Media Research Center President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell appeared on this morning's edition of "Fox & Friends" to discuss how the mainstream media is downplaying or ignoring ACORN's history of legal trouble over voter fraud, all while casting the liberal community organizer as the victim of conservatives and Republicans.
Fox News anchor Steve Doocy had Mr. Bozell explain the inaccuracies in a September 23 USA Today article.
You can watch the video by clicking the play button in the embed at the right. A transcript appears below the page break:
STEVE DOOCY, "Fox & Friends" co-host: First up, USA Today writes,"ACORN is a target of conservatives because of its ties to Democrats." Is that right?
BRENT BOZELL, MRC President: It was not a target of conservatives because of its ties to Democrats, it was an organization that conservatives were maintaining for years was actively involved in electoral politics, which is against the law when you're using taxpayer money. It's a huge difference. No, it's not right.
DOOCY: What about the headline, er, rather the passage from USA Today, "attacks increased after ACORN's aggressive voter registration and the get-out-the-vote [effort]."
BOZELL: Once again, ACORN's the victim. Those awful conservatives, they're the aggressors. Why, because evidence piled up and piled up and piled up that ACORN was involved in illegal electoral activity. So it's not that attacks increased, it's that the evidence increased of their illegal activity.
[...]
DOOCY: [O]ne other passage, ACORN videos, rather, the "videos showing ACORN workers giving advice... are raising questions about its tactics and finances and whether it can survive." Hmmm?
BOZELL, chuckling: Yeah. Tactics and finances. This was the advice given on how to set up a whorehouse. How not to pay your taxes. How to break laws. That should have been part of the narrative, but it wasn't.
DOOCY: Hey, is USA Today a liberal outfit?
BOZELL: You know, they're one of the better ones. That's the amazing thing. Yes, of course they are. But USA Today is a newspaper that sometimes does cover both sides of the story, but this really is a microcosm. That one paragraph really shows you the media at their present worst, and it explains why everyone is stopping reading newspapers, why they're not watching these network shows anymore. They're had it with this.
