MRC/NB News

"I've just been chuckling at" the media's response to Associated Press phone records probe by the Obama/Holder Justice Department, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell confessed to Fox Business Network host Stuart Varney this morning on the May 14 Varney & Co.

"There have been four years of overreach by this administration, four years of people not involved in journalism saying this was an administration that was drunk on power and evasive and dishonest, and the media would have nothing of it," noted the Media Research Center founder. It took the administration "turning on the press as well, and suddenly they're apoplectic," Bozell noted with a laugh. [For the full segment, watch the video below the page break]

During an interview with MRCTV, U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee, asked what has become one of the most common questions across the country: Why won't the mainstream media give the murder trial of abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell the coverage it deserves?

“We're talking about people being murdered,” she declared. Is the lack of attention “because we’re talking about poor women in minority neighborhoods, or is it because the media is trying to protect the abortion business?”

The Media Research Center, parent organization of NewsBusters, rented five large billboards in Times Square over the weekend as part of our new“Stop Censoring the News” campaign to educate the public about how certain media outlets apparently are spinning their coverage or simply censoring news critical of the Obama administration to protect and promote a liberal agenda.

The five billboards are clustered together in Times Square and face in different directions, covering 3,800 square feet. Two of the signs read, “It’s Time the Liberal Media Stop Censoring the News!” and two others read, “Start Telling the Truth!” above an image of three monkeys, labeled ABC, CBS, and NBC, who are depicted as the  three mystic apes that see no evil, speak no evil, and hear no evil.

This morning, the Media Research Center is releasing the “winners” of our 25th annual Best Notable Quotables awards, with MSNBC weekend anchor Melissa Harris-Perry taking the dubious honor of “Quote of the Year” for a bizarre Fourth of July tribute to America that referred to “the imperialism, the genocide, [and] the slavery” upon which our country was built.

Runner-up was David Chalian, who was fired from his job at Yahoo! News after being caught on an open microphone disparaging Mitt and Ann Romney during an ABCNews.com Webcast of the first night of the Republican National Convention: “They are happy to have a party with black people drowning.”

Here are a few of the “winners” of 2012, each with video of their offending quote. The results were determined by a panel of 46 judges -- radio talk show hosts, magazine editors, columnists, editorial writers, and expert media observers -- who were extremely generous with their time. For the full issue, please visit www.MRC.org:

While President Obama's record-breaking pace to raising a total of $1 billion earlier this month received significant media attention, there was little if any curiosity among the traditional press about how he was on track to achieve such an unprecedented milestone in presidential fundraising. The broadcast networks in particular have not bothered to mention the growing scandal that is being scrupulously pieced together by alternative media outlets.

An independently-owned website Obama.com (redirects to official site here) has been suspected of accepting millions of dollars worth of illegal foreign donations for months now. Despite all the speculation and accusations coming from a nonprofit organization known as the Government Accountability Institute (GAI), no action had been taken until recently.

We're proud to announce that just shortly after noon Eastern on Thursday, NewsBusters surpassed the 1,000,000 "fans" milestone on Facebook. In fact, NewsBusters is the only conservative blog with over 1,000,000 fans. The achievement comes as Americans trust in traditional media has hit an all-time low according to Gallup.

With more than 1,000,000 fans, NewsBusters now finds itself in elite company, joining FoxNews.com, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck as one of few conservative media outlets to reach a seven figure fandom on the world’s largest social network. Of that group, NewsBusters often has the highest total fan engagement as measured by Facebook’s  "talking about this" count.The milestone was reached as NewsBusters' September web traffic rose 88% year-over-year. Month-to-date October traffic is up 147% from the same period in 2011. [visit our page at Facebook.com/NewsBusters]

We at NewsBusters are extremely close to a major milestone: surpassing 1 million fans on the Facebook social networking site. With Facebook, we have managed to reach hundreds of thousands of Americans who otherwise might not have been aware of our mission of exposing and combating the liberal media's bias.

If you haven't done so already, please head over to Facebook.com/NewsBusters and click "like" to help us hit 1 million fans on Facebook!

NewsBusters senior editor Tim Graham appeared on the Fox Business Channel's Varney & Co. earlier this morning to review how the liberal media spun last night's debate, and what to expect over the next two weeks.

Host Stuart Varney suggested media bias could not dislodge the pro-Romney trend now evident in the polls, but Graham offered a warning: "We could see some of the most aggressive bias to date coming in the next two weeks, if they [liberal reporters] really believe Obama is losing." [Video and transcript below the jump.]
 

While this will almost certainly remain unreported on the broadcast news networks, the Associated Press is reporting that the Democratic National Convention Committee accepted at least $5 million in corporate donations and borrowed another $8 million in order to reach its $36.7 million budgetary goal, according to the financial disclosure reports that were filed with the Federal Election Commission on Oct. 17.

In doing so however, the Democratic Party failed to uphold its pledge to run its convention solely from money raised by individual donors and not corporate cash. "This convention will be different," DNC chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fla.) promised last year.

Imagine if an employee at a college or university was suspended from her duties for signing a ballot petition that is for same sex marriage, the media outrage would be predictable and the person would become a household name. And the media would have good reason for doing so: no one should suffer employment consequences for their political convictions. But you probably haven't heard of Dr. Angela McCaskill, because she's on the 'wrong' side of the same-sex marriage debate.

In an incomprehensible move that is being criticized by even advocates for same-sex marriage, Gallaudet University put their Chief Diversity Officer on administrative leave until further notice. Why, you ask? Because McCaskill had the audacity to sign a petition at her church that supported a reversal of Maryland's relatively new same-sex marriage law.

UPDATE: C-SPAN2 (not C-SPAN but C-SPAN2) will re-play the MRC’s “25th Anniversary Gala and 2012 DisHononors Awards” which took place last week, Friday night at 10:58 PM PDT. That's early Saturday morning (1:58 AM EDT, 12:58 AM CDT, 11:58 PM Friday night MDT). It lasts just over two-and-a-half hours.

C-SPAN2 first ran it Friday night at 8 PM EDT. NEW: C-SPAN.org has posted its video of the event.

MRC's Christian Robey suggested a letter to the editor on Monday for David Carr's strange column attacking MRC's letter attacking the media for rigging this presidential election by hounding Romney and protecting Obama. Carr wrote Brent Bozell assembled "conservative royalty" to attack "ostensibly tendentious coverage."

Some of us were skeptical that a liberal newspaper would deign to publish a letter from an organization that critiques the media on a daily basis. Every blog post here is a bit of a letter to the editor (or executive producer). But with this advice, Brent Bozell allowed me to draft a letter and we sent it along, and we received notification that they were interested in publishing it. It appears near the bottom of the editorial page Thursday on page A26. The headline is simply "Bias In The Media":

In their continuing push to rig the election for Barack Obama, none of the three broadcast networks – ABC, CBS, or NBC – devoted a single second of coverage to Univision’s politically devastating  investigative report about the Obama Administration’s lethal gunwalking scandal, Fast and Furious.

Media Research President Brent Bozell reacted: "“This is another example of the media deliberately rigging this election. The Obama Administration provided guns to Mexican drug cartels, and the networks have the gall to ignore it. ABC, CBS and NBC have absolutely no excuse for spiking this explosive report, and are clearly doing so because it will damage Obama’s chances of re-election. Americans shouldn’t have to learn a second language to receive real investigative reporting."

Election Day is still six weeks away, but the all important battleground state of Ohio will begin early voting -- both in-person and via absentee balloting -- on Tuesday, Oct. 2. At least a third of likely voters in the Buckeye State are reportedly expected to cast their ballot before Nov. 6. 

So in an attempt to drum up support and enthusiasm, as well as sympathetic press, Democratic lawmakers in Ohio are encouraging students and union workers across the state to camp outside of their respective board of elections office overnight in order to be among the first to vote the following morning. Dutifully helping out the Democrats, MSNBC Live anchor Thomas Roberts interviewed state senator Eric Kearney (D-Ohio) about the upcoming publicity stunt called "Sleep Out the Vote." Kearney explained the basis of the idea as such: 

NewsBusters's parent company the Media Research Center (MRC) today proudly announces that perky Katie Couric is the “winner” of the DisHonor of the Worst Reporter in the History of Man for her outrageously pathetic bias as chronicled by the MRC over the past quarter century.

The competition was fierce, but Couric was selected from a competitive field of finalists that included Bryant Gumbel, Brian Williams, and Dan Rather by the more than 1000 attendees who cheered and jeered throughout the evening to roast the liberal media's worst of the worst at the MRC's 25th Anniversary DisHonors Awards Gala. The event was held Thursday evening at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. WMAL personality Chris Plante served as emcee with media personalities Stephen Hayes, Laura Ingraham, and Jonah Goldberg on hand as award presenters. The Davisson Brothers Band provided live entertainment.

In an article published shortly before 5 a.m. EDT on the morning of Sept. 26, The Daily Beast's Eli Lake revealed that three separate U.S. intelligence officials confirmed to him that within 24 hours of the September 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, the Obama administration had strong reason to suspect al Qaeda ties to the deadly violence.

Lake noted that the identities of at least four of the participants in the attack on the consulate were found within 24 hours, one of which has been tracked by his use of social media. This of course conflicts with the administration's early story. You may recall that four days after the attack, on Sept 16, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations insisted to CBS' Bob Schieffer that the attack was spontaneous and tied to an obscure video on YouTube.

"The public is waiting for Mitt Romney to say, 'I've had enough of you folks,'"  NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell told Fox Business Network's Stuart Varney this morning. The Media Research Center founder and president noted that unlike President Obama, Romney actually entertained questions from the media after his September 11 statement, where he was subjected to six different iterations of the same question about the appropriateness of his statement the evening prior.

As we now know  because of a hot microphone catching an exchange among reporters before the presser, that was a planned ambush by the journalists, Bozell argued [watch the full video below the page break].

In light of the tragic events that just transpired in Egypt and Libya on Sept. 11, both presidential candidates felt obligated to host separate press conferences that aired just 30 minutes apart. In yet another example of the ‘journalistic integrity’ that saturates the MSNBC network, the Jansing and Co. hostess and guests openly showed favoritism to President Obama, who was glaringly devoid of any time for questions from the media.

Anchor Chris Jansing engaged in a conversation with NBC’s Chief White House Correspondent Chuck Todd that continued off and on throughout the allotted hour. Republican challenger Romney was taken to task for sharing his opinion on the matter without the benefit of “any foreign policy experience,” or as they described it as “launching a political attack” after the murder of an ambassador.

That it’s entirely possible there were dangerously incompetent policies in place regarding diplomatic security in both Cairo and Benghazi were not even considered.

The Washington Post doesn’t always report on voter fraud, but when it does, it buries the story in the Metro section.

At the bottom of page B4 in the September 11 issue, the Post noted a Democratic congressional candidate in Maryland who dropped out of the race yesterday after instances of her voter fraud were brought to light.

After offending religious Americans by appearing to boo God, the Democratic National Convention had the top ranking Catholic official in the country perform the closing Benediction Thursday night. Cardinal Timothy Dolan did the same for the Republicans last week in Tampa Bay, but those delegates didn’t seem to have a problem with a party platform that included God and Jerusalem.

The only networks respectful enough to show the prayer in its entirety without interruption was Fox News, Fox Business and C-SPAN. ABC, CNN, and PBS kept it in background while talking over it. MSNBC completely ignored it, cutting the audio feed to let their pundits share their opinions without distraction. CBS and NBC returned to local news affiliates as soon as he began.  

[See video below.  MP3 audio here.]

MRC Research Director and NewsBusters senior editor Rich Noyes appeared on FNC's The O'Reilly Factor Friday night to talk about the so-called "mainstream" media's lack of interest in news that a volunteer at D.C.-based gay group walked into the Family Research Council's offices and opened fire, wounding a security guard.

Guest host Juan Williams branded the lack of coverage "outrageous." Noyes described how if the reverse had happened -- a Christian conservative volunteer invading a liberal headquarters with 50 rounds of ammo -- the same networks that barely touched the FRC shooting would undoubtedly have provided far more intensive coverage.

Video below the jump.

On Sunday’s Reliable Sources, CNN host Howard Kurtz lashed out at CNN’s own host Fareed Zakaria for committing plagiarism in a gun control article for Time magazine. Kurtz gave credit to us: “A conservative watchdog site Newsbusters, acting on a tip from the NRA, broke the story that Fareed's column was not entirely his own work.”

Kurtz put the two passages side by side on the screen to underline Zakaria’s copycat routine and pounded Zakaria for committing a “cardinal journalistic sin,” and the “latest case study of an insidious journalistic disease.” It’s too bad journalists aren’t this upset about sloppy bias. (Video and transcript below)

Tuesday night's edition of The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News featured one of the latest videos from Dan Joseph of MRCTV from the streets of Madison. Joseph tried to interview an angry aging hippie as he held up leftist signs, including one with Gov. Scott Walker's face in a pile of elephant dung.

Joseph turned to a group of middle-school-aged children who said the protester was scary. O'Reilly said "Those kids are getting quite a political education." O'Reilly also featured what a generous person might call the "soul stylings" of liberal Congresswoman Gwen Moore of Milwaukee as she tried to sing "Hit the Road, Scott."

On “Fox News Sunday,” host Chris Wallace not only interviewed Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington DC, but asked him about the MRC’s finding that the broadcast network evening news shows only gave the Catholic lawsuits against Obamacare 19 seconds of air time.

He asked: “I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but it you haven’t, I’ll inform you. What do you make of the fact that the broadcast networks have spent a grand total of 19 seconds this week on their evening newscasts – 19 seconds covering the lawsuits by the 43 Catholic organizations. What do you make of that?” (More transcript as well as video below)

Updated with new statements | Fury over the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts’ continued refusal to report the lawsuits Catholic entities have filed against the Obama administration has spread beyond the Media Research Center watchdog group and Catholic leaders to 11 additional Christian leaders equally concerned about this decision to deliberately not report national news. Below are statements released by FRC’s Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer of American Values and nine more leaders.

When then-President George W. Bush visited U.S. troops, saying similar things to what President Barack Obama said in his recent visit, MSNBC's Chris Matthews snarled that it was a mere "photo-op," NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell noted last night on FNC's "Hannity."

Yet when President Obama made his surprise visit to Kabul earlier this week, Matthews ridiciculously gushed that Obama's speech was "right out of Henry the Fifth," alluding to the St. Crispin's Day "band of brothers" speech in the Shakespeare play. [Watch the full "Media Mash" segment below the page break; MP3 audio here]

NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell recently awarded two members of the Media Research Center (MRC) field team --  Ryan McNicholas and Paul Thurman --  with Apple iPads for their diligent work so far this year.

The MRC field team liaises with Tea Party leaders and conservative Americans around the nation. Ryan and Paul are two outstanding members of our 10-person field team which has traveled the country, bringing MRC signs, buttons, bumper stickers and hand fans to Tea Party rallies and conservative events in more than 35 states thus far. Paul and Ryan have worked especially hard, logging thousands of miles and working nights and weekends. Brent sought to recognize their hard work with a token of his esteem.