On Hannity & Colmes, MRC/NB's Bozell Targets Bill Moyers and PBS Hypocrisy

Brent Bozell, President of the Media Research Center, which publishes NewsBusters, appeared Tuesday night on FNC's "Hannity & Colmes" to criticize PBS for returning left-winger Bill Moyers to the taxpayer-funded network just weeks after PBS spiked Frank Gaffney's documentary, "Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center," which was intended to be part of last week's 11-part America at a Crossroads series. Wednesday night, most PBS stations will run Moyers's left-wing screed, "Buying the War," about how the news media was supposedly complicit in the Bush administration's false contentions that got the U.S. into the Iraq war. (More below on the segment and topic)

Video clip (5:58): Real (10.2 MB at higher-quality 225 kbps) or Windows Media (3.8 MB at lower-quality 81 kbps), plus MP3 audio (2.1 MB)

Bozell appeared with David Swanson of the far-left AfterDowningStreet.org. During the segment, Sean Hannity played a clip of Moyers railing against Hannity's “political pornography.” For more on the program PBS refuses to air, check an April 11 Washington Times article by Jennifer Harper, "PBS shelves film on moderate Muslims." The MRC on Tuesday distributed a press release, “PBS Pushes Moyers's Radical Left Film, But Spikes Gaffney's Centrist Documentary as Extreme.”

ALEXANDRIA, VA -- Media Research Center President L. Brent Bozell commented today on PBS's decision to broadcast Bill Moyers's "Buying the War" documentary while refusing to air Frank Gaffney's "Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center:"

"All PBS has become is welfare for activist has-beens," said L. Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center.

"Their editorial rationale is self-incriminating. They subject viewers to the fanatical work of liberals like Bill Moyers, using viewers' tax money and airwaves to peddle Moyers's notion that the liberal media coverage of the Iraq war wasn't liberal enough. But, at the same time, they claim that Frank Gaffney's very balanced and measured documentary on centrist Muslims does not meet the standards necessary for airing on their stations.

"Why? Because they can -- and that makes the words 'public television' an oxymoron."

"What PBS and Moyers should own up to is not having the backbone to allow a balanced, viable, perspective to stand on its own two feet because it clashes with their fringe ideology," Bozell concluded.