On June 25, a 33-year-old Marxist Muslim named Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic mayoral primary in New York City. Over the following week, broadcast networks ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS ran nearly an hour of coverage about the self-described democratic socialist, but spent less than two minutes on his numerous radical positions and scandals.
MRC analysts looked at all coverage of Zohran Mamdani on ABC, CBS, NBC’s flagship morning and evening news programs and Sunday morning political talk shows, as well as all of PBS’s regular news shows, from June 25 through July 2, 2025. During the seven-day period following Mamdani’s electoral victory, these networks spent a combined 56 minutes and 26 seconds discussing the young socialist candidate — but only 85 seconds on any of his wildest policy prescriptions.
We identified five particularly damaging details about Mamdani’s candidacy to look for, including:
ABC, CBS, and PBS ignored all five of the above issues. NBC ignored four of the five, but spent 85 seconds on his proposal to raise taxes on “whiter neighborhoods.” That discussion occurred on the June 29 Meet the Press during a lengthy interview with Mamdani himself.
Instead, these networks chose to paint Mamdani as a political upstart with fresh economic ideas. The morning after his upset victory over former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, NBC News correspondent Emilie Ikeda gushed on Today: “Mamdani ran to the left of Cuomo, focusing on affordability and pushing populist ideas, including free public buses, rent freezes, and city-owned grocery stores funded by higher taxes on the wealthy.”
That same day over on ABC’s Good Morning America, senior investigative reporter Aaron Katersky marveled that Mamdani’s victory signified a “seismic shift in New York City politics, and a possible harbinger for the Democratic Party.”
During Mamdani’s Meet The Press interview, moderator Kristen Welker noted that President Trump had slammed him as a “communist.” But rather than press him on his cozy relationship with avowed Marxists and his overt communist rhetoric, she instead treated the remark as a reckless smear and gave him free rein to deny the allegation without pushback.
The media’s ongoing sanitization of Mamdani’s radicalism suggests not only that they support Mamdani, but also that they expect more prominent Demcorats to begin espousing similar views in the coming years. Should the Democratic Party lurch even further leftward to align with ideologues like Mamdani, expect plenty more media whitewashing to ensue.
