On the April 16 PBS News Hour, as federal funding for both PBS and NPR was coming under heavy fire, co-PBS News Hour, co-anchor Amna Nawaz boasted that on her program, “we regularly invite and host conservative and Republican voices.”
But is that true? MRC analysts tracked and labeled every guest who appeared on the PBS News Hour during the two-month period between July 19, 2025, the day after Congress rescinded taxpayer funding for PBS and NPR, and September 18, 2025.
In all, the News Hour hosted 98 liberal-leaning guests and 21 conservative-leaning guests, a disparity of 4.6 to 1. Those stark findings are similar to those of two previous PBS News Hour guest studies in May 2025 and March 2023.
Key Findings:
■ Liberal-Democratic guests outnumbered conservative-Republican guests 98-21, a liberal-leaning/conservative-leaning ratio of 4.6 to 1.
■ Of seven total appearances by Republican officials, three were coded as anti-Trump. Of 13 total appearances by Democratic officials, none were pro-Trump.
■ When elected officials and political appointees were removed from the guest count, the ideological disparity of show guests widened to 85-15, a ratio of 5.7 to 1.
■ Liberal journalists made 16 appearances as guests, compared to zero conservative journalists.
Guests were categorized as based on the subject and content of their PBS interviews, not their overall ideological stances. For instance, socialist Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich was not categorized for his PBS appearance discussing artificial intelligence. Historian Douglas Brinkley was not counted when he discussed the impact of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and there were no political attacks.
Some guests were coded as conservative over literally “penny-ante” issues, like a PBS guest who supported Trump’s idea to kill off the penny. Some ostensibly Republican and conservative guests opposed Trump on a variety of issues, including tariffs, or were put on to defend Israel, while often paired in a discussion with a fierce Israel opponent.
Yet even with those generous parameters in place, the ideological gap between liberal- and conservative-leaning guests remained a chasm, with both PBS and NPR stuffed with hand-wringing liberals to discuss the latest Trump atrocity against democracy, or immigrants, or freedom of speech.
Liberal Guests Fearmongered Over Trump 2.0, While Anchors Hailed Lefties
The News Hour retained its hostility toward the Trump administration protecting Jewish students from the Hamas-supporters taking over elite liberal campuses in protest of Israel’s defensive war in Gaza. Pro-DEI Wesleyan University president Michael Roth ridiculously claimed on July 24 that efforts to protect Jews from anti-semitism on campus were akin to kidnappings for ransom, calling the administration’s pressure “an assault on the independence of civil society in America.”
The August 13 show featured Rachel Accurso, known on YouTube as the children’s edutainment personality Ms. Rachel, who has a side gig pushing Hamas-helping propaganda about conditions in Gaza on social media. News Hour co-anchor Geoff Bennett flattered her with a Mister Rogers comparison.
Bennett cued up Democratic Party attorney (and MSNBC personality) Marc Elias’s partisan rant on August 15, making the knee-jerk anti-Trump case against the president’s executive order to fight crime in D.C.: “Donald Trump is an authoritarian and he admires authoritarians. So, I mean, he -- you have to take my word for it. Look at who he pals around with and look at who he cites with approval. And one of the things that authoritarians do, one of the things he has tried to do, is to exert police power….”
PBS was clearly rankled by Trump’s insistence the Smithsonian museums emphasize America’s greatness and not perpetually dwell on shameful moments. Co-anchor Nawaz’s skewed discussion with left-wing historian Peniel Joseph about the Smithsonian August 20 culminated with the cliché of McCarthyism, with Joseph ranting: "This is reminiscent of the age of McCarthyism, the age of the Cold War years, where speech was suppressed. Folks who were cultural producers in Hollywood and academics lost their jobs, but average people lost their jobs too for speaking out for social justice.” Nawaz didn’t challenge Joseph’s warped comparison.
Two nights later, Target boycott leader and pastor Jamal Bryant was the guest as co-anchor Geoff Bennett unleashed a strangely energetic fusillade against the retail behemoth for supposedly bowing to Donald Trump and discreetly rolling back its "diversity, equity, and inclusion" (DEI) initiatives. Bennett sounded like a boycotter press release: “The big box retailer Target is reeling. Sales have stalled, its stock price has plunged, and the company faces growing backlash months after rolling back its diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI initiatives. A boycott led by our next guest slowed store traffic nationwide, and is among the factors that pushed longtime CEO Brian Cornell to step down after 11 years. Now Target is scrambling to reset its image and strategy.”
The segment was particularly jarring, given the hostile fashion the News Hour treated a conservative boycott of Target over Pride Month in June 2023.
Was the News Hour aware of its perception of being a liberal bubble? An August 26 segment on Trump’s moves to fire Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook for allegedly making false statements to get a better mortgage, featured two anti-Trump voices, one who served under Barack Obama, the other at the center-left Brookings Institution. But as if to cover herself, Nawaz announced, “We did invite Bill Pulte to join us on the program, but the Trump administration declined.” (Pulte is director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and posted alleged incriminating evidence against Cook on X.)
Guest Journalists as Liberal Mouthpieces
With its own roster of liberal reporters down one with the departure of White House reporter Laura Barron-Lopez to a place more suited to her politics (MSNBC), outside journalists stepped up with liberal taking points.
Jasmine Garsd of PBS’s fellow taxpayer-funded news outlet NPR appeared September 8 to talk about “Alligator Alcatraz.” After Garsd lamented how detainees at that illegal immigrant detention center in Florida were being held in “absolutely horrific conditions,” Nawaz asked about the Supreme Court ruling lifting restrictions on ICE agents conducting raids in Los Angeles.
Jasmine Garsd: I mean, listen, what we're seeing is these quotas, right? It's been said that the government is aiming for 3,000 daily arrests, a million deportations in the first year….And so the question is, how are these people being selected? How are they being picked up? And there are so many accusations that it's racial profiling.
On August 5, reporter William Brangham interviewed Will Sommer, senior reporter at the liberal-leaning site The Bulwark and author of Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America.
After Bennett set up reporter William Brangham regarding “how the president's promotion of fringe theories has helped keep the [Jeffrey] Epstein case in the public eye,” The Bulwark reporter claimed: “On the campaign trail and in office, President Trump has a habit of courting unfounded conspiracies.That includes QAnon, the belief that some hidden figure in the government, Q, is explaining how Donald Trump is waging a secret battle against dark, nefarious forces, including a cabal of child sex traffickers.”
Sommer overstated things when he claimed “Epstein's death and the pandemic really drove a lot more people into conspiracy theories. And a lot of that too was people like — were Donald Trump and his allies embracing conspiracy theories. Trump spoke very positively about QAnon believers during the 2020 campaign. So it's been a very symbiotic relationship between Trump and QAnon.”
Republican Party Poopers
During a period where Republicans control the House, Senate, and White House, somehow Democrats dominated the News Hour guest list 13-7. And of those seven total appearances by Republican elected officials or political appointees, three were anti-Trump, including popular News Hour guest, retired Rear Admiral James McPherson, who came on the September 2 show to predictably criticize Trump’s latest military move -- in this case, the administration temporarily assigning military lawyers to act as judges in immigration cases.
Conclusion: As always, the guest list for News Hour was dominated by disgruntled Democratic politicos, leftist professors, and legacy media liberals – an unwise stance for a previously tax-funded network that operated under a congressional mandate to maintain "strict adherence to objectivity and balance in all programs or series of programs of a controversial nature, and a major reason it lost that taxpayer funding.
METHODOLOGY: The study covered a two-month period, July 19, 2025-September 18, 2025, encompassing every edition of the PBS News Hour (Monday through Friday). The half-hour PBS News Weekend was not included.
Guests were defined as interview subjects if they appeared in studio or talked to a host or in-studio reporter remotely. Guests were defined as either liberal or conservative based on the subject matter and content of the interview, or classified as non-applicable if neither designation applied. Elected officials and political appointees of both parties were also included -- defined as current or recently retired officeholders at the federal, state, and local level, as well as those who served in the Biden White House or served previously or currently in the Trump White House, or were appointed to their position during the Biden or Trump administrations. Regular show pundits and public TV reporters from local member stations were excluded from the PBS tally