Brent Bozell

"Last night I thought it was very poor, quite frankly. I thought he had opportunity after opportunity to go after Barack Obama. I don't know why he held back," noted MRC President Brent Bozell in his October 16 appearance on FNC's "Fox & Friends." [audio version available here]

Reacting to co-host Steve Doocy suggesting that McCain may have "made the case" to sway some undecided voters, Bozell strongly disagreed:

No. I think he had great opportunities to score bigger points. Take the abortion issue, and by the way, I'm glad finally that issue was raised by a moderator. On abortion, Barack Obama's record is perfectly clear. He is in favor of every form of abortion imaginable. He's in favor of taking off all restrictions on abortion. He's in favor of federally-funded abortion, meaning you and I will pay for all the abortions in America. And John McCain never made that point.

Spreading the WordAs we reported earlier, in an interview for the upcoming New York Times's Sunday Magazine, and again in last night's Presidential debate, Illinois Senator Barack Obama singled out the Fox News Channel for scorn for how he feels they are covering his campaign.

Excerpted Sen. Obama quotes from the Times Sunday Magazine: "I am convinced that if there were no Fox News, I might be two or three points higher in the polls.... If I were watching Fox News, I wouldn't vote for me, right? ... Because the way I'm portrayed 24/7 is as a freak. I am the latte-sipping, New York Times-reading, Volvo-driving, no-gun-owning, effete, politically correct, arrogant liberal. Who wants somebody like that?"

MRC President and Newsbusters.org Publisher L. Brent Bozell, III issued the following statement in response:

Tom Brokaw hit a "home run" in moderating the October 7 presidential debate in Nashville, Tennessee, earning a "tip of the hat" from MRC President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell for presenting a balanced agenda of debate questions.

Appearing on the October 8 "Fox & Friends," Bozell noted that of the 18 questions asked at the Belmont University-hosted debate, former "NBC Nightly News" anchor Tom Brokaw allowed 14 neutral questions and two each of conservative-leaning and liberal-leaning questions.

Asked about MSNBC's Chris Matthews calling Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), "debonair," however, the MRC president proclaimed that the "Hardball" host was "an embarrassment as a journalist."

"If he [Matthews] were to put an Obama button on... I'd have more respect for him, really. I don't have any respect for somebody who is as shameless as he or that sidekick Keith Olbermann," Bozell added.

Media Research Center President and NewsBusters Publisher L. Brent Bozell, III appeared this morning on the Fox News Channel's Fox & Friends to discuss the media's nearly unanimous acclamation of Illinois Senator Barack Obama as the winner of last Friday's Presidential debate.

Mr. Bozell noted one of the few press exceptions, Newsweek, who gave the nod to Arizona Senator John McCain, but pointed out that they then said of the win, "Who cares?"

Mr. Bozell also discussed Sen. Obama's continuing to wear and discuss the bracelet of fallen soldier Sgt. Ryan David Jopek, and how his family has been asking since at least March that he stop doing so. Mr. Bozell pointed out that if the tables were turned, and it was Sen. McCain refusing the repeated requests of the family of KIA Cpl. Matthew Stanley, whose bracelet he wears with their continued blessing, the media would be apoplectic.

Networks have given more coverage this year to the 6-year-old collapse of Enron than the role of federal government-sponsored mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the present financial crisis, Media Research Center President Brent Bozell noted in a September 25 interview with the hosts of Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends." The NewsBusters publisher argued that the media's lack of interest was due to its ideological commitment to the liberal social aims of Fannie and Freddie: extending loans to people who otherwise were priced out of owning their homes.

Bozell appeared via satellite from Nashville, Tennessee. A portion of the transcript follows [audio of segment here]:

STEVE DOOCY, co-host: Look at the coverage that the Fannie Mae catastrophe is getting as opposed to say the Enron collapse a number of years ago. Much different.

BOZELL: That's an understatement.... If you look at the height of the crisis during that time period, you know that the word Fannie Mae never appears in an ABC transcript? ABC never reported it. And ask yourself what's bigger, Enron or this? CNN, how about this, CNN gave at the height of this gave Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac three percent the coverage that they gave Enron. Get this statistic: This year, this year, there's been more coverage by the networks on Enron -- which isn't in the news -- than on both of these calamities combined.

MRC President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell appeared live in the New York studio on the September 16 "Fox & Friends" to discuss negative campaigning this presidential season, as well as the media's bias.

Bozell noted that the bias in the media often manifests as a bias by omission and/or a double standard:

STEVE DOOCY, co-host: Because everybody in the mainstream media seems to be beating up Sarah Palin, what stories are nobody covering on the Left?

Reacting to photographs of Sen. John McCain taken by a freelance photographer for Atlantic Monthly, MRC President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell took aim at the photographer while noting the magazine has reacted appropriately by denouncing her work. [audio of segment here]

"In this case, I don't know that I blame Atlantic Monthly for this reason. [Jill Greenberg] is a rogue photographer," Bozell told Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes on their September 15 program.

Bozell added that Atlantic's editor denounced Greenberg as "appalling." "This wasn't the [fault of the] Atlantic Monthly, this was the photographer" who is among a segment of the political left that "is just out of control." That doesn't negate that fact that the media have not been biased in this election cycle, Bozell added.:

MRC President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell appeared on the September 11 "Fox & Friends" to talk about media coverage of Sen. Barack Obama's lipstick-on-a-pig remark and on the continued fallout from MSNBC's biased convention coverage.

Bozell noted that the liberal media just "don't get it" about widespread anger over the lipstick remark, but cautioned the Fox News anchors from labeling Obama's remark as sexist:

BRENT BOZELL: There are women all over America who are outraged. Whether or not he meant to say it, he did say it. Period.

GRETCHEN CARLSON: And so, do you believe, though, that it was a sexist comment?

MRC President and NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell appeared on FNC's "Live Desk" at 2:55 p.m. EDT, reacting to MSNBC shelving Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann from covering the presidential election. [audio available here]

BRENT BOZELL: I'm not surprised, Martha.... Simply because what you heard was this giant sound of America turning off its TV sets with these two left-wing activists posing as news anchors. They got trounced in the ratings, they came in last in the cable ratings even covering the Democrats. They have no credibility.

You have a man like Keith Olbermann who one day is the anchor covering the Republican Convention, the next day calls John McCain the worst person in the world, says that he is delusional, just insults him as best he can. And as a result MSNBC has no credibility.

Spreading the Word

NewsBusters.org's parent company, the Media Research Center, today released the following statement from President L. Brent Bozell, III.:

Arch-liberal MSNBC has finally pulled the plug on the horrendous anchor tandem of Olbermann and Matthews. It's a good move, but it's about time. I wonder what it was that finally made them see the light?

MRC President and NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell appeared on Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends" Thursday morning to discuss the outrageous media bias against Alaska Governor and Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

Regarding the attacks on Palin's experience, Bozell claimed:

For two years Republicans, conservatives, have been saying that Barack Obama was perhaps the arguably the singularly most unaccomplished presidential candidate in the history of the republic, and for two years, the national press corps, the networks, particularly, have absolutely refused to cover his lack of experience. Now, Sarah Palin comes on, and what have we heard all week long from the same reporters? If this isn't a double standard, I just don't know what is.

[Audio available here.]

What a disgraceful display of media malice in response to the Gov. Palin announcement. The Governor is a remarkable, genteel and upstanding woman, yet the press went right into the gutter in response to Sen. McCain's selection of her to be Vice President.

These alleged journalists are again demonstrating what utter charlatans they are. Every day they lecture conservatives about ‘mean-spirited' politics, yet they spent the entire Labor Day weekend using Gov. Palin's new born son's condition to try to score cheap and shoddy Democratic campaign points. And continued right on doing so when the Palin family announced that their oldest daughter Bristol was pregnant.

These are not reporters, these are hypocritical left-wing advocates using their First Amendment rights as clubs to bludgeon and abuse this fine woman with the lowliest attacks they can drum up.

The line between the liberal media and the Democratic Party has now been crossed so many times it is no longer blurred, it is obliterated.

MRC President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell appeared around 10:15 a.m. EDT on Fox News Channel's "America's Newsroom" to discuss actor George Clooney's role in advising presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama.

Imagine, Megyn, what would happen if it transpired that in 2000 George Bush's foreign policy advisor was Billy Ray Cyrus, or if this year, McCain was being advised on foreign policy by Ted Nugent. The media would have a field day with something like that.

Audio available here.

MRC President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell appeared on Friday's "Hannity & Colmes" to talk about the media's eagerness to jump on the press plane and head to cover Barack Obama in Iraq. This despite the media's disinterest in covering John McCain's numerous foreign trips earlier this year. [audio available here]

"This is a press, the networks especially, that have gone into a complete swoon over Barack Obama," argued Bozell.

Earlier that day, Bozell appeared on "Fox & Friends" to discuss the same topic. Video of that can be found here.

For the MRC press release on the matter, click here (excerpt below):

MRC President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell appeared on today's "Fox & Friends" around 8:15 a.m. EDT. The topic: Barack Obama's biggest fans, the three network anchors, taking their bias on the road following the Illinois senator to Iraq. [audio available here]

Quipped Bozell:

If the networks were governed by the FDA, they would have recalled the word "news" from these guys.

The NewsBusters publisher went on to note that CBS devoted just 31 words to McCain's Iraq trip, and that McCain failed to get a traveling correspondent, much less an evening newscast anchor, to shadow him on his foreign trips:

Tony Snow, who we sadly learned passed away Saturday morning after a battle with cancer, accepted the second annual "William F. Buckley Jr. Award for Media Excellence" at the MRC's 2008 Gala and DisHonors awards held in Washington, DC on April 10 this year. In one of his last public appearances, Snow praised the MRC and chastised journalists for not appreciating America's greatness:

"I love your determination, I love your creativity, your terrier-like refusal to let the press get away with things that violate the canons of journalism. But while I'm at it, I want to take a moment to talk about what is the most indefensible lapse of all. And we've seen several examples of it tonight. That is, the failure of the press to shake off maybe the greatest bit of laziness that you see often in journalism, it's what I call 'facile cynicism.'

"It's the attitude that, when you look at American life, you look at it with a sense of boredom; you're surrounded by people who are mediocre; the politicians are boring; oh, you look at it with a yawn. There's a kind of an Olympian look down at the people that fails to acknowledge that even now, in a time when we are riven by disagreements about a war and when we are anxious about our economy, this is still the world's dream machine."

Media Research Center President Brent Bozell issued this statement on Saturday regarding Tony Snow's passing:

At about 8:05am ET this morning, MRC President Brent Bozell, publisher of NewsBusters, appeared on Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends" to discuss the networks' slavish coverage of Barack Obama and his campaign for President.

As Mr. Bozell says himself in the video (Windows Media), the Big Three (NBC, ABC and CBS) aren't delivering news stories so much as they are issuing Obama campaign press releases, save for the fact that the campaign itself would be too embarrassed to engage in this kind of overwrought hyperbole.

Mr. Bozell expounds on the glowing coverage of Barack Obama, and juxtaposes it with the now vicious reporting on his opponent John McCain, and goes on to predict how the two Party conventions will be covered.

There are over 180,000 U.S. troops serving bravely in Iraq and Afghanistan and each of them are owed a great deal of gratitude for their service and sacrifice. In a first of its kind Web-A-Thon to raise funds to send the largest shipment of care packages in history to our troops abroad, Move America Forward will Web-cast "From the Front Lines" via streaming video at www.ustream.tv on Thursday, June 26 from 4 p.m. to midnight EDT (3 PM to 11 p.m. CDT, 1 PM to 9 p.m. PDT).

The Media Research Center is sponsoring the 5 to 6 p.m. EDT hour and MRC Founder and President Brent Bozell will be interviewed at the top of the hour, around 5:05 p.m.

Radio host Rush Limbaugh should briefly join the live Web cast around 4:20p.m. EDT and other conservative luminaries like Ann Coulter, Mark Levin, and Sean Hannity are also scheduled to participate in the Web cast.

You can find the Web cast here on Ustream.tv or embedded on this post below the page break.

MRC President Brent Bozell appeared on the June 24 "Hannity & Colmes" to comment on a trend in Iraq reporting that conservatives have known for a while and the New York Times is only now catching on to: the media love to report negative developments from Iraq, while downplaying or ignoring positive developments such as the succeess of the surge or the exonerations of the Haditha "massacre" Marines.

Here's an excerpt of Bozell from the segment:

BRENT BOZELL, MRC President: There's a terrible adage in journalism: good news is no news, bad news is great news. And that's the coverage that we've seen in Iraq. Countless studies have been done, we've done studies on this, showing that as things got worse and worse, you had more and more coverage. But suddenly the surge came around and as the surge took off and was successful, the coverage went down. You see just the other day where the military announced that violence is down 89 percent, and yet NBC and CBS didn't think that was news. Now, they didn't need to send a reporter to Iraq to report that one, they could have done that from their bureaus.

Media Research Center (MRC) President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell joined lawmakers and a conservative radio host today in calling for an up-or-down vote on the Broadcast Freedom Act, which would drive a stake through the so-called Fairness Doctrine, which, if resurrected, would threaten conservative talk radio.

Below is the official MRC press release. Be sure to also check out the MRC's Culture and Media Institute study, "Unmasking the Myths Behind the Fairness Doctrine":

ALEXANDRIA, VA - Media Research Center President L. Brent Bozell joined with House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO), Congressmen Mike Pence (R-IN), Greg Walden (R-OR) and Trent Franks (R-AZ), syndicated radio talk show host Laura Ingraham and President of Americans for Tax Reform Grover Norquist in declaring this July 4th to be Radio Independence Day, and called for Congress to allow a full up or down vote on the Broadcaster Freedom Act (BFA).

The BFA will kill once and for all the Fairness Doctrine, the onerous governmental policy that served to stifle free speech on the radio airwaves for four decades. Twenty-one years since its repeal, conservatives have flourished on the air, and liberals have been seeking to again silence them with the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine.

The BFA is currently stuck in committee. A discharge petition has been started to allow it to the floor for a full vote, but it has only 194 of the needed 218 signatures.

MRC President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell appeared on the June 10 "Fox & Friends" to discuss yet another poll noting that the public perceive what the MRC has documented for nearly 21 years: the media are not only biased ideologically, they tailor campaign coverage in a way that goes softer on candidates they favor, such as Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

For example, Bozell note, the Illinois Democrat's numerous gaffes have received widespread play in blogs and on video-sharing sites like YouTube, yet are virtually ignored by the MSM:

Barack Obama has a long history of gaffes on this campaign trail, Bosnia sniper type of gaffes. We've documented them. Others have documented them. But you won't see them on the news media. So you just can't say, I mean it's, what Ed has said is true, Hillary did stumble and did make mistakes and Bill did make mistakes but so did Barack Obama and they weren't covered.

Audio from the two segments is available here. Transcript below by MRC intern and NewsBusters blogger Lyndsi Thomas:

The following is from an MRC press release calling out the liberal mainstream media for covering up House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) recent remarks chalking up the success of the U.S. military in Iraq to the "goodwill of the Iranians." [audio of Pelosi's remarks available here]

Alexandria, VA-- Last Thursday, a collection of reporters and members of the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle sat down for a nearly 80-minute interview with Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California.

At the 62-minute mark, Pelosi slandered and demeaned the hard-won successes of our armed forces in Iraq, saying "Whatever the military success and progress that may have been made, the surge didn't accomplish its goal. And some of the success of the surge is that the goodwill of the Iranians -- they decided in Basra when the fighting would end, they negotiated that cessation of hostilities -- the Iranians."

No one at the Chronicle reported the Speaker's vicious slander. Nor did NBC, ABC or CBS, CNN or MSNBC deem it fit for broadcast, either Thursday evening or at any point on Friday. The vaunted New York Times likewise did not deem this fit to print.

L. Brent Bozell:

MRC President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell appeared on the June 2 "Fox & Friends" to discuss Sen. Barack Obama's decision to leave the controversial Trinity United Church of Christ and the fact that Obama has appeared on the cover of 11 news magazines since the beginning of the year.

Partial transcript below by MRC intern Peter Sasso [audio available here]:

STEVE DOOCY, "Fox & Friends" co-host: Brent, so things heated up when the Catholic priest a week ago said some crazy stuff there at the pulpit at Trinity United. But we should go back a little bit. Barack Obama initially joined that particular church because it had a huge power base and if he wanted to get established in Chicago politics, he had to join it.

BRENT BOZELL, Media Research Center President: That's right. I mean and it's now become the home for whack jobs. But, you know, you look at his resignation yesterday and you just ask yourself why does this man do things half way? Why can't he go all the way? Did he resign because there is something wrong with that church? No. In fact, in resigning, he said I'm not saying this. He said this. Very emphatically, that he absolutely refuses to denounce that church. If you absolutely refuse to denounce that church, why did you leave it?

[...]

MRC President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell appeared on Fox News Channel's May 20 edition of "Fox & Friends" in the 8 a.m. half-hour. Bozell was joined by liberal radio talk show host Mike Papantonio to discuss whether Michelle Obama should be "off-limits" to media scrutiny and whether Hillary Clinton's complaints about slanted media are overblown.

Audio available here.

Selected excerpts below:

GRETCHEN CARLSON, co-host: Brent, are spouses off-limits in 2008?

BRENT BOZELL, President of the Media Research Center: Well, you know, I'm institutionally sympathetic to the idea that a spouse should be off-limits if the spouses want to be off-limits, if the spouse isn't participating in the political process. In this case, you've got a spouse who is well-informed, well-educated, well-spoken and outspoken on the campaign trail campaigning on behalf of her husband. So absolutely she's fair game. Of course she is. And it's an insult to her to say that she shouldn't be.

CARLSON: In what way?

MRC President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell appeared on the May 9 edition of Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends" to discuss media coverage of the Democratic primary race. Bozell held that while the conventional wisdom that Clinton's candidacy is all-but-over may be accurate, political reporters who should be objectively reporting the campaign have taken on the role of pundits and commentators. What's more, Bozell added, it's precisely this sort of cheerleading by the referees that has called the game for Obama well before the clock's run out. [audio available here]

The network news broadcasts are to blame for the American people's widely held misconception that the U.S. economy is in a recession, according to Media Research Center founder and President L. Brent Bozell III.

"How in the world is it that 81 percent of the American people believe that we're in a recession?" Bozell asked on CNBC's "Kudlow and Company" May 2. "Maybe it's because the national networks this year, and we've counted it, have talked about a recession over 500 times."

Hillary Clinton's recent appearance on "The O'Reilly Factor" was a play for superdelegate support at the Democratic Convention, MRC President Brent Bozell argued on the May 2 "Fox & Friends" in a segment joined by liberal talk show host Mike Papantonio. [audio available here]

Asked about the media and if it will follow up any more on the Rev. Wright controversy, the NewsBusters publisher quipped that, "[u]nless Jeremiah Wright sends a cruise missile back in their direction, no, the networks aren't going to touch this, and the New York Times is going to leave this alone. That's the end of the story, that's the way it goes."

Below is a transcript of some remarks from Bozell's appearance on the May 2 "Fox & Friends":

MRC President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell appeared on both the April 29 "Hannity & Colmes" and the April 30 "Fox & Friends" to discuss media treatment of the ongoing Barack Obama/Rev. Jeremiah Wright saga. Bozell discussed a taxpayer-funded "puff piece" interview by PBS's Bill Moyers on "Hannity & Colmes." The next morning on "Fox & Friends," in addition to addressing Moyers's bias, Bozell discussed reports that Hillary Clinton backer the Rev. Dr. Barbara Reynolds was the person responsible for arranging Rev. Jeremiah Wright's April 27 National Press Club event.

While Reynolds has a political agenda in view, Bozell noted, he doubted there was a direct link to Hillary Clinton herself. [Audio excerpt here]

An excerpt from the "Fox & Friends" segment:

GRETCHEN CARLSON, co-host: Well how did Rev. Jeremiah Wright end up as a keynote speaker at the National Press Club? And what role Barbara Reynolds, openly a Clinton supporter, what role did she play in arranging Rev. Wright's appearance? More details coming out this morning now.

BRIAN KILMEADE, co-host: Yeah, Brent Bozell, you have a theory here. And we know now thanks to one of the reports that she had brought up Rev. Wright's name two years ago as a speaker and he has spoken before at 2007. But when they needed Rev. Wright, they had to go to Reynolds who does know him personally.

MRC President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell appeared opposite liberal radio talk show host Mike Papantonio on the April 24 "Fox & Friends" program in two short segments in the 8 a.m. half-hour. Topics included the cancellation of a planned CBS North Carolina Democratic primary debate and the recent Los Angeles Times's article hinting that John McCain "may face "fitness questions" in light of his U.S. Navy disability pension. [see video here; audio available here]

In the first segment, Bozell applauded ABC for a hard-hitting Pennsylvania debate and lamented that the primary debates up to it had mostly been "a farce." In the second, the MRC president slammed the April 22 Ralph Vartabedian article in the Times as worse than being a mere "cheap-shot," it's just merely "stupid" and nonsensical.

A transcript of Bozell's remarks appears below:

MRC President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell was on "Fox & Friends" during the 7 a.m. EDT hour today to recap last night's "DisHonors Awards."

You can find videos of the Awards program here at EyeBlast.tv, the MRC's online archive and video-bookmarking site. You can also sign up for an EyeBlast.tv account here.

[Audio available here]

I have to give props to the "Fox & Friends" graphics guys for this graphic for our "How We Adore Clinton-Gore Award," which you can see below the page break: