victory in the 1994 midterms shocked liberals, but within weeks the media elite were fully engaged in disparaging the new Republican majority as mean-spirited, racist, dumb and dangerous.

It’s hardly a secret that large swaths of the public have soured on the news media as reliable communicators of factual information. A series of new polls released in 2023 showed the public’s distrust of the media elite has gotten worse, not better.