Broadcast Love Letters for Lisa Murkowski

Tim Graham on Jun 27, 2025

Here's how it's so easy to identify the national media as liberal Democrats: They hate "moderate" Democrats. They love moderate Republicans. They despise disunity in their party, and love to fester disunity in the Other Party.

This week, we've witnessed an outpouring of love for Sen. Lisa Murkowski of (R-Alaska), whom the Institute for Legislative Analysis evaluated as voting for limited government just 37% of the time in 2024. These journalists loathed "centrist" Democrats like Sen. Joe Manchin or even Sen. Kyrsten Sinema.

Murkowski is selling a new book titled "Far from Home: An Alaskan Senator Faces the Extreme Climate of Washington, D.C." The liberal networks haven't offered a welcome wagon to books by conservative senators like Tom Cotton, Mike Lee and, especially, Rand Paul, whose last book put Anthony Fauci on the cover and was titled "Deception: The Great COVID Coverup."

CBS started the love train with "Sunday Morning," a program usually reserved for Democrat gushfests. Norah O'Donnell celebrated how the senator beat back a Tea Party challenger in 2010 by running and winning as an independent. "Did that enforce in you this idea that, OK, I've got the backing of my constituents to do what I think is morally right and sort of strike out in this independent way?" She later asked: "Alaska relies more heavily on federal funding and programs than perhaps any other state in the country. Are you worried that your constituents may be punished for your independence?"

They repeated the embrace on Monday's "CBS Mornings." Co-host Tony Dokoupil worried about MAGA pushback: "How can you have a free and frank conversation in Congress or anywhere else where, as you've acknowledged, there's this fear of retaliation? Maybe it's physical. We've seen lawmakers targeted. Maybe it's not physical, but it's definitely not just political. It's beyond that. How can democracy function when retaliation is so real and so intense these days?"

Co-host Gayle King asked the senator, "How do you navigate Donald Trump, who has been sometimes unkind, disparaging to you?" Co-host Vladimir Duthiers interjected: "And are forced to hire security sometimes?" The MAGA crowd are violent, unlike, oh, anti-ICE rioters. King concluded: "You're also grounded by your values, which come across in this book. We thank you so much."

On Monday's "PBS News Hour," the entire thing was a MAGA-bashing session. Co-host Amna Nawaz lovingly quoted the senator from her book finding Trump "isn't that smart. Trump lacks the ability for strategic or linear thinking. He isn't able to form or follow through on complex plans." The same goes for his allies: "As the populists have gained power, they haven't succeeded in governing. They have slogans, but slogans are not solutions."

NPR spent 14 minutes on "All Things Considered" on Monday and Tuesday presenting Murkowski as a courageous bulwark for democracy. NPR won't consider the books written by those right-wing Republicans. But co-host Juana Summers brought the conversation around to President Trump's request to rescind $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, NPR's taxpayer trough. Murkowski reassured her: "I am an unabashed supporter of public broadcasting in my state that is so highly rural."

So it's obvious that PBS and NPR are putting Murkowski on their platforms precisely because they're rewarding their own financial backers on the proper congressional appropriations committees.

None of these interviewers focused on the leftist half of the "Extreme Climate" in Murkowski's book about Congress. Extremists among the Democrats? Maybe these journalists can ask Joe Manchin about that when he comes out with his memoir "Dead Center" in September. But nobody should count on that.

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Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.