With Republicans in control of the vaunted Washington, D.C. trifecta, not even the left-wing news media have found a way to blame the ongoing government shutdown on anything other than obstinate Democrats. That’s something of a rarity for the corporate media, who historically have found a way to blame Congressional Republicans for every shutdown in recent memory.
As the MRC’s Rich Noyes demonstrated back during the Biden administration, journalists pointed accusatory fingers at Republicans for the last three government shutdowns. During the 1995-1996 shutdown, ABC, CBS, and NBC evening newscasts (and CNN’s World News) ran 48 stories in which reporters assigned blame: 23 blaming Republicans, and 25 blaming both Republicans and then-President Clinton. Not a single story blamed Clinton alone.
Broadcast coverage of the 2013 shutdown exhibited a similar pattern: House Republicans unanimously being deemed responsible, while a Democratic president evaded any blame. But despite that dynamic being flipped during the 2018-2019 shutdown (that is, Republicans controlling both the White House and the Senate, with only the House of Representatives under Democratic control), the media found a way to blame President Trump and his party anyway.
It seems that no matter how power is distributed in Washington, the media will inevitably blame Republicans any time the government shuts down — as long a Democrats control at least one of the three bottlenecks.
