Brent Bozell, President of the Media Research Center which runs NewsBusters, appeared Friday night, at about 9:40 PM EST on the Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes -- with Ollie North filling in for Hannity. Topic: New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller's defense of his paper's hit piece on John McCain, Bozell’s call for his dismissal and how the attack has united conservatives.

MP3 audio clip (5 minutes)

Friday morning, Bozell appeared on C-SPAN's Washington Journal and you can watch an excerpt in this NewsBusters post or the entire 30-minute segment on C-SPAN’s site.

On Friday afternoon, the MRC distributed and posted this press release:

BOZELL: BILL KELLER MUST GO

Tony Snow fans will love absolutely love this.

The former White House Press Secretary -- and all around good guy! -- is going to be Bill O'Reilly's permanent fill-in guest host on the "Radio Factor."

O'Reilly himself posted the good news at his website Thursday:

In his weekly Friday column, USA Today founder Al Neuharth hailed Fidel Castro for how “he outfoxed 10 consecutive U.S. Presidents” and, recalling a meeting with him 20 years ago, Neuharth wrote that he found him “brilliantly briefed” with a “quick, slick comment” after Neuharth told him that profits from Gannett’s other papers subsidized losses at USA Today: “Aha, your company and my country are both socialistic!” Neuharth’s reaction to the oppressive communist dictator's contention:

I paused, said “touche” and lifted a glass of Cuban rum. Then we talked capitalism and socialism and sports until 3:55 a.m.

How cozy.

Perhaps the average New York Times reader makes $250,000 a year, but the average American family? Not quite.

And yet the Times, and its media colleagues, continue to feature sob stories from rich families in stories supposed to illustrate the pain the housing “crisis” is causing for middle- and lower-income families.

“Not since the Depression has a larger share of Americans owed more on their homes than they are worth,” New York Times reporters Edmund Andrews and Louis Uchitelle wrote in a February 22 article. “With the collapse of the housing boom, nearly 8.8 million homeowners, or 10.3 percent of the total, are underwater.”

One of mankind’s fondest dreams is no doubt to live upon this earth in vitality and youth beyond the paltry 75 to 90-odd years the healthiest among us get to enjoy. As such, one of contemporary fantasy’s most compelling franchises has had to have been Highlander. The protagonist is himself immortal and gets to live indefinitely provided his head is not lopped by a fellow Immortal as these are destined to battle until there is a sole survivor among them as the catch phrase reminds the viewer “In the end there can be only one.”

It has been several years since an adventure of the legendary Scotsman, but if “Highlander: The Source” is any indication, it appears he is feeling his 400 plus years.

For several years as this film plodded its way through production and distribution, fans were given hints that they would finally at last be provided with an explanation as to how the Immortals came to be in the first place. This convoluted story delivers none of that as the Source does not necessarily refer to origins.

On Thursday's The O'Reilly Factor, former CBS News correspondent and current FNC analyst Bernard Goldberg pointed out the New York Times has historically had a double standard of reporting allegations of sex scandals by Republicans while downplaying or delaying reports of sex scandals by Bill Clinton. Before Bill O'Reilly clarified that while the Times did cover Gennifer Flowers, but "years and years and years after the fact," Goldberg complained: "The New York Times showed virtually no interest in Bill Clinton and Gennifer Flowers. It showed absolutely no front page interest in allegations by a reputable businesswoman named Juanita Broaddrick, who said that, when Bill Clinton was attorney general of Arkansas, he raped her. ...

Back on August 28 we posted the sad story of the death of a motorcycle policeman who was killed while in service as a motorcade escort for president George W. Bush. What brought the story to our attention was the shocking way that Time Magazine reported the story. With a headline that blared "Bush Motorcade Kills Cop," Time made it appear that the officer died as a result of... well, President Bush.

Well, today, we have a similar story to report. A motorcycle policeman was killed today while in service as a motorcade escort for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The previous incident was headlined as if Bush was responsible for the unfortunate death, but today's Time headline was not so harsh in its tone when a Clinton was involved. "Officer Killed Escorting Clinton," is how Time magazine reported this incident.

With each passing moment, it appears the New York Times laid a big egg with its hit piece on John McCain.

Not only did the Times bury a follow-up piece in Friday's paper as reported by my colleague Clay Waters, but also the Seattle Post-Intelligencer chose not to run the article due to "serious flaws."

PI's managing editor David McCumber blogged at length about this decision Friday (emphasis added throughout, h/t NB reader David Gliewe):

In an attempt to salvage some degree of credibility for presidential candidate Barack Obama's assertions about military equipment shortages, Reuters reporter Andrew Gray went back to a long-discredited claim planted by a local Tennessee reporter, and resurrected a Donald Rumsfeld quote that was not relevant to his story topic.

First, Gray went to what Obama claimed, and how the Pentagon responded:

During the face-to-face encounter on Thursday evening, Obama said he had heard from an Army captain whose unit had served in Afghanistan without enough ammunition or vehicles.

Obama said it was easier for the troops to capture weapons from Taliban militants than it was "to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief," President George W. Bush.

"I find that account pretty hard to imagine," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters.

The gossip blog Deceiver reminds its readers of an inconvenient truth about Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times and purveyor of underbaked allegations of adultery against John McCain. It seems Mr. Keller knows something about cheating on the wife, which led to divorce and the second wife:

In a September 2006 New York magazine story, journalist Joe Hagan described the circumstances behind Keller’s marriage to his second wife, the French gin-namesake Emma Gilbey (who is also an ex-something of U.S. Senator John Kerry, but I digress…) and his divorce from National Public Radio reporter Ann Cooper.

Hagan found friends at the Times were shocked, like reporter Stephen Engelberg: "I wouldn’t pretend to be Bill’s psychologist, but he didn’t get a red sports car, so …" Here's the snippet Deceiver used:

Choice excerpts of Media Research Center Founder and President Brent Bozell on C-SPAN's Washington Journal on February 22, 2008.

Bozell speaks of the Bill Keller New York Times disaster, its implications for the 2008 Presidential race and more.

C-SPAN's posting of the full video of the 30-minute segment from Washington Journal.

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) challenges Sen. Barack Obama (D-Illinois) during their CNN debate in Austin, Texas on February 21, 2008.

"Good Morning America" host Diane Sawyer found an astoundingly gentle way to ask Hillary Clinton about the possibility of not being the Democratic nominee. On Friday's program, the ABC journalist wondered if such a victory was even necessary. She soothingly suggested, "The question is, are you in a new place about winning? Have you decided that you can accomplish what you want to accomplish, even if you don't win the presidency?"

Sawyer's question, in reference to a comment made at the debate in which Clinton claimed she would be "fine," whatever happens in the election, led to more softballs. The GMA host lauded the Democratic presidential contender for something as simple as having her daughter at the debate. "...We noticed that Chelsea came up and immediately slipped your hand into yours, last night. What was that about? What was going on between the two of you?"

There is no need to play the parlor game, "What party is this person a member of?" with this Associated Press story by Lara Jakes Jordan (Feb. 23 Note: The original link from AP's hosted.ap.org site was changed; the story link now goes to Jordan's story carried at SignOnSanDiego.com. Jordan's report has been saved for future reference at BizzyBlog's host for fair use and discussion purposes):

Congressman Charged in Land Deal

Republican Rep. Rick Renzi was indicted Friday on charges of extortion, wire fraud, money laundering and other matters in an Arizona land swap scam that allegedly helped him collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in payoffs.

A 26-page federal indictment unsealed in Tucson, Ariz., accuses Renzi and two former business partners of embezzlement and conspiring to promote the sale of land that buyers could swap for property owned by the federal government.

Global warming alarmist Anne Thompson has shown a propensity for having little regard for economic reality.

Thompson offered viewers on the February 21 broadcast of the "NBC Nightly News" a variety of reasons why building a badly-needed coal-fired power plant in an isolated part of Nevada is a bad idea.

"Critics say emissions are exactly the issue, because coal-fired power is the nation's biggest producer of CO₂ emissions," Thompson said in a February 21 report from Ely, Nev. "That's why Nevada is in the center of this fight. The Ely energy center, which would sit in this valley, along with the other two proposed coal-fired plants, could more than double those greenhouse gas emissions, sending another 31 million tons into the sky."

The fallout continues from yesterday's New York Times hit piece on John McCain. The paper itself doesn't seem eager to put up a fight as network news broadcasts, liberal bloggers, journalism professors, and the general public are questioning the Times's journalistic standards.

Yesterday's inflammatory story, which used anonymous sources to forward nine-year-old allegations from his first presidential run suggesting an improper relationship by John McCain with a female telecommunications lobbyist, received prominent front-page placement; today's follow-up on McCain's press conference was relegated to page 20 -- Elisabeth Bumiller's "McCain Disputes That Aides Warned Him About Ties to Lobbyist."

On Friday’s CBS "Early Show," co-host Harry Smith interviewed Hillary Clinton and wondered if she would step aside for the good of the Democratic Party: "More important for you to be elected, or for a Democrat to be in the White House a year from now?"

Smith began the interview by asking Clinton: "And you stopped, you paused, you drew a breath, and you said you were honored to be there with Barack Obama. And I whispered, as you said that, 'valedictory.' Was that the beginning of the end of your campaign?" Smith went on to wonder if a long drawn-out nomination fight was "worth it"given Obama’s lead:

And I thought I saw some of the fight leave your body last night. I thought I saw there was almost a sign of body language like this guy has won ten states in a row. He has a significant lead in delegates. You know, is it worth going after every single vote tooth and nail for the next two, three, four weeks?

Count Fox News's Chris Wallace in the group that believes the New York Times recent hit piece about John McCain might end up helping the GOP presidential candidate woo disgruntled conservatives in time for this November's elections.

Wouldn't it be just exquisitely delicious irony if it turned out the Times spent 3,000 words to diminish McCain's candidacy only to end up furthering it?

According to Wallace, who was interviewed Thursday by WOR radio's Steve Malzberg, such is definitely possible (11-minute audio available here):

On Friday, ABC correspondent David Wright continued to make it clear that his affection lies with Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton. Covering Thursday's Democratic debate for "Good Morning America," Wright slammed the New York senator for "an absolute clunker of an attack line." And, at one point, the journalist completely misstated a comment by Clinton about American military troops.

Discussing a question from CNN debate host Campbell Brown about overcoming crises, Wright asserted, "Clinton went on to compare her suffering to soldiers wounded in Iraq." In fact, she said quite the opposite. Wright only played a brief snippet of the former first lady's answer, in which she observed, "The hits I've taken in my life are nothing compared to what goes on every single day in the lives of people across our country." But even that makes it clear that Clinton was not drawing a parallel between her life and wounded veterans. For context, here is Clinton's response to the query: