MRC/NB News

Today’s (Friday’s) Washington Times picks up on a recent report from the Media Research Center (you can read it here) documenting the outpouring of positive coverage for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. The piece, by reporter Jennifer Harper, quotes NewsBusters senior editor Rich Noyes, but also included a quote from Democratic operative Dan Gerstein claiming, “If President Bush had appointed someone with the same background — working class, an up-by-the-bootstraps story — the coverage would have been exactly the same.”

As TimesWatch editor Clay Waters pointed out yesterday, the press had a far more cynical reaction to the “up-by-the-bootstraps” story of Clarence Thomas, elevated to the Supreme Court by the first President Bush back in 1991.

An excerpt from Harper’s Washington Times piece, “Sotomayor Finds Favor in Coverage”:

The Upside Down Ratings World of NABOB
On April 9 we wrote of an asinine assertion made about the new Arbitron radio ratings system by soon to be transferred Democratic Federal Communications Committee (FCC) Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein.  Well now President Barack Obama has put the imprimatur of his FCC and Administration on Adelstein's addled notion.

Since the inception of tracking those who listen to Guglielmo Marconi's marvelous invention, Arbitron had relied on a personal pen-and-paper diary system and the journal-keepers' honor and memory as to what they had listened and for how long they had done so.  The potential for misremembering and book-cooking was simply staggering.

So Arbitron came up with a pager-esque device called the Portable People Meter (PPM).  This gadget automatically tracks to where the radio dial is tuned, thereby virtually eliminating human error and the ability to cheat.  

Obviously, this is far more accurate way to establish who is listening to whom, right?  If you do find this to be a self-evident truth, you are not a master of the obvious, you are - according to the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters (NABOB) - a racist bigot.

How so?  Because the ratings under the new regime revealed that the numbers for hip-hop, urban and other racial minority stations had long been incorrectly inflated (and conversely the listenership of talk radio had long been underreported).

And this, you see, is not the better results of technological advancement, this is racism.

Acting Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Michael Copps insists that the so-called Fairness Doctrine is "long gone" and "not coming back." But liberal legislators such as socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and former Democratic presidential aspirants Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) have recently called for a return of the anti-free speech.

That's why Media Research Center (MRC) President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell is calling on FCC Chairman Copps to call for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to bring the Broadcaster Freedom Act to the floor for an up-or-down vote:

When this many high-powered elected officials are calling for a return of the mis-named ‘Fairness’ Doctrine, and are actively opposing a vote on the bill to prevent the FCC from reinstating it, it isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s a determination to shut down free speech on talk radio.

The solution is simple: Chairman Copps should call on Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid to allow a full, fair stand alone vote on the Broadcaster Freedom Act. That way we will know once and for all how each member of Congress thinks – are they for free speech, or are they for the ‘Fairness’ Doctrine?

The May 19 press release is available at MRC.org and is excerpted in full below:

In a letter dated today and a press teleconference held at 9:30 EDT this morning, Media Research Center president and NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell joined other conservatives in calling on President Obama to withdraw Harry Knox from the presidential Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.:

Harry Knox is the hate-filled antithesis of this noble objective.  Knox is a virulent anti-Catholic bigot, and has made numerous vile and dishonest attacks against the Church and the Holy Father.  He has no business on any Council having to do with faith or religion.

Co-signers to the letter include lay Catholic and conservative leaders such as Judie Brown of the American Life League, Kate O'Beirne of the National Review Institute, American Spectator publisher Al Regnery, Chuck Donovan of the Family Research Council, and Bill Donohue of the Catholic League.

A list of some instances of Harry Knox's anti-Catholic bigotry is available at MRC.org here. Knox's virulent hatred of Catholics extends from the top down, from Pope Benedict XVI to the rank-and-file member of the Knights of Columbus:

During his first 100 days as President, Barack Obama has pushed an audaciously liberal agenda which, if enacted, would have radical consequences for America for decades. With Democrats enjoying monopoly control of the House and Senate, the news media have a professional duty to scrutinize those policies, and give audiences both sides of the story — not just the perspective of a powerful Chief Executive.

Unfortunately, a Media Research Center analysis of ABC, CBS and NBC evening news coverage of President Obama’s first 100 days in office shows network reporters have failed as watchdogs. The networks have raised few doubts about Obama’s left-wing agenda and showered each of Obama’s major policy initiatives with positive press.

MRC analysts looked at all 982 broadcast evening news stories about Obama and his administration from Inauguration Day (January 20) through April 29. Key findings:

On Monday, NewsBuster Warner Todd Huston revealed Oprah.com and CNN's statistically unsupported theory that women are leaving men for other women.

On Saturday, "Fox News Watch" shared this bizarre story with its viewers, giving NewsBusters credit for the revelation.

Host Jon Scott stated (video embedded right, h/t Jeff Poor): 

"Joy Behar has called homeschoolers demented" and "is an ongoing, non-stop anti-Catholic bigot... yet it's Elisabeth Hasselbeck" that the media label controversial, laments Media Research Center President Brent Bozell. [audio available for download here]

The NewsBusters publisher appeared on the May 8 "Fox & Friends" to address how the media consider Hasselbeck "controversial" for teaching her kids to believe the Bible's creation account rather than labeling liberal co-host Behar "controversial" for suggesting that teaching children creationism is "child abuse."

STEVE DOOCY, "Fox & Friends" co-host: So they label Elisabeth as controversial or as the conservative but Joy Behar is always labeled the comedian!

In his Wednesday night “Media Mash” segment, FNC's Sean Hannity picked up on a Tuesday night NewsBusters post, “Third CNN Staffer Joins Obama's Team, As Does ABC Vet; Revolving Door Up to Ten,” about the latest journalists to spin through the revolving door to work in the Obama administration. Hannity informed his viewers of how the press corps are “losing three more of their own to the Obama administration. Now, at the outset of the President's term, several of the so-called objective journalists left their jobs to join the administration. Now NewsBusters.org points out that a few more are following suit.” Hannity named some names:

Senior CNN politics producer Sasha Johnson -- by the way, that makes her the third CNN staffer to join the President's team. Chicago Tribune reporter Jill Zuckman and veteran ABC News reporter Beverley Lumpkin. Now that brings the total number of so-called mainstream media journalists who have rushed to join the Obama administration to ten.

The Left's Idea of Diversity

Behold one of the new "Fairness" Doctrines - "media diversity" - coming soon to a radio station near you. 

President Barack Obama's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has released the names of the thirty-one members of their Advisory Committee On Diversity For Communications In The Digital Age.  This May 7 gathering is made up of a laundry list of left-wing grievance groups, with a smattering of radio and television companies included to break up the monotony.

Not a single conservative organization is taking part in this Commission - more than a dozen Leftist groups are. A little ironic for a "diversity" panel, is it not?

Chairing the meeting is Henry Rivera, a former FCC Commissioner who was (and presumably still is) a strong proponent of the Censorship Doctrine, also mis-known as the "Fairness" Doctrine.

Many, many liberals in Washington have over the last several years called for a reinstatement of the Doctrine.  But push-back from people who have read and actually understand the First Amendment led the Left to realize that the political price to bring it back was too high, so they MovedOn.org.

Of course, their desire to silence the lone voices of their opposition had not lessened in the slightest.  They're still just as dictatorial, just pragmatically so.

The morning after the media's "enchanted" evening with President Obama's 100-day press conference, Media Research Center Director of Research Rich Noyes appeared on the April 30 "America's Newsroom" to do a post-mortem of the media's fawning over the nation's 44th president. [audio excerpt here]

The segment began with a discussion of New York Times reporter Jeff Zeleny's fawning question about what enchanted Obama the most in his first 100 days.:

MEGYN KELLY, Fox News anchor: So, you know, it's prime real estate when you get to ask one of these questions as a reporter at these White House press conferences. He doesn't call on all the reporters. Every question counts, and the White House press corps sort of relies on one another to get to the heart of the matter so that all the most important things are asked. Does this qualify? How enchanted he was in his first 100 days?!

RICH NOYES, Media Research Center:  I'm not sure if it really does. You're right. I cannot imagine the press asking George W. Bush what enchanted him the most about his time in the White House. I believe their mantra kept asking him to define all his mistakes and apologize for them, was sort of the routine question they'd bring up to him.

Yesterday Media Research Center President Brent Bozell sat down for a chat via Skype with Breitbart.tv "B-cast" anchors Scott Baker and Liz Stephans. You can watch the video here or in the embed below the page break.

The topic: preliminary findings in an MRC study on the media's treatment of President Obama's first 100 days.

"The liberal media deserve the Tammy Wynette Award for their coverage of Obama’s radical agenda, as they continue to devotedly stand by their man," quipped Media Research Center President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell in an April 27 statement.[see bottom of post for full press release]

"For the pro-Obama liberal media, the Obama honeymoon is nowhere near over," Bozell argued, reacting to the results of a study in which MRC analysts looked at 852 stories on the Obama administration from January 20 through April 15 on ABC's World News, the CBS Evening News and the NBC Nightly News.

Among the key findings thus far, MRC analysts noticed that the media have actively worked to:

CNSNews.com, a division of the Media Research Center, is spotlighted on the Drudge Report as editor-in-chief Terry Jeffrey confirmed what President Obama and his Bush-loathing supporters in the media want to downplay:

The Central Intelligence Agency told CNSNews.com today that it stands by the assertion made in a May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that the use of "enhanced techniques" of interrogation on al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) -- including the use of waterboarding -- caused KSM to reveal information that allowed the U.S. government to thwart a planned attack on Los Angeles.

Before he was waterboarded, when KSM was asked about planned attacks on the United States, he ominously told his CIA interrogators, "Soon, you will know."

According to the previously classified May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that was released by President Barack Obama last week, the thwarted attack -- which KSM called the "Second Wave"-- planned " ‘to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into’ a building in Los Angeles."

Is this the new politics Barack Obama promised to bring to Washington?  His hand-picked DNC Chairman just went on national TV and denied that the Obama administration requested Georgetown University to cover up the IHS monogram representing the name of Christ.  Confronted with a CNSNews.com article flatly reporting that such a request had indeed been made, Tim Kaine resorted to the hoary dodge of claiming he hadn't seen the story.  Adding insult to injury, Kaine even claimed to be ignorant of CNSNews.com itself, NewsBusters' sister organization.
 
Kaine made his credulity-busting claims during a Morning Joe appearance today.

We just received word that C-SPAN 2 is going to air a "slightly abbreviated version" of the Media Research Center's 2009 Gala and Dishonors Awards dinner.

It should start airing at 1:26 p.m. EDT.

Check here for more details, and your check local cable listings for the channel assignment.

You can also watch a Web stream of the program here at that time.

Media Research Center President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell appeared on the Fox News Channel program, "America's Newsroom" shortly after 10 a.m. Eastern. [See video embed at the right; audio available here]

Mr. Bozell gave his thoughts on the media's coverage of the Tea Party protests, the good, the bad, and the Roesgen. Below is an excerpt:

MEGYN KELLY, co-host, to Brent Bozell: There's been a lot of outrage over this clip, online and other words [sic]. CNN has come out and said she [CNN correspondent Susan Roesgen] was doing her job and quote, "called it like she saw it." Do you see a problem with it?

BRENT BOZELL, MRC president: Well, you tell me where in that clip was a reporter reporting news. This was an activist debating with an activist, and calling herself a reporter in the process.

Media Research Center's Seton Motley appeared on FNC's Fox & Friends on April 16th to talk about the egregious media bias in covering the tax day TEA Party protests. And there was no shortage of bias to talk about.

Of CNN's Susan Roesgen's openly hostile reporting from one event, Motley said, "She was totally in attack mode. She was almost angry to be there."

He also addressed the juvenile pornographic references by CNN's Anderson Cooper and MSNBC,  which he referred to as "Nestea-Plunging" "so as to not sink to their level."

Motley added "They can't get any more biased, so they decided to go vulgar too."

As has been mentioned here before, the Media Research Center is heading up the Free Speech Alliance (FSA).  Made up thus far of sixty-five organizations, the FSA is dedicated to protecting the freedom of speech of all practitioners of conservative and Christian talk radio from any and all government regulatory censorship.

Well here is an excellent piece by Peter Ferrara of the American Civil Rights Union (ACRU), a Free Speech Alliance member organization, that appeared in Sunday's Washington Times. 

This essay captures perfectly the other half of the argument we are making.  Just as Rush, Sean, Mark et. Al. have the First Amendment-guaranteed Freedom to Speak, We the People have the First Amendement-guaranteed Freedom to Listen. 

The Left's attempts to take away the former inherently abridge the latter too.

We will at this point allow Mr. Ferrara to speak expertly for himself.

Update (March 31, 18:42 EDT): This blog post was mentioned on the "Grapevine" segment on FNC's "Special Report with Bret Baier." Video added at 13:00 EDT on April 1, 2009.[audio available here]

A contributing editor of a major weekly news magazine pens a newspaper op-ed defending a controversial decision by a prominent Catholic university. Said editor's son is a marketing executive for said Catholic institution, but neither the editor nor the newspaper disclose the fact to readers.

If the popular FAIL blog dealt with journalistic missteps, this would surely make the cut.

Enter Kenneth L. Woodward of Newsweek magazine, whose op-ed "Why Notre Dame Should Honor Obama" graces page A17 of the March 30 Washington Post.

Writes National Review Online's Kathryn J. Lopez:

Spreading the WordMedia Research Center Founder and President and NewsBusters.org Publisher Brent Bozell issued the following statement on the meteoric rise in the ratings Rush Limbaugh has enjoyed since the inception of the Obama White House and the Democrats' all-out coordinated attack against him.

As announced yesterday, audience numbers surged for Rush-carrying stations across the country, including in several of the nation's largest markets like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Houston.  Since the orchestrated campaign continued into March, ratings could reach even greater heights for this month.

Bozell:

"I will offer NBC a bit of friendly advice: When you find yourself in an embarrassment hole, stop digging," said Media Research Center's Brent Bozell in a statement released today regarding the MSNBC cable network's reported negotiations to hire left-wing radio host Ed Schultz.

Schultz has a long history of obnoxious on-air comments and behavior.  Just this past Friday, Schultz called Republican Senator Jon Kyl a "spineless scumbag" for daring to criticize President Obama's joke about how his bowling was so bad it was "like Special Olympics or something."  On March 2, he likened a speech given by talk radio host Rush Limbaugh to conservatives at a political conference to Adolf Hitler addressing a Nazi rally.

Last November, he called Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama "a terrorist on the American worker. He is a terrorist on wage workers" and said ""the progressive talkers, you know, we lefties with microphones, we were never invited to the White House. Never got a chance to even urinate on the yard. You know? None of that."

Mr. Bozell's full statement appears below:

Moments ago C-SPAN ended a showing of the MRC's Thursday night gala featuring the DisHonors Awards and the William F. Buckley Jr. Award for Media Excellence which was presented to, and accepted by, Brit Hume.

It will re-run tonight (Saturday) at 11:09 PM EDT (10:09 PM CDT, 9:09 PM CDT and 8:09 PM PDT), when they will carry just under two hours of our show.

Sorry for the lack of advance notice. Usually when C-SPAN covers our event it is not shown until months later, so this took me by surprise -- and as of Friday night C-SPAN's schedule for Saturday night was blank. I just happened to flip by C-SPAN a few minutes ago and saw it.

The Media Research Center's annual “DisHonors Awards,” held Thursday night, furnished MSNBC's Keith Olbermann with comments to ridicule, but his rants exposed his own hypocrisy. As Brit Hume accepted our “William F. Buckley Jr. Award for Media Excellence” he thanked the MRC for providing information he could use, leading Olbermann to denounce Hume at the top of Friday's Countdown: “Brit Hume's dumbfounding admission. He was fed a buffet of daily talking points by an ultra-conservative media site and quote 'we certainly made tremendous use of it.'”

As if Olbermann doesn't graze a “buffet of daily talking points” from an “ultra-liberal media site.” The headline over a post earlier in the day on Media Matters' “County Fair” blog: “Accepting Buckley award, Fox's Hume thanked Media Research Center 'for the tremendous amount of material' they 'provided me for so many years when I was anchoring Special Report.'” Unlike Olbermann, however, Hume almost always credited the MRC so viewers were informed of his source.

Before subsequently reading the Hume quote verbatim as transcribed by Media Matters, Olbermann charged “Brit Hume admits that for years he's been reading daily talking points, from a lunatic-fringe right wing Web site, on the news” and that Hume “made an admission at a DC dinner last night as startling as if he had confessed to making up the news out of whole cloth or reading it off a ouija board.”

Andrew Breitbart, the founding editor of the conservative Big Hollywood blog, described MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews as a reality TV star trying to keep his short-lived 1990s celebrity status alive.

BREITBART: Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann are basically Gary Busey and Jeff Conway.

[...]

BREITBART: My friend's a Beverly Hills psychiatrist who deals with the neuroses of the stars every single day. And he called me up after the thrill up the leg thing, and he said, "Andrew, that's a common side effect of a double dose of lithium."

[laughter]

Last night Fox New Channel's Brit Hume became the third recipient of the Media Research Center's William F. Buckley Jr. Award for Media Excellence.

MRC President Brent Bozell heralded Hume as "a pioneer of sorts, a journalist who recognized how the lock-step liberalism of his colleagues was damaging the profession he loved."

"Recently, a top ABC correspondent told me that letting Brit Hume leave that network was the biggest mistake it ever made," Bozell added.

You can watch Hume's acceptance speech embedded at right.  Below is a transcript of Hume's acceptance speech:

As if out to prove our point about media bias, the Washington Post's Mary Ann Akers seized on a one-liner by Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbacher made last night at the MRC Gala and DisHonors Awards. Wurzelbacher, accepting the "Obamagasm Award" on behalf of ABC's Bill Weir, made a crack playing off the orgasmic delight that Chris Matthews and others in the media expressed after watching then-candidate Obama deliver rousing campaign speeches.

"God, all this love and everything in the room - I'm horny," Akers quoted Wurzelbacher, before going on to insist that no one in the whole room, especially at her table, understood why he said that.

The Media Research Center (MRC) today proudly announces that HBO's Bill Maher is the "Winner" of Quote of the Year for tastelessly suggesting that Sarah Palin's teenage daughter Bristol was the actual birth mother of her infant son, Trig. Maher was selected by the more than 800 attendees of the MRC's annual DisHonors Awards Gala, held last night at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Maher-- winner of the Half-Baked Alaska Award for Pummeling Palin -- beat out MSNBC's Chris Matthews (the Media Messiah Award), CNN founder Ted Turner (the Dan Rather Memorial Award for the Stupidest Analysis) and ABC's Bill Weir (the Obamagasm Award).

We hope Chris Matthews isn't too jealous of Bill Weir. Conquering fierce competition, the ABC reporter pulled out a victory last night in the "Obamagasm Award" at the MRC's DisHonors Awards. [audio available here]

Media Research Center President and NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell chatted about the ceremony this morning on "Fox & Friends."

JULIET HUDDY, co-host: There's something called the Obamagasm Award. Who won that and explain the significance of that award?

BRENT BOZELL, MRC President: Well, the Obamagasm Award is given to that reporter who has swooned the most, and I mean there are all manner of descriptors --

BRIAN KILMEADE, co-host: Tough category here!

BOZELL: for the media's coverage.

STEVE DOOCY, co-host: Exactly right. Brent, we've got the clip, let's look at Bill Weir of ABC.

Media Research Center President Brent Bozell had already been scheduled to appear on today's "Fox & Friends" to discuss last night's MRC Gala and Media DisHonors Awards, but President Barack Obama's laid a golden egg with his joke about the Special Olympics last night on NBC's "The Tonight Show." So the latest Obama gaffe and the media's interest in it was the first topic co-hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade asked the NewsBusters publisher about (audio available here) this morning:

KILMEADE: Brent, that comment. How big a deal?

BOZELL: Well, in the eyes of the regular press, no big deal at all. They're just simply going to overlook it. If past is prologue, they refuse to do any serious kind of journalism work on Obama, candidate or president. But, this is the kind of thing that is beginning to percolate out there. What is becoming evident is when you turn the teleprompter off, this man is capable of making all manner of mistakes, and the more he stays in the public eye, doing this type of thing without a teleprompter, the more mistakes he's going to make.

Last night's Media Research Center Gala and Media DisHonors Awards was a rousing success and was pretty darn funny to boot.

Fortunately we got it all on video over at EyeBlast.tv, the MRC's video archive home. We'll also post some of the highlights here at NewsBusters throughout the day. Stay tuned for video clips of Joe the Plumber, Brit Hume, Mark Levin, and much more.