MRC’s Brent Bozell: Media are Twisting, Distorting and Lying About Information on Hillary

October 14th, 2016 12:28 PM

During a Friday morning appearance on Fox Business Network’s Varney & Co., Media Research Center president Brent Bozell called out the media for “secretly colluding with the Clinton campaign.” As evidence of this, Bozell pointed out the number of instances released in the WikiLeaks emails that pointed to collaboration between the Clinton Campaign and journalists, including “secretly colluding with the Clinton campaign, giving them veto power over their stories, teeing up stories for them.”

“Democracy can only survive if there is a free press,” Bozell observed, adding “How can you have an open, functioning democracy, when you have got the news media, not just withholding information from the public, but twisting, distorting and lying about information when they do present it?”

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STUART VARNEY: The president of the Media Research Center is Brent Bozell and he’s with us right now. Brent, you are on record saying that NBC's release of the 2005 lewd tape is, quote, a direct threat to the democratic process. That is strong stuff. Explain it. 

BRENT BOZELL: Sure it is. Democracy can only survive if there is a free press. Free press is one that is dedicated to truth and one that is dedicated to objectivity and one that is dedicated to fairness. What do you have here? You have NBC, now caught, not just being biased, not just being utterly one-sided, but in fact, playing its own October surprise, holding footage that could be devastating to a candidate and releasing it on the eve of a presidential debate, the absolute worst time for that candidate, and in fact, possibly sinking his candidacy. How can you have an open, functioning democracy, when you have got the news media, not just withholding information from the public, but twisting, distorting and lying about information when they do present it?

 VARNEY: That’s the whole point, isn't it? Holding it for maximum damage to one particular campaign. You know, we were watching the broadcast network news last night, and I noticed that ABC spent nine minutes on trump and women. NBC nine minutes, trump and his women. CBS, five minutes and trump and his women. Those three broadcast networks only spent seconds, literally seconds, on new WikiLeak revelations. That is a skewing of the news in extraordinary fashion. 

BOZELL: Yeah. Let me give you the week-long number account. In the last week, they have done 253 minutes of coverage on trump. 

That is over four hours. Think about that, on the news, ABC, NBC, CBS, just on the news, over four hours. The totality of the WikiLeaks, 37 minutes. And a lot of that, a lot of that is not harmful to Hillary. It is discussing other things other than what might be harmful to her. Whereas 100% is harmful to Trump. Here is the big one I think, Fox News has broken a story, and has covered it very thoroughly, about how overwhelmingly the FBI investigation investigating Hillary Clinton was stunned that she was given a free pass by the FBI Director. Overwhelmingly they believed she needed to be indicted. And unanimously believed that she needed to have her security clearance taken from her. That is a huge story -- except, now tell me, ABC, NBC, CBS, how many minutes on that? The answer, they haven't provided one, not one second. Not one second. 

Stuart: That is extraordinary, isn't it? Could you call it a conspiracy, a cabal, a media cabal that is out to get Donald Trump, at all costs? 

BOZELL: I do call it a conspiracy because, and, I used to laugh at that phrase. No, it is not a conspiracy. That is just goofy thinking. Look at these WikiLeaks emails. And you now have got closing in on a dozen examples of major network figures, major newspaper figures, major internet news figures, openly -- not openly -- secretly colluding with the Clinton campaign, giving them veto power over their stories, teeing up stories for them. The Clinton campaign chortling at success at having offered the information that a candidate – that a reporter used against Trump. On and on, these WikiLeaks stories which you won't see covered by anybody in the press shows the collusion. 

VARNEY: Brent Bozell, you said it was strong stuff and it is. And we appreciate you giving it to us this morning. Brent Bozell, everyone. Thank you, sir. We appreciate it. 

BOZELL: Thank you, sir. Stuart.