A new analysis reveals that the PBS program Washington Week with The Atlantic—funded by American taxpayers—has spent the past three months relentlessly attacking President Donald Trump and his administration, while giving Democrats a near-total pass.
According to a study released Tuesday by the Media Research Center (MRC), the weekly program devoted 83 minutes to covering President Trump and Republican issues from April through June. Of that, 93% of the coverage was negative.
Even on topics where the Trump administration has received bipartisan praise—such as the successful military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities—the PBS panel still delivered 82% negative commentary.
Trump’s immigration policies, including ongoing efforts to restore the rule of law and end the judicial obstruction from sanctuary cities, received 100% negative coverage from the show.
“PBS claims to be objective,” the MRC report states, “but its flagship political roundtable functions as a taxpayer-funded echo chamber for the Left.”
The program’s opening segments, typically led by moderator Jeffrey Goldberg, regularly framed Trump in a disparaging light. One example cited in the report: “Most presidents wait until they leave the White House to cash in. President Trump takes a different approach. Crypto deals, hotels, golf courses, 747s—everything is on the table.”
Panelists, drawn overwhelmingly from left-wing media outlets, offered few opposing views. Of the 14 news organizations represented on the show during the study period, 13 were liberal. The sole exception, The Dispatch, offered no ideological counterbalance—its representative reportedly echoed the same anti-Trump rhetoric as the rest of the panel.
PBS News Hour correspondent Laura Barron-Lopez, a frequent panelist, even claimed that Trump officials “emboldened extremists” and “used hate speech” while accusing the administration of “normalizing political violence”—rhetoric the study described as inflammatory and unsubstantiated.
Under federal law, PBS is required to maintain “strict adherence to objectivity and balance in all programs or series of programs of a controversial nature,” especially those funded through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting—which receives about $445 million annually from American taxpayers.
Yet the MRC report found that Democratic figures, including the Biden administration, were barely criticized at all. Aside from one special episode centered on the tell-all book Original Sin—which exposed the Biden campaign’s cover-up of the president’s cognitive decline—Democrats were largely absent from scrutiny.
“Outside of that one episode,” the report notes, “Democrats received a total of just 61 seconds of coverage—43 seconds positive, 18 seconds negative.”
MRC concluded that Washington Week “continues to grossly betray its mandate to the American taxpayer” and should face serious scrutiny for failing to provide the ideological balance its charter demands.
While millions of conservative Americans foot the bill for PBS every year, the programming they’re forced to subsidize appears intent on vilifying their values—and their president.