MRC-Radio: Bozell Discusses Anti-Israel and Arizona Biases, Comedy Central's 'JC'

NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell appeared on WMAL's "Grandy Group" shortly after 8 a.m. this morning.

The Media Research Center President discussed the media's anti-Israel bias flaring up afresh after the Gaza flotilla incident (click image at right for MP3 audio):

FRED GRANDY, host:  You follow this more closely than do I. Um, over the last three or four days, has al-Jazeera acquired NBC, CBS, ABC, all the major outlets, because it seems there's such a clear media bias against what Israel did that it's hard for the truth to get out. Who ever thought that Benjamin Netanyahu and Joe Biden would be the two guys speaking truth to power on this?!

BRENT BOZELL:  You know, it's very sad but this is a continuation of a narrative we've seen since the late 1980s with the intifadas that Palestine was launching against Israel where Palestine was always the innocent one and Israel was always the aggressor. You've got to put the story into context.

The coverage that is being given is completely against Israel from the standpoint that there's no context.

[...]

Between 2001 and 2009 -- just think about this for a second -- 8,600 rockets have been launched from the Gaza Strip against Israel, over the border of Israel. Israel has every right to do whatever they need to do to defend themselves from these attacks. They instituted a blockade because they knew that these weapons were coming in.

There's a long history of this. Last November, Israeli Navy officials intercepted a fraudulent civilian ship packed with 500 lbs. of weaponry. That was 100 miles off Israel's coast.

[...]

GRANDY: But absent you,  and Joe Biden, to his credit, and of course Prime Minister Netanyahu, this story isn't getting out. Why?

BOZELL: It's not, it's not. Because the decision  [by the media] has been made that Israel is in the wrong and her enemies are in the right, which is why, by the way, they [the radicals on the MV Marmara] did what they did, because they know they can get away with it.

Look at the video, the video that shows these, by the way, let's stop calling them activists, at the very least they're militants or radicals, or something, they're not activists.

After this exchange, co-host Bryan Nehman shifted topics to the Arizona anti-illegal immigration bill, noting that despite the media's constant trashing of the law, polls show a majority of Americans support the bill. "Is the media losing its influence?" the co-host asked Bozell, who replied:

Oh yeah, guys, there's obviously cracks, there are big, big cracks in this monopoly.... What's happening is that there's a new media, there's you guys in talk radio, and there's the Internet, and those, both those forces are growing while the old media are all dying. Now, they're still very powerful, they're more powerful than any other outlet that the new media have, but collectively, the new media are as big as they are, it just takes an awful lot more work to get our story out. But if we work hard at it, if we tell our story, the story will get out.

Towards the end of the segment, Bozell explained his complaint about the "JC" cartoon program planned for Comedy Central:

BOZELL: What cowards they are. They [the executive at Comedy Central] have a policy that they will not do anything that might be offensive to Muslims, and on the other hand they are talking about producing a show designed uniquely, specifically, and formally to do nothing but insult Christianity.