Gavin Newsom – America’s Greatest Patriot.
Don’t be surprised if Netflix cooks up a Pravda-style documentary with that title as Newsom ramps up to run for president.
The streaming company’s California-based employees are overwhelmingly liberal — and the company’s co-founder seems positively enthralled with the state’s governor. (RELATED: Something to Hold Against Donald Trump)
Liberal bias in the media is hardly a new topic. It was a theme of Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign in 1964. And in the 1990s, CNN was derided as the “Clinton News Network.” But media bias has blossomed during Donald Trump’s time in the White House.
The ideological posture of Netflix is suddenly relevant because, today, the streaming company just announced it is acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns HBO as well as HBO Max, one of Netflix’s top streaming competitors.
[I]f the company’s bid for the company succeeds, its programming would undoubtedly reflect the liberal biases of its employees.
As Senator Mike Lee and Jack Posobiec have warned, if the company’s bid for the company succeeds, its programming would undoubtedly reflect the liberal biases of its employees. Jane Fonda’s newfound fear of authoritarianism reflects the loss of monopoly power in the media and in Hollywood held by the left for decades. Only now does she see market power and concentration as a problem.
How one-sided are Netflix employees? They contributed more than $17.3 million to candidates and other advocacy groups in the 2024 elections for the presidency and for Congress. Want to guess how much of that money went to Republicans? Less than 1 percent.
Skeptics might ask if the donations from Netflix employees only trended left in 2024. Nope. More than 99 percent of the Netflix employees’ contributions went to Democratic candidates in 2020 as well. And the most popular candidates were on the far left of the party — Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
But isn’t it the company’s executives who really decide what Netflix airs? Maybe. But even if so, the liberal leanings are woven into the DNA of the company’s leadership.
Start with the founder of Netflix, Reed Hastings. He is one of the country’s biggest donors to Democrats and aligned causes. Last year, he gave $7 million to a super PAC supporting Kamala Harris for president.
In 2021, he gave Gavin Newsom $3 million amid an effort to recall the California governor. Most recently, Hastings gave $2 million to the Newsom-backed initiative on redrawing congressional districts.
Given Hastings’ political preferences, are we to believe that anyone at the company would dare to push programming that’s critical of Democrats or supportive of Republicans?
Skeptics may argue that Hastings no longer runs Netflix. But the company’s co-CEO, Ted Sarandos, is also a big donor to Democrats (with nothing going to Republicans). He’s given nearly $100,000 to the Democratic National Committee. And his wife, Nicole Avant, served as ambassador to the Bahamas during the Obama years.
Sarandos has already let his personal politics influence Netflix operations. In 2019, after the state of Georgia passed a restrictive abortion law, he spoke out against it and said Netflix “will work with the ACLU and others to fight it in court.” He added, “Should [the law] ever come into effect, we’d rethink our entire investment in Georgia.” That’s politicization, pure and simple.
The chief content officer for Netflix, Bela Bajaria, is also a partisan Democrat. She made the maximum allowable contributions to the campaigns of Kamala Harris of Joe Biden. And she’s given nearly $30,000 to the Democratic National Committee, according to Open Secrets. She was also the co-host of an $8 million fundraiser for the Biden-Harris campaign in 2020. Contributions to Republican candidates? Zero. Likelihood of even-handed treatment of Republicans? Also zero.
Let’s not forget that in 2018, Netflix struck a $143 million deal with Barack and Michelle Obama for original programming — much of which seems to be geared toward bolstering the profile of… Barack and Michelle Obama.
Even if the Netflix bid fails, there’s another flawed bidder waiting in the wings: Comcast. For more than a decade, it has owned MSNBC, the far-left news network that now calls itself MS NOW. (RELATED: The New Editor-in-Chief of CBS News Is Not Like the Others)
The channel is reportedly being spun off to a Comcast subsidiary soon. But one has to wonder about Comcast’s commitment to fairness, given its prolonged stewardship of MSNBC. The New York Times wrote last year that, “Time slots on the cable network once devoted to news programming are now occupied by Trump-bashing opinion hosts.” (RELATED: The Spectacle Ep. 261: MSNBC’s Rebrand Can’t Save It From Itself)
The article also pointed out that MSNBC gave the Biden press secretary, Jen Psaki, her own show and that NBC News reporters bristled over the channel’s liberal politics. (RELATED: Jen Psaki Fawns Over Zohran Mamdani)
The Netflix bid has sparked antitrust concerns, given that the company’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery would give it enormous power over the streaming marketplace. The winning bidder will take over the Warner Bros. Discovery TV and movie studios, as well as employees, whose campaign contributions last year were also 99 percent in support of Democratic candidates.
When one firm can affect the entire market for narratives and movies and streaming, one should immediately think of central planning and censorship, not freedom of ideas.
That’s great news for Democrats. And whoever acquires Warner Bros. Discovery, its employees will have a few years before the next presidential contest to ensure that Americans know Governor Newsom as “America’s Greatest Patriot.”
Dave Brat is a PhD economist and a former member of Congress from Virginia.
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