Media Research Center President Brent Bozell appeared on the Fox Business Network (FBN) early Thursday evening to lambaste the latest “garbage” cover by the tabloid New York Daily News and blast CNN’s Anderson Cooper for his work of “gotcha journalism” hounding Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday.
Risk and Reward fill-in host Cheryl Casone set the scene on the first topic by showing the latest smear by the Daily News as well as New York Times editorials in the last two days that have charged Republicans and the National Rifle Association (NRA) with being both responsible and complicit in the Orlando terror attack at a gay night club.
Bozell opined that while “the Daily News is just garbage, it's a tabloid” one should “expect that from them,” The New York Times definitely crossed the line that the MRC founder predicted could cause the paper legal trouble if they continue to make such allegations.
“[T]hough it's left-wing, even though it's pro-handgun and all that stuff, what they've done in this, I'm not an attorney, but I’ve got to think it's coming very close to an accusation of defamation because to say that you're complicit in an act of terrorism could not be an uglier accusation to make,” he ruled.
He went onto state that individuals and media outlets “can have a debate and a civilized debate about whether or not you should do things such as prevent people who are on these watch lists from getting guns...but to say that somebody in some institution is responsible for the vicious murder of 50 people is way beyond the pale, way beyond the pale.”
Moving over to the case of Cooper chiding Bondi for not being an enthusiastic enough supporter of LGBT people (like Cooper himself), Casone argued that “this was the classic, you know, gotcha interview, that's what he did, a lot of journalists do it.”
Giving his own take, Bozell mocked Cooper wallowing over the blowback she’s suffered:
No, no, be still my heart that — that producers sometimes lie to you, it's happened to all of you and it is gotcha journalism. Look, reporters are supposed to be dispassionate and they’re supposed to be observers of the national scene, not the participants and certainly not those trying to create a reality, and that's what you're getting from the press today. They lost all vestiges of objectivity. They’re not reporting anymore. They're trying to effect the news. This reporter was trying to effect the news in Florida.
“Now, if you want to do, that call yourself an editorial writer, call yourself a commentator. Don't call yourself, and don't pretend to be a reporter and don't pretend to be somebody who is — who the public should look at as somebody who's projecting objectivity, who is seeing truth,” he concluded.
