After Democrats Lose Shutdown Fight, MSNBC Host Tweets That the Media Is Biased Toward Republicans
Hours after news broke that lawmakers had agreed on a deal to end the three-day federal government shutdown, MSNBC host Joy Reid raised some eyebrows with a tweet suggesting that the media is biased in favor of Republicans.
Reid, the host of MSNBC’s “AM Joy,” seemed to indicate that media coverage of the shutdown and resulting compromise was slanted.
“There is nothing so predictable as media spin in favor of Republicans,” Reid tweeted.
But her post was widely criticized by social media users, many of whom pointed out that media outlets actually have strong liberal biases.
As pointed out by Independent Journal Review, a 2017 Gallup poll showed that 62 percent of Americans think the “news media favors one political party over the other.” Sixty-four percent of those respondents said the Democratic Party is the one favored.
Though liberal activists, reporters and others expressed the belief that Democrats had caved on immigration reform, Reid disagreed.
In a column penned for The Daily Beast, she called the deal that ended the shutdown a “bold fold” on the part of Democrats.
Senate Democrats originally forced a shutdown by refusing to support a spending bill. They were upset it did not address the roughly 700,000 illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and were protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
In return for passage of the compromise deal, which funds the government through Feb. 8, Republicans promised to immediately take up the DACA issue. Moreover, both bills ensure that the Children’s Health Insurance Program would be extended for six years.
According to Reid, the deal actually helped Democrats because it took CHIP “off the table,” while at the same time putting the pressure on Republicans to follow through on their promise to address DACA.
“In short, buckle up,” she wrote. “It’s going to be a long war.”
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