The ABC, CBS and NBC evening news shows continue to do what they do best: Refuse to cover news that could potentially give the Trump brand a boost ahead of the midterms.
The Census Bureau released a stunning report September 15 showing that the official poverty rate fell 0.5 percentage points to 10.2 percent, which is the lowest on record. In an adjacent report released the same day, the Bureau estimated that median household income in 2025 “was $87,460, an increase of 2.6 percent from the 2024 estimate of $85,210” and the “highest on record dating back to 1967.”
Now, anyone with common sense would consider all of this to be newsworthy. But ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News all treated the reports like they didn’t exist across three days of coverage (September 15 — September 17).
ABC and CBS did manage to find airtime September 15 to blast out Texas Longhorns quarterback Arch Manning’s apology for laughing at an AI slop video depicting coach Steve Sarkisian slapping ESPN sideline reporter Holly Rowe. Apparently, that was a heck of a lot more important than reporting on the state of the economy as voters make their decisions ahead of the election. And why would they volunteer to give President Trump a layup of a talking point as Republican candidates go on the stump? It’s not as if they’re neutral news shows anyway.
Americans are richer than ever- and poverty hits an all-time low https://t.co/9a3Wfl55Qs pic.twitter.com/MNMrPIGGB8
— New York Post (@nypost) September 16, 2026
But this is not the first time the Big Three have pulled a stunt like this in 2026. Recently, the networks also spiked groundbreaking news that drug prices had fallen 3.1 percent in July, which reflected the steepest decline since 1963. But for World News Tonight anchor David Muir, in particular, the more important news was yapping on about elks at the Redwood National and State Parks.
The problem with both of these stories for the lefty media is that they skewer the overarching narrative that Trump is somehow steering the U.S. economy off of a cliff. MRC Business just released a study with CNSNews using BLS data to calculate the five-month average annual consumer price inflation rate spanning the entirety of the Iran War to date (March-July 2026) and juxtaposed it to the same period during 2022 (March-July). This year, it's currently 3.6 percent. During the same period in 2022 under Joe Biden, with no war underway, the inflation rate averaged a whopping 8.6 percent.
The Big Three networks will apparently do anything to protect the narrative, even if it means throwing journalistic ethics out the window.
