Charles Barkley took a break from criticizing ESPN during his NCAA Tournament coverage on CBS to tell you how he really feels about Fox News.
Barkley finished filling out his bracket at halftime of top-seeded Auburn’s Thursday afternoon matchup with Alabama State. And while Barkley has Auburn in the Final Four, he picked his alma mater to get knocked off by Florida, garnering some surprised reactions from Ernie Johnson, Clark Kellogg and Kenny Smith in the studio.
But you didn’t expect Barkley to pick Bruce Pearl and the Auburn Tigers just because he’s rooting for them, did you? That would be biased.
“We’re supposed to be unbiased. What are we, Fox News?! What are we Fox News in here now? This ain’t Fox News, we don’t have to repeat everything the idiots say every day.” – Charles Barkley pic.twitter.com/6P9j1gwoqw
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) March 20, 2025
“We’re supposed to be unbiased,” Barkley fired back after being questioned for picking against Auburn. “What are we, Fox News?! What are we Fox News in here now? This ain’t Fox News, we don’t have to repeat everything the idiots say every day.”
ESPN is probably bracing to be ripped by Barkley at some point during the tournament. But that’s probably a stray Fox News wasn’t anticipating.
Whether you’re a fan of CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Newsmax, NewsNation or none of the above, it’s worth noting that every cable news outlet exudes a frustrating level of bias. But we’ll share this quote from Bob Costas’ 2023 appearance on Club Random with Bill Maher.
“If you were someone from outer space and somehow you understood English, and you watched CNN for a week and you watched Fox for a week,” Costas told Maher. “You’d have a much better understanding of what was happening in the world from watching CNN than from watching Fox.”
In 2023, Fox News reached $787 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems in 2023. The settlement was over the voting machine company’s defamation lawsuit which accused Fox News of “recklessly disregarding the truth” to promote 2020 election conspiracy theories being alleged by Trump.
Barkley, of course, still works for TNT Sports, which is a sister network of CNN under Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD). And in 2023, Barkley launched a weekly primetime show on CNN with Gayle King, which was canceled last year.
Despite his ties to CNN, Barkley never shies away from ripping his WBD bosses, and he was notably upset with the way they framed the canceling of his cable news show. So despite any potential biases, it’s fair to assume this is how he really feels about Fox News.
