"This time, they went too far," MRC President and NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell said of the Obama administration's rule to force Catholic institutions to violate their conscience on contraception, and he scolded the media for refusing to cover the controversy at first.
"The national news media has no understanding of what goes on in the Catholic church. This is massive inside the Catholic church, and think about how long it took -- it took CBS 10 days to do a story on this and they only devoted seconds to it," Bozell argued on the February 9 edition of FNC's Hannity, during his regular "Media Mash" segment. "It took NBC and ABC 17 days to arrive at this story. This is the biggest story dealing with an assault on religious freedom in the history of the Republic."
[MP3 audio here; video and additional transcript below the fold]
Host SEAN HANNITY: We've got the health care issue going on. Now when the issue of Planned Parenthood was in the news, the media pounced on it -- you actually did a study at MRC about this -- they waited two weeks to cover Obama and his mandate on religious institutions and violating the beliefs on birth control....
MRC President BRENT BOZELL: The national news media has no understanding of what goes on in the Catholic church. This is massive inside the Catholic church, and think about how long it took -- it took CBS 10 days to do a story on this and they only devoted seconds to it. It took NBC and ABC 17 days to arrive at this story. This is the biggest story dealing with an assault on religious freedom in the history of the Republic.
HANNITY: Let me explain it to these people that don't understand in the media. This is about the First Amendment. This is about the right to practice your religion. To have the state mandate and force religious institutions, to provide a -- mandate forced by the government -- to provide coverage for either contraception or the morning-after pill, it's contrary and contradicts their values, their religious belief system. That's religious freedom. To have the government force you to do something that is the antithesis of what it is your conscience tells you to do.
BOZELL: And not only that, Sean, but this thing has been simmering for months. Cardinal-designate Dolan said to the President directly, 'You are telling us that by law we must commit a mortal sin. We can't do that.' And he tried to explain this, that you've got "Marie Antoinette" Sebelius and these people at the White House, they just think they can run roughshod over people. This time, they went too far.
