John Ziegler

Very early on in the 2008 presidential election cycle I decided that I needed to produce a documentary film called “Media Malpractice” about the unprecedented media bias that I was sure would result in Barack Obama’s election. In May of that year I purchased the website URL HowObamaGotElected.com for that purpose.
 
In addition to the successful and very well received film, we put out two rather well known You Tube videos before the movie was completed.

NewsBusters readers know John Ziegler as the documentarian that created the fabulous "Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted."

With the release of HBO's Palin-bashing film "Game Change," I had an e-chat with Ziegler to discuss his impressions of the movie and how it relates to today's politics:

NewsBusters readers should be quite familiar with John Ziegler, the independent filmmaker that produced the spectacular documentary about the 2008 presidential campaign "Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin was Targeted."

In the past few weeks the film has been re-released using a different marketing format, and Ziegler was kind enough to answer some questions about this and other media bias issues via e-mail:

Without question one of the most vehement, unapologetic Sarah Palin haters on national television is NBC's Norah O'Donnell.

So contemptuous of the former Alaska Governor is O'Donnell that she actually went to a Palin book signing event last week armed with crib notes to attack fans of the outspoken conservative.

Seeing this as the straw that broke the camel's back, Palin documentarian John Ziegler has called for NBC to fire O'Donnell.

In a piece he published at his website, Ziegler outlined his reasons:  

Since he burst onto the scene in January with an exclusive interview with former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, John Ziegler has been a NewsBusters favorite.

As a result of last week's $100,000 challenge to debate MSNBC's Keith Olbermann about all things related to Palin, NewsBusters decided it was time to catch up with Ziegler to see if the "Countdown" host had responded.

What followed was a fabulous e-chat about his wager offer as well as what his views are concerning what's happened to Palin this year and what he sees in her future.

Readers are guaranteed to be surprised by some of his answers:

Sarah Palin documentarian John Ziegler has offered Keith Olbermann $100,000 if the MSNBC host invites him on "Countdown" to debate issues related to the former Alaska governor.

According to Mediate, Olbermann made some remarks on his show Monday about Ziegler's recent scuffle with the American Conservative Union's David Keene at the Western CPAC conference last Saturday. 

In characteristic Olbermanese, the host said Ziegler was "defending his own crush" meaning Palin.

Mediaite's Tommy Christopher caught up with Ziegler on Tuesday who had the following to say about Olbermann:

On Thursday, NewsBusters asked if the media would notice Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Cal.) being called out by the CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce for her racist and condescending treatment of him during a Senate hearing.

Such seemed a particularly important question as this disgraceful event occurred on the 100th anniversary of the NAACP.

Yet, according to LexisNexis, not one major media outlet other than FNC thought it was at all newsworthy that Harry Alford called Boxer "God-awful" for pitting the opinions of other black organizations against his.

You think this would have been boycotted, especially on the 100th anniversary of the NAACP, if Boxer had an "R" next to her name instead of a "D"?

For those interested in hearing more from Alford, he was interviewed by LA radio host and Sarah Palin documentarian John Ziegler Friday, and made some comments about Boxer I guarantee media will also ignore (video embedded below the fold, h/t Hot Air):

Although almost eight months have passed since last year's elections, Palin Derangement Syndrome continues to manifest itself throughout America's press.

As NewsBusters' Mike Sargent reported Tuesday, Vanity Fair's Todd Purdum is gravely afflicted with the illness, and needs to see a team of doctors quickly if he ever wants to be taken seriously by anyone other than the extreme Left.

With that in mind, Palin documentarian John Ziegler had a fascinating radio interview with Politico's Mike Allen Wednesday that shed some light on how PDS works and why it's so pernicious.

To set this up, Allen was on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" earlier in the day, and defended Purdum's piece (15 minute audio available here):

UPDATE at end of post: Ziegler discusses incident with John Gibson, Brewer discusses it with tweeters!

MSNBC's Contessa Brewer invited documentarian John Ziegler on her program Wednesday, and got into quite a battle with him over why Sarah Palin should have been at all insulted by David Letterman saying she dresses like a "slutty flight attendant" and her daughter was recently "knocked-up by Alex Rodriguez" during a Yankee game.

Brewer actually didn't think there was anything wrong with Letterman making such comments.

Even better, as the scrum continued, and Ziegler claimed Palin had more class than most people on MSNBC, Brewer got insulted, and called to her producer, "Cut the mike, please" (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, h/t NBers blonde and bigtimer):

Very frightening, I think, what the media was able to get away with this go round.

So said Alaska Governor Sarah Palin at the beginning of John Ziegler's must-see documentary "Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted."

After a nicely spliced introduction that included many of the disgraceful moments NewsBusters reported throughout the campaign, just before the opening credits rolled, Palin ominously stated, "This is for the sake of our democracy that there is fairness in this other branch of government if you will called media."

So true, and yet what Ziegler masterfully demonstrated to his viewers was that democracy and fairness were not on the minds of most press members when the campaign began in 2007.

"Media Malpractice" documentarian John Ziegler was thrown off the USC campus in southern California Wednesday by security guards.

Ziegler was attempting to interview people attending The Annenberg Norman Lear Center's excellence in journalism awards ceremony at which CBS's Katie Couric was to be honored for her "Evening News" segments with Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

Unfortunately, the good folks at USC didn't want Ziegler to speak with anyone, and physically escorted him off campus in handcuffs (video embedded below the fold, h/t Hot Air):

There were many famous people at CPAC this year and I was lucky enough to run into some of them. And some of those I ran into even let me ask them a few questions about media bias. The resulting videos are embedded below the fold.

The four interviews I was able to get where with Joe the Plumber, John Ziegler, George Phillips, and Roger Simon. Each have unique experiences with liberal media bias and each articulated different but insightful points about the media.

Make sure you check out each of the videos and watch them all the way through.

Confronted by Sarah Palin documentarian John Ziegler, on Monday's "Today" show, NBC's Matt Lauer was forced to admit that the media perception of the Alaska governor as an "idiot" was "a lie." However Lauer displayed some disbelief that the media heavily pushed that line during the campaign as he professed, "I don't think that everybody in the media ran out saying, 'Sarah Palin is an idiot.'" Ziegler got the confession from Lauer, while promoting his film Media Malpractice, in the following exchange as aired during the 7:30 am half hour of the February 23, "Today" show [audio excerpt here]:

JOHN ZIEGLER: Oh wait a minute I, I urged people and I urge you Matt because you've been up to Wasilla. You, you know Sarah Palin. You know that this is a lie that she's some sort of an idiot or a moron.

MATT LAUER: No, no, no. Okay but that's, but that's an extreme state-

ZIEGLER: You know it! Tell, tell America right now what you know.

LAUER: That's an extreme, that's an extreme statement. I'm just asking you-

ZIEGLER: You-

LAUER: -when she-

ZIEGLER: Is it not a lie that she's an idiot? You know it Matt.

During the Monday 12PM EST hour of MSNBC news coverage, anchor Norah O’Donnell interviewed conservative film maker John Ziegler, creator of ‘Media Malpractice,’ a documentary on media bias against Sarah Palin, and denied any such bias: "Well, let me ask you, you called the treatment of Sarah Palin and her family a, quote, 'media assassination, one of the greatest public injustices of our time.' Is that a little strong? Are you and her a little thin-skinned?"

Ziegler responded by pointing out O’Donnell’s own anti-Palin bias: "The evidence is overwhelming. It's continuing today. I mean, just a few weeks ago, Norah, you incorrectly stated on the air Sarah Palin called Barack Obama a terrorist during the campaign." NewsBusters reported on O’Donnell’s January 29 smear of Palin.

O’Donnell criticized part of Ziegler’s documentary: "Let me ask you, in your documentary you cite examples of media bias by Saturday Night Live, that that's media bias. Aren't those comedians?...How's that media bias?" Ziegler explained: "Poll after poll shows that more people get their news from comedy shows because the line between entertainment and news, as this network has shown time and time again, has virtually evaporated...MSNBC used to be a news organization, now it's an advocacy organization, and SNL is actually thought to be a news organization."

Last month NewsBusters introduced readers to John Ziegler, a conservative filmmaker creating a documentary about the astoundingly poor job the press did covering 2008's presidential campaign.

Marvelously entitled "Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted," the movie is set for release on February 23.

I chatted with Ziegler earlier in the week about last year's campaign shenanigans and the film. Some of the highlights include (60-minute audio available here):    

Round one between MSNBC's David Shuster and Sarah Palin documentarian John Ziegler was delicious.

Round two, which took place later in the day Friday on "1600 Pennsylvania Ave," was a tad less contentious, but still quite entertaining.

Pay particular attention to the moment at 6:10 when Shuster actually says:

When you're doing a documentary, when you're evaluating the credibility of someone, because you're going to spend a lot of time doing a documentary or a news story, isn't it important to at least try and test her credibility as opposed to just being taken in by their wonderful personality?

Shuster missed the delicious irony in that being exactly what he and the rest of the Obama-loving media did with the president-elect the last two years (video embedded below the fold, h/t Hot Air):

Documentarian John Ziegler Friday called MSNBC's David Shuster "a joke" and "an alleged newsperson" for his anti-Sarah Palin bias.

Appearing on MSNBC to discuss video clips of an interview that he did with the Alaska governor Monday, Ziegler got into a rather contentious exchange with Shuster claiming "this network played an enormous role" in the character assassination of Palin during last year's presidential campaign, and definitively stated "MSNBC is clearly the pet network of Barack Obama."

Shuster followed this up by falsely claiming (video embedded below the fold, h/t TVNewser):

Documentarian John Ziegler has posted at Andrew Breitbart's new website Big Hollywood a fabulous video of an interview he did Monday with Gov. Sarah Palin (embedded right).

In it, Palin answers -- with her characteristically delicious candor! -- how she felt about the media's coverage of her family, as well as the Katie Couric interview and Tina Fey's parodies.

In his article about his meeting with Palin, Ziegler offered his own castigation of the press's abysmal performance during the 2008 presidential campaign:

Former Clinton Administration officials and liberal news media personalities who have been sharply critical of the "The Path to 9/11" miniseries fail to point out that top executives, editors and researchers connected with the docudrama ,who are actually quite left of center themselves, were supportive of the project, according to a new film that explores the controversy.

"The Path to 9/11" is a two part ABC television miniseries that aired on Sept. 10 and 11 in 2006. It is based in part on the 9/11 commission report and presents viewers with a dramatization of the events that lead up to the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington D.C. in 2001. The film highlights the U.S. government's ineffective response to terrorism in the 1990s and in the first few months of the Bush administration.

To suggest the "The Path" was conceived for the purpose of singling out and smearing the former president as part of a "right wing hit piece" aimed against the former president simply does not square with reality, since the project was launched and conceived by several openly liberal ABC executives the new film explains.