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The broadcast networks can easily demonstrate their leftist bias in the way they cover entertainers. Those who use their fame for “good” are praised, and those who are the opposite – who lean Republican – are “controversial.” Nowhere was that more evident than how the press freaked out about actress Sydney Sweeney vs. how they covered for antisemitic rapper Macklemore.
Sweeney, who identified as a registered Republican, keeps ending up on the “wrong” side of the networks. Last year, she made a provocative ad for blue jeans, making a pun with the word “good genes.” ABC News warned: “The play on words is being compared to Nazi propaganda with racial undertones,” and then invoked professor Robin Landa proclaiming the pun was racist: “The American Eugenics Movement and its prime between 1900 and 1940 weaponized the idea of good genes just to justify white supremacism.”
Right now, Sweeney is featured in mostly naked advertisements for a sports prediction market called Novig. On Sept. 14, “CBS Mornings” carried the feminist water, weirdly claiming the ad demeaned women’s sports. Adriana Diaz proclaimed, “Actor Sydney Sweeney`s appearance in a provocative ad campaign is drawing backlash, especially from female athletes.” She reported the four-time Olympic gold medalist swimmer Ariarne Titmus called the ad “a kick in the face to every woman who has dedicated her life to perfecting her craft.”
STEAMY SYDNEY SWEENEY AD DRAWS BACKLASH FROM FEMALE ATHLETES
Clearly, Sweeney’s ad was directed at men who are likely to bet on men’s sports. It was a weird claim. They noted that Sweeney responded with an Instagram post displaying athletes appearing mostly naked in ESPN Magazine’s “Body Issue.”
Actress Sydney Sweeney poses nude in a promotional billboard ad for the sports-prediction market app Novig in Times Square, New York, on Sept. 16, 2026. Sweeney has received online backlash for the ads featuring her nude with strategically placed sporting equipment in Novig’s first national ad campaign. (Anthony Behar/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect)
Diaz pushed back: “So she is making that comparison, but people are really upset about this …. She is not an athlete herself and she is objectifying women – I mean, many people believe.”
SYDNEY SWEENEY’S PROVOCATIVE SPORTS AD ‘REINFORCES THE IMAGE SHE HAS ALREADY BUILT’ DESPITE BACKLASH: EXPERT
Sweeney drew more negative coverage on the broadcast networks than Lindsay Clancy, who admitted to strangling her own three children. After her trial ended in a mistrial, the broadcast network coverage was 65% positive.
Sweeney also drew more negative coverage than the White rapper Macklemore – a stage name for Ben Haggerty – who was disinvited from several of performer Ed Sheeran’s concerts over his fervent talk of Israel’s alleged “genocide” in Gaza. On Sept. 15, ABC’s “World News Tonight” led the broadcast with “serious trouble” for Sheeran.
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Anchor David Muir intoned: “We begin tonight with the political backlash playing out. Multiple performers now dropping out of singer Ed Sheeran’s U.S. concert tour. It comes after Macklemore was removed as the opening act over remarks he made in support of Palestinians.”
ABC reporter Whit Johnson vaguely suggested Macklemore’s song “Hind’s Hall” was “a song he wrote about the pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses.” In typical fashion, the song touts “f— the police” and implies they’re racist: “Has always been about dollars and the color of your pigment / but White supremacy is finally on blast / Screaming ‘Free Palestine’ ’til they’re home at last.” The lyrics include bashing Israel for colonialism, apartheid and genocide and attacking the “Nakba” – the Islamist term for “displacing the Palestinians” in creating Israel in 1948.
MACKLEMORE DOUBLES DOWN AFTER GETTING KICKED OFF ED SHEERAN TOUR AFTER PRO-PALESTINE STANCE
Macklemore’s schtick is so upside-down that he’s hailing pro-Hamas protests and then calling the immigration police of ICE a “terrorist organization.”
On the “PBS News Hour,” they brought on New York Times music-industry reporter Ben Sisario, who brought a similar vagueness about the Macklemore smears: “He also has a protest song that he released a couple of years ago, again about the war, and in it he accuses Israel of genocide, and he shows his solidarity with student protesters in the U.S. and in New York. So, his position has been widely known.”
MACKLEMORE’S LONG HISTORY OF CONTROVERSY FROM GRAMMY WINS TO ‘FREE PALESTINE’ CONCERT REMARKS
Sisario tried to argue stadiums were more willing to allow antisemitic rapper Kanye West, and concluded: “I also think it is specifically about the political issue of the war in Gaza, and whether criticism of Israel’s stance and Israel’s actions in that war is considered allowable.” PBS routinely blasts Israel as a global pariah.
Sweeney drew more negative coverage on the broadcast networks than Lindsay Clancy, who admitted to strangling her own three children. After her trial ended in a mistrial, the broadcast network coverage was 65% positive.
Poor Sheeran could have toured with many apolitical pop acts – like some recent winners of “The Voice” or “American Idol” – but he chose a White rapper who built his career on confessing his “White privilege” and trashing White people, a man Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro calls “the Colin Kaepernick of music,” all about being celebrated by the left as a “social justice” champion.
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Sheeran lamented, “I’ve tried in my career to not be a political commentator of any kind because I want my music and shows to be about unity, not division, about humanity, not politics.”
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In response to the controversy, Macklemore announced a “Free Palestine Tour,” scheduled for Dublin, Paris and London in October. It’s pretty gross, considering his Palestinian allies murdered 378 innocent people and took others hostage at the “pro-peace” Nova Music Festival near the Gaza border on Oct. 7, 2023. That was part of the 1,200 they killed overall in the terror attack.
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