Pressure of Truth
Exposing the spin on all sides of the news.
Outlet profile

PBS NewsHour / Associated Press

U.S. center-left

Owned byPBS NewsHour is produced by WETA-TV, the PBS member station for Washington, D.C. (based in Arlington, Virginia), and distributed nationally by PBS, a nonprofit public media organization. The Associated Press is a not-for-profit news cooperative owned collectively by approximately 1,400 U.S. member news organizations — newspapers, broadcasters, and digital outlets — with no single private or government owner.
FundingPBS NewsHour is funded by corporate underwriters (including BDO, BNSF, Consumer Cellular, and Raymond James), major philanthropic foundations (including MacArthur, Knight, Ford, Rockefeller, Walton Family, and others), and viewer donations; it lost its longtime federal support through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 2025 after Congress rescinded $1.1 billion in CPB appropriations. The AP is funded primarily by licensing fees paid by its member news organizations worldwide, supplemented by more than $61 million in philanthropic grants raised over the past seven years.
On the administrationbroadly critical

Background

The Associated Press was founded in 1846 by five New York newspapers pooling resources to telegraph reports from the Mexican-American War, and from the outset adopted a nonpartisan stance to serve publishers across the political spectrum; it has since grown into the world's largest wire service, a nonprofit cooperative that has won 60 Pulitzer Prizes and now distributes content to thousands of news organizations globally. PBS NewsHour traces its roots to 1973, when journalists Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer provided gavel-to-gavel Watergate coverage on public television, leading to the launch of The MacNeil/Lehrer Report in 1975 as a nightly national program known for in-depth, single-issue treatment of the news. In 1983 it expanded to an hour and became The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour — the first hour-long nightly national newscast on American television — and went through further renamings as anchors changed over the decades, arriving at PBS NewsHour by 2012. Production was handled by the private firm MacNeil/Lehrer Productions for decades before ownership transferred to WETA-TV in 2014, cementing its home in public broadcasting. Most independent bias-rating organizations — including AllSides and Media Bias/Fact Check — classify both PBS NewsHour and the AP as slightly left-of-center, while both receive high marks for factual accuracy; Ad Fontes Media rates AP near the center. In 2025, the Trump administration moved against both outlets: Congress eliminated the CPB's federal appropriation, stripping a major funding source from NewsHour and ultimately forcing the cancellation of its weekend edition and West Coast operation; and the White House barred AP reporters from Oval Office pool coverage after the AP refused to use 'Gulf of America' instead of 'Gulf of Mexico,' a dispute the AP fought in federal court and initially won before the administration appealed. Both organizations covered these conflicts extensively and critically.

Sources

  1. PBS News Hour — Wikipedia
  2. Funders | PBS News
  3. History | PBS News
  4. WETA and MacNeil/Lehrer Productions Announce Planned Transfer Of PBS NewsHour To WETA
  5. Associated Press — Wikipedia
  6. How the Associated Press Got Its Start 175 Years Ago — Smithsonian
  7. PBS NewsHour Media Bias Rating — AllSides
  8. PBS NewsHour's AllSides Media Bias Rating Shifts from Center to Lean Left — AllSides
  9. Associated Press Media Bias — AllSides
  10. Associated Press — Bias and Credibility — Media Bias/Fact Check
  11. PBS NewsHour — Bias and Credibility — Media Bias/Fact Check
  12. Trump signs executive order directing federal funding cuts to PBS and NPR | PBS News
  13. AP sues Trump White House for denying access over 'Gulf of Mexico' row — NPR
  14. Judge orders White House to allow AP access to news events — NPR
  15. Associated Press | Journalism, Pulitzer Prizes, Photography & Gulf of Mexico controversy — Britannica

Profile compiled 2026-07-03; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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