Bozell: TV Networks Ungrateful for Surge Success

In conjunction with the tour for his new book Whitewash, NewsBusters publisher and MRC president Brent Bozell was invited on to FNC's "Fox and Friends" to discuss the liberal media's constant search for bad news in Iraq.

In his Thursday appearance, Bozell noted that things are so ridiculous that some liberal journalists are bemoaning how fewer deaths in Iraq harms the cemetery business there. Watch the video above, on YouTube, or download the video in Windows Media, Real or listen to MP3 audio.

Transcript is below the fold...

GRETCHEN CARLSON: Did you fall over when you saw the New York Times yesterday morning?

BRENT BOZELL: Well yeah, especially since in the editorial pages less than a month ago, they said flat-out that the surge would never work. I'm waiting now for the editorial to come out and say that 'We were wrong about this.'

But look, one story in the New York Times really doesn't mean anything. There have been hundreds of stories in the press over the last three years about how everything was going wrong day after day after day, so you simply can't write just one story and say, now I've done my job, let's move on and let's go find something else wrong in Iraq like Blackwater or desertions.

We looked at the network coverage and it's unbelievable. In the last month and a half, guess how many stories ABC has done on the surge working.

BRIAN KILMEADE: You did--they did three, correct?

CARLSON: But they were the best of the bunch?

BOZELL: They were the best. NBC: 1. CBS: Not one. Now CBS, to its credit, has reported in these little anchorette briefs that casualties are down by 50 percent.

KILMEADE: This is unbelievable, Brent. If you had predicted this a year ago. If you had--before we had even knew the term "surge" and the new strategy that needed to be refocused and Donald Rumsfeld was just finding his way out the door--if you had said in a year things will be fine, the Shias and Sunnis will be able to cross Baghdad no problem, violence will be down 70 percent, the Al Anbar province will be a place the president will go visit and walk down the street, they would've said you're drunk--again.

BOZELL: Absolutely. But look, in television, the old saw is good news is no news, bad news is great news. But beyond that, the media have such a hatred for George Bush and all things George Bush, they simply do not want to give him credit for anything in Iraq.

You look at the coverage on television, again, ABC and NBC they've yet to report that casualties are down by 50 percent. I mean--

CARLSON: There was another news service, this was your favorite headline from October 16--

BOZELL: --Yeah, you've gotta read this one--

CARLSON: As violence falls in Iraq, cemetery workers feel the pinch.

(Laughing)

KILMEADE: That sounds like a joke.

BOZELL: That's the McClatchy paper chain. That's their headline.

KILMEADE: Yeah, the glass is always half empty.