MRC President Brent Bozell on Thursday appeared on The Blaze TV and compared the controversy engulfing Facebook’s targeting of conservatives to the IRS selecting right-leaning groups for special scrutiny. Talking to host Tomi Lahren, Bozell explained, “For anyone to suggest that Facebook has a policy against conservatives, it's just simply unfounded. It's silly. The IRS didn't have a policy against conservatives. There were people within the IRS who had a policy against conservatives.”
The MRC president and other prominent conservatives attended a meeting with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Bozell explained, “Well, you know, for those people who suggested it's a photo-op, I don't know that I felt like going 5000 miles for a photo-op. No, look, Facebook is saying very publicly that they are acknowledging that they have a problem. That there's been a significant erosion of trust within the conservative community and that they want to fix it."
A partial transcript is below:
Tomi
The Blaze
5/19/16TOMI LAHREN: Brent, so you were there. What’s the word?
BRENT BOZELL: Well, you know, for those people who suggested it’s a photo-op, I don’t know that I felt like going 5000 miles for a photo-op. No, look,Facebook is saying very publicly that they are acknowledging that they have a problem. That there’s been a significant erosion of trust within the conservative community and that they want to fix it. So, they met with us to underscore that. Now, the proof will be in the pudding. They are undertaking an investigation and no one expected to come out of that meeting with everything resolved. But I thought it was a very good first step. I think they are sincere and they reached out and they want to resolve this. At the end of the day, I think we’re going to see some significant steps and I think we’re going to be pleased. I hope so anyway.
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BOZELL: For anyone to suggest that Facebook has a policy against conservatives, it’s just simply unfounded. It’s silly. The IRS didn’t have a policy against conservatives. There were people within the IRS who had a policy against conservatives. Big difference. So, the suggestion is that things are going on inside of Facebook, which hopefully Facebook is going to try and correct. What they said is, thus far, they have not found systemic evidence. Now, the word is systemic. It does mean it doesn’t exist. It does mean that they are researching and studying it and they are bringing in outside people to look at this. I think they’re sincere about that. We’re just going to wait.
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BOZELL: Why does Facebook want to talk to conservatives? I think because the erosion of trust directly influences their business model. But something struck with me yesterday. They acknowledged unequivically that this is the heart of liberalism and that the conservative world view — it’s not that they don’t agree with it, it’s that they don’t understand it.
