‘Really Jarring!’ Jessica Tarlov Calls Out Independent Journalists for Exposing Themselves as Anti-Trump Partisans
Jessica Tarlov, the liberal voice of Fox News's The Five, defended her show on Semafor's podcast Mixed Signals for "not hiding partisanship," like many journalists who are now independent of networks and showing their true "Anti-Trump" colors.
Co-host Ben Smithasked Tarlov, "Aren't you just sort of basically putting on an entertaining show at the expense of the country?"
"You said that in such a nice tone, and then at the end there got real serious and negative!" Tarlov said of Smith's question, before acknowledging that she's cognizant of "selling a product" to advertisers and viewers.
"I don't necessarily think that putting on an entertaining show, which is how you get so many butts in seats, then, plus, the social media proliferation that comes from the show is obviously part of programming. And we can't all be PBS, right?"
"But one thing that The Five does, and a lot of Fox programming, is, they're not hiding partisanship or agenda in some way," Tarlov said, continuing:
And we have seen an enormous amount of pushback against people who folks thought were reporters or independent journalists or non-partisans, where it's like, actually, you had an agenda the entire time! And a lot of that was being anti-Trump, frankly. And you see where — and I don't begrudge anyone a career evolution, if you decide that you want to leave cable news and you want to go independent and be on Substack, or you want to go to MeidasTouch, or do whatever it is that makes sense for you and your family — you see a lot of people's true colors. And that has been really jarring to folks who've watched these people for a long time.
The Five was the most-watched cable news program in August, averaging 3.3 million total viewers. In Dec. 2025, Mediaite ranked Tarlov and her co-hosts Jesse Watters, Greg Gutfeld, Dana Perino,and Harold Ford Jr.as No. 1 on the Most Influential in News Media list.
Watch the interview with Tarlov on Semafor's Mixed Signals podcast above.
The post 'Really Jarring!' Jessica Tarlov Calls Out Independent Journalists for Exposing Themselves as Anti-Trump Partisans first appeared on Mediaite .
