At the Capitol grilling of the PBS and NPR CEOs on March 26, Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas) asked PBS boss Paula Kerger, "Would you believe that PBS is fair and objective and nonpartisan?"
Kerger said, "Yes."
Fallon then noted that on "Washington Week with The Atlantic" in 2023, host and Atlantic magazine editor Jeffrey Goldberg pronounced President Joe Biden as mentally "quite acute." Fallon asked Kerger if there were "any dissenting opinions" on that episode. Kerger professed ignorance. Fallon assured her there was not. So when Biden failed on the debate stage in 2024, Fallon said the world found out who was lying: "the Democrats, Jeffrey Goldberg and PBS."
Hours after this hearing, "PBS News Hour" put on Jeffrey Goldberg for almost seven unchallenged minutes to toot his own horn for having the fortune of Team Trump messing up and including him in a chat on the private encrypted app Signal as officials discussed bombing the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen.
But that segment was nothing compared to two nights later, when Goldberg hosted a very special, self-glorifying 30-minute episode of "Washington Week with The Atlantic." As usual, his supporting cast was unanimously left-wing Democrat journalists: the husband-and-wife team of New York Times reporter Peter Baker and New Yorker writer Susan Glasser, the very biased PBS White House reporter Laura Barron-Lopez, and Shane Harris of ... The Atlantic. No dissenting opinions on Goldberg's heroic journalistic stance. Super cozy.
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Goldberg could mock the Trump team's "enthusiastic efforts to deflect ... mainly by calling me unpleasant names." You poor thing!
The crew then echoed each other that this Signalgate scandal was enormous and unprecedented, and of course, as Goldberg said, "a dumb mistake." Yes, don't include an editor whose magazine endorsed President Donald Trump's opponents in the last three election cycles. That's profoundly dumb.
You could tell you were observing a liberal bubble when the name "Biden" never came up, so no mention of Team Biden using Signal on their phones before Team Trump did. No one would confuse a successful strike on the Houthis with Biden's deadly Afghan withdrawal fiasco.
After the energetic claim that the details of this conversation must be considered "classified information" -- to dissent from this is "farcical" -- they turned to lashing the Trump team for pushing back on the press. They were supposed to apologize sheepishly, and the story would vanish within 48 hours. Assuming there would be a brief episode in anti-Trump bias is "farcical."
An apology to Trump supporters would be in order. But it should be recognized that PBS and Team Goldberg are out to destroy Trump and empower the Democrats. They are not going to go gently away after an "oops" message.
Barron-Lopez proclaimed Trump's people base their actions on lies and attempt to discredit stories attacking them. She cued up Goldberg: "Do you think there's a lesson for the press?"
Goldberg broke out the old "just continue to do your job" line, when we know he feels his job is to destroy Trump. "You have to be willing to be intimidated in order to have an effective bully, right?" Then he said, "I don't want to be self-righteous or anything (heaven forbid!), but if you have the truth and you're aligned with the truth ... ultimately, the voters, the citizens will recognize reality."
This leaves the impression: "And vote for Democrats next time."
This is the reality of what PBS is -- an arrogant, unanimous left-wing channel. For Paula Kerger to lie to Pat Fallon and say they're objective and nonpartisan oozes contempt for the public who funds their partisan propaganda.
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org.
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