NewsNation has committed to playing things, politically, right down the middle. That’s why one of the network’s primetime shows is named On Balance with Leland Vittert.
Lots of cable news shows say they are unbiased. The hosts will spend plenty of time telling you that no one else should be trusted to deliver the “real” news other than that person.
Leland Vittert is one of the newest members of cable news’ primetime brigade. He moved into the 9 PM ET timeslot previously occupied by Dan Abrams Live in the NewsNation lineup before that program ended earlier this year. Abrams worked hard to stand in the middle, politically, allowing guests to be the stars and showcase their opinions, while he occasionally took strong stances against both prominent Democrats and Republicans when warranted.
I watched Friday’s episode of On Balance with Leland Vittert to get a feel for how the program slots into the NewsNation strategy of simply providing the news and interesting stories and allowing their viewers to make their own determinations.
Vittert’s interview with former federal prosecutor Shan Wu and President Trump’s former lawyer Jim Trusty was fair and balanced. He asked questions that would make viewers think, made his guests ponder, and led to interesting responses in an attempt to take viewers inside the minds of the country’s power brokers.
He also featured a conversation with Mark Halperin, who makes regular appearances on The Megyn Kelly Show, to talk about “Trump’s continuing momentum” and “winning the messaging war” against Democrats.
And this is where my opinion of the program was changed.
Let’s play a game. If I asked you to name the network the following portion of a monologue came from, which would you guess?
“This week, Democrats have been reminded once again that fighting against Donald Trump does not work. However, being for socialism works out pretty well for them in certain cases. Just consider this week, everything that Democrats have counted on to stop Trump has come up shortly. They’ve tried impeaching him twice. They tried raiding his home, they tried multiple felony indictments, they tried a felony conviction, and they tried civil judgments. None of that worked to stop Donald Trump’s rise and now his second term, so they turned to the court. The courts, that was their last line of defense. The Supreme Court today, well, I won’t say kill Democrats’ hopes, but it certainly poured a lot of water on the fire. They are against Donald Trump. And they are not for anything.”
Fox News? Newsmax? OAN?
Nope. That was Leland Vittert on Friday evening. A primetime host on a network purporting to be non-partisan.
Now, in fairness to Vittert, it did feel as if his stance felt more in line with a “Both sides are awful, am I right?” than a “These radical leftists need to be defeated so we can take our country back!” that you might get on the aforementioned conservative cable news channels.
Furthermore, NewsNation flashed the following chryon on the screen as Vittert gave his message.
I think it’s a difficult sell to say that you’re non-partisan and down-the-middle politically with a monologue about how — in my terms, not Vittert’s — “the Democrats suck” and that’s listed as “breaking news.”
For clarity’s sake, my issue isn’t with Vittert’s stance or opinion. He’s more than free to have them and share them. But I don’t think you can pretend to be an unbiased news network that features commentary of “one side is wrong about everything” with a graphic that says “Breaking News: Democrats Only Message is Anti-Trump” and then give me the whole “We report, you decide” poppycock.
The episode of the program hosted by Leland Vittert included a portion of the conversation with Halperin about Zohran Mamdani — the winner of the Democratic primary in the New York mayoral race — and whether or note Democrats are worried about being defined by the “communist, socialist” political figure, as well as questions about whether Democrats can ever win a messaging war against Donald Trump.
They aren’t the most unbiased, unslanted questions in cable news history.
NewsNation has pounded that table that it isn’t your run-of-the-mill cable news channel with biased hosts, slanted news coverage, and a hope that they’ll win voters from only one side of the political aisle. Maybe this episode of On Balance with Leland Vittert is a complete misnomer. Maybe I just caught a bad night when the coverage was perhaps more slanted one way than the other.
And maybe I’m the fool for believing in something that just isn’t possible. I thought Elizabeth Vargas Reports — which I reviewed in this space earlier this year — was the perfect representation of what NewsNation was trying to build. This episode of Vittert’s show didn’t align with that vision, in my estimation. And that’s a shame.
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Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing bi-weekly industry features and a weekly column. He has previously served as Program Director and Afternoon Co-Host on 93.1 The Fan in Lima, OH, and is the radio play-by-play voice of Northern Michigan University hockey. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.
