On Aug. 12, the White House sent a letter to the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Dr. Lonnie G. Bunch III, informing him the Trump Administration “will be leading a comprehensive internal review of selected Smithsonian museums and exhibitions…to ensure alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions.”  

Exactly one week later, President Donald Trump posted the following to social media: “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.” Our analysts rated media coverage of these announcements in our Topic of the Week.

The least biased piece in our content set came from The Art Newspaper. This article gave some background about the funding and governance of the Smithsonian but was mostly “sharp rebukes from groups spanning the museum field to free-speech organisations” who believe the Trump Administration is trying to “police Smithsonian programming.” 

However, our analysts did not believe these criticisms were political in nature and came more from a belief the Smithsonian should be able to operate free from any political interference, whether from the left or the right.  Our analysts found this article to be simple fact reporting with minimal bias.

The only other item our analysts rated that made it into the fact-reporting range was an article from The New York Times. Our analysts spent more time discussing this article than anything else in our content set. The author of this article interviewed numerous artists and museum curators from around the country to see how they changed their programming due to Donald Trump’s re-election to the presidency.

All of our analysts agreed that it was a well-researched piece that showed high effort on the part of the author. However, the headline (“As Trump Targets the Smithsonian, Museums Across the U.S. Feel a Chill”) and framing of the criticisms against the Trump Administration were more biased compared to The Art Newspaper article.

One of the people interviewed in this article said “the chilling effect [of the Trump Administration] on museum programming struck at the heart of artistic experimentation and the historic role of art to occasionally provoke strong reactions in viewers.” The author noted “[i]n previous years, museums were cautious not to upset progressive audiences…[b]ut nowadays, museums are worried about the reaction from conservative audiences.” Our analysts rated this article as a mix of fact reporting and analysis with strong left bias.

In the New York Post, anthropologist Elizabeth Weiss wrote, “[President] Trump isn’t trying to ‘erase history,’ he’s looking to reverse a woke movement that has indeed rewritten the American story to highlight suffering rather than providing a balanced picture of our past.” In a video that accompanied the article, Weiss said the Smithsonian is “overly focused on this one negative aspect of our history, slavery, as opposed to taking a look at all the great things that we have in our history.” 

In the article, she also said, “Trump’s criticism that the Smithsonian is overly focused on slavery is not unreasonable: In nearly every exhibit, critical race theory in general, or slavery specifically, makes an appearance,” but she provided little evidence to support this claim, which lowered the article’s reliability score. 

She also wrote, “There’s no mention in either of the American Indian Museums — in NYC or DC — about slavery practiced by Native Americans,” but our analysts noted that while these museums may not have a dedicated permanent exhibit solely focused on Native American slavery, they have engaged in scholarly and public programming on the topic. Our analysts found this article to be opinion with material facts not independently corroborated, with a strong right bias.  

On The Glenn Beck Program, Beck and Stu Burguiere discussed Trump’s post to social media about the Smithsonian and the reaction to it. Beck said if “you want to tell the story of slavery, tell both sides of slavery, not just the horrors of slavery, but the miracle of those who were White, who stood up and tried to stop it…[Slavery]’s not the story of America. It is one of the stories of America that, thank God, we fought. We’re the only country in mass where one race of people fought and died for the freedom of another race of people.” Our analysts rated this video from Beck’s YouTube page as opinion with a strong right bias.

On NPR’s Morning Edition, host Michel Martin interviewed Nikole Hannah-Jones, who produced The 1619 Project, and asked for her reaction to Trump’s social media post and his past criticisms of The 1619 Project. Hannah-Jones said Trump’s “criticism [of the Smithsonian] is baseless…to say that any museum, but particularly the National Museum of African American History and Culture, spends too much time focusing on slavery means that you don’t actually want a real, authentic depiction of the American past.” 

On The 1619 Project, she said, “We are taught that this is a nation founded on freedom. That’s true. We were also founded on slavery, and we’ve only wanted to deal with one of those histories.” Our analysts rated this interview as a mix of analysis and opinion with bias that is slightly strong left.

Finally, our analysts rated a video from The Lincoln Project’s YouTube page. In the video, Rick Wilson was also responding to Trump’s social media post. Wilson said Trump was “complaining about the Smithsonian and saying that all they do is complain about how bad slavery was. Let me be very clear about something. If you are defending slavery, you are losing…if you are defending slavery, you are an absurdity, not a president.”

Wilson also said “Donald Trump has certainly never been to the Smithsonian. He has never engaged in the process of going to a museum where history is portrayed in the good, the bad, the ugly.” However, our analysts noted Trump had previously visited the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. This inaccurate statement, along with Wilson’s conflation of Trump’s complaint about the Smithsonian overemphasizing slavery with a defense of slavery, lowered reliability. Our analysts rated this video as unfair persuasion with  aslightly hyper-partisan left bias.  

Want to see if you agree with our analysts? Find the articles and videos examined by our team on the Topic of the Week page of our website.