2025 marked a year of arguably unparalleled success for the NewsBusters team seeing as how, along with chronicling the best and worst in daily and long-term liberal media bias, we helped see to a successful conclusion a decades-long fight to defund National Public Radio (NPR) and PBS.
In addition to President Trump’s successful media lawsuits and changes inside CBS News, the NewsBusters team was proud to take credit for the suspension of ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel plus the May 2026 cancellation of CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
As you’ll see below in our top-ten list of the most read stories, you’ll see two of those topics featured along with the major media stories of 2025 such as the Charlie Kirk assassination, the government shutdown, and the expanding influence of Alex Soros.
It’s stated every year, but we cannot begin to thank each and every one of you enough for your support of NewsBusters and the Media Research Center. Along with downloading the NewsBusters app (which is available in both the Apple and Google Play stores), please consider donating to help keep our newsroom humming to keep the liberal media honest.
To see past year-end top-ten lists, follow the links for 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024.
1. November 5 – STUDY: TV News Spends Shutdown Playing Defense for Democrats
Senior research analyst Bill D’Agostino snagged the top spot this year for his blockbuster study on broadcast network evening news coverage of this fall’s record-breaking government shutdown. D’Agostino found that “87 percent of the coverage” in the month of October “favored Democrats” and “83 evaluative statements…critical of Republicans, but just twelve criticizing Democrats.”
Arguably, the most stunning number was the fact that not one segment pointed out many Senate Democrats had “voted back in March to end the same Obamacare subsidies” they’ve demanded be extended.
2. September 10 – ABC Proclaims Charlie Kirk Had It Coming, Students Didn’t Want Him on Campus
Associate editor Nick Fondacaro clocked in at the second spot for chronicling the worst liberal bias from the ABC News Special Report on what we would sadly learn was Charlie Kirk’s murder at Utah Valley University.
ABC News Live anchor Kyra Phillips leaned into describing Kirk as having “outspoken views on politics, culture, religion…sparking sometimes pretty heated debates” about other issues such as “DEI, Jews, women, LGBTQ community, [and] people of color” and thus “controversial.”
Senior investigative correspondent Aaron Katersky scoffed that Kirk’s very appearances was foreboding because it “had divided the campus… where there were people on both sides debating whether he should even be allowed to bring his message” there.
ABC News essentially proclaims that Charlie Kirk had it coming:
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) September 10, 2025
AARON KATERSKY: His presence there at the university had divided the campus, according to an article in the school paper, where there were people on both sides debating whether he should even be allowed to bring his… pic.twitter.com/GiyxfqOHd5
3. January 7 -- Daily Mail: Sunny Hostin’s Surgeon Husband Hit With Claims of Insurance Fraud (But Cleared Months Later)
Early in the year, we spotlighted reports that View co-host Sunny Hostin’s doctor husband was caught up in a massive insurance fraud suit that was “one of the largest RICO cases ever filed in New York...accused of getting kickbacks by performing surgery and fraudulently billing a company that insures taxi companies and Uber and Lyft drivers.”
By July 10, however, he was dropped from the suit with the transit company at the center of the kerfuffle saying it “deeply regrets any public speculation against Dr. Emmanuel Hostin, his wife, Sunny Hostin, or his children.”
4. February 18 – CONNECTING THE DOTS: Mapping Alex Soros’s Growing Dominance in Washington
MRC Business’s Joseph Vazquez teamed up with author and Bongino Report content manager Matt Palumbo for an exhaustive and unmatched detailing of far-left donor Alex Soros’s web of influence as he assumes the public mantle of Soros family operations from his father, George.
From his meetings with the Biden regime to the Kenyan president and expanding the reach of his pet project Global Witness, the pair showed why the younger Soros is here to stay.
5. August 27 – CNN’s Jake Tapper Wants You to Use Correct Pronouns of School Shooter
Fondacaro made his second of three appearances on the list thanks to CNN host Jake Tapper stepping on a massive rake in covering the deadly Minneapolis Catholic school shooting by breaking his personal rule of not saying the name of a mass shooter…in order to make clear the biological male was supposedly a woman.
6. February 5 – CONFIRMED: CBS LIED to Voters About No ‘Deceitful’ Editing for Kamala
Back in early February amid the Donald Trump-Paramount lawsuit, Fondacaro meticulously went through the released footage – courtesy of the Federal Communications Commission – of Democrat Kamala Harris’s unedited interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes.
A NewsBusters analysis found that CBS had, in fact, chopped up its pre-2024 election interview to make the meandering, stammering Harris seem cogent. The footage’s release further pressured CBS’s parent company Paramount into a multi-million-dollar settlement.
7. January 27 – BETRAYAL: Soros-Controlled Station Unmasks Vehicles of ‘Undercover’ ICE Agents in San Jose
Vazquez torched a Bay Area news radio station in late January for its rancorous reporting out the direct location and description of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials on the January 26 KCBS Radio Weekend News. KCBS – not to be confused with CBS’s Los Angeles-area TV station – belongs to the radio conglomerate Audacy, controlled by a Soros-controlled investment firm.
Just a few weeks ago, Vazquez updated our viewers on the fact that the anchor at the center of the hoopla had been demoted.
8. March 8 – WHOA: NPR Host Interviews Greg Gutfeld, Fights With Him Over 'Racist' Asian Joke
As part of his beat covering the now-defunded National Public Radio (NPR), executive editor Tim Graham brought us this humdinger from springtime as Fox News Channel host Greg Gutfeld went toe-to-toe with Weekend Edition Saturday host Scott Simon.
Simon whined to Gutfeld his “controversial” show is built on “insult conservatism,” and “punch[es] left,” but “not punching up at powerful people.”
Gutfeld was not having any of this, blasting Simon for being part of “the most powerful people” who’ve “controlled the megaphone for years” and are “95 percent left-wing.” Thus, he argued, he wasn’t interested in going along to get along with the old guard.
9. June 22 – CBS News Touts a 'Groundswell' Against DeSantis That's Less Than TEN
CBS Evening News Plus both launched, flopped, and was cancelled in less than a year. Along with anchor John Dickerson’s snarky, left-wing commentaries dubbed “Report’s Notebook,” there were plenty of cartoonishly liberal reports.
Florida-based correspondent Manuel Bojorquez had one our Tim Graham took part that was billed as showcasing a “groundswell” of opposition to the work by President Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) to rid the Sunshine State of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) gobbledygook.
As Graham’s headline indicated, it was wildly misleading as a local news story out of Florida A&M reported the protest was “at least 10” people.
10. January 20 – We Watched ABC So You Didn’t Have to. Here’s Their Worst Inaugural Meltdown
To cap off our top-ten list, we throwback to my blog from Inauguration Day summarizing the torrent of Trump hatred on ABC that kvetched his speech was a “hot mess of division” “filled with hammers,” and “hard to watch” because it was such a “harsh repudiation” of Joe Biden given before an audience that “did not really reflect” America’s “diversity.”
This mouthful of negative hot takes laid the groundwork for what we would see on a near-constant basis from ABC, which was undoubtedly the most-liberal broadcast network and up there with MS NOW and PBS in all of TV news.
