MRC's Tim Graham Makes Weekend Appearance on C-SPAN: Engages in Media Bias Debate

MRC director of media analysis Tim Graham appeared on C-SPAN's Washington Journal on Saturday morning to discuss the letter  MRC president Brent Bozell and more than 20 other conservative leaders and media personalities wrote to executives of ABC News, CBS News, CNN and NBC News.

"I would simply say we have a news media that doesn't hold the Obama Administration accountable. It's trying to destroy the Mitt Romney presidential campaign," Graham said. "That is not what ‘objective’ news media does." (See video and transcript below, MP3 audio available here).

HARLESTON: Earlier this month, the Media Research Council -- Center, sorry -- sent an open letter to the biased news media. They wrote this election year, so much of the broadcast networks and their counterparts in the major establishment print media are out of control with a deliberate and unmistakable leftist agenda. To put it bluntly, you are rigging this election and taking sides in order to predetermine the outcome. In the quarter century, since the Media Research Center was established to document liberal media bias, there has never been a more brazen and complete attempt by the liberal so-called news media to decide the outcome of an election. What kind of evidence do you have that the media is in cahoots with the Democrats and the folks on a left to rig this election?

GRAHAM: Well we've certainly seen just in the last couple of weeks since the convention, just a dramatic bias against Mitt Romney on behalf of the President of the United States. I think if we just look at what's happened since September 11, when we had an attack on our consulate in Benghazi. On that particular day, we've had the attack on our embassy in Cairo. Mitt Romney puts out a statement saying he did not like the tweets our government was sending out that sounded all apologetic to the Muslim rioters. And our news media jumped on that  right away, saying that Mitt Romney was exploiting this tragedy for political gain. The whole controversy was about Mitt Romney and I think it was kind of funny that they would suggest for example that Mitt Romney was politicizing this. Well no, what happened was that he has a press conference the next morning, we all hear off-camera that they're plotting. 'Everyone ask him about this, everyone ask him if he's going to apologize for being so rude to this president.'

When you have that sort of coordination, where they're all sort of saying let's all ask the same question, we are not getting journalism. We're not serving the public. We are all serving to make sure that Mitt Romney is punished for questioning the President of the United States. And so the problem we have over the last couple weeks just on this particular issue is that our news media is covering Barack Obama going on the Letterman show, but they're not covering Barack Obama's administration lying to the public about what happened at this consulate in Benghazi. That's the story that's been coming out, that's the scandal that's emerging. And yet, the coverage we really get of the president celebrates him and it basically treats Mitt Romney as if he were the incumbent president.

HARLESTON: Who was this letter addressed to and what has the response been so far?

GRAHAM: Well, we sent this letter to the network news. Although it's an open letter, so to some extent it is a message to the conservative grassroots. Obviously, we have not heard from the network news executives. We would certainly welcome that, we certainly have heard from conservative grassroots on this letter and it reflects the view of the conservative grassroots in this election season that we had a truly non-partisan news media that didn't have a candidate they favored in this race, they would've been doing this story as a serious story from the beginning. Why are our embassies so vulnerable in this season?

In the last couple weeks, we've also had the story of the secret tape that Mother Jones put out about Mitt Romney at a fundraiser. Our network news executives said we going to give that 88 minutes of news time on our morning and evening newscasts. This is not a story that deserves 88 minutes of news time. But the Obama administration thinks this is as good as a campaign ad for them so the morning and evening shows have given it 88 minutes. We've had all kinds of serious things that have happened in the last two weeks. The Inspector General of the Justice Department came out with this report on the administration's handling of Fast and Furious. They gave seven minutes to that, same morning and evening newscasts. So that's where I would simply say we have a news media that doesn't hold the Obama Administration accountable, it's trying to destroy the Mitt Romney presidential campaign. That is not what ‘objective’ news media does.

PS: The full 40 minutes is on C-SPAN's website here.