"The Obama people were very smart in the way they handled media relations," NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell told Pajama Media's Ed Driscoll during a recently-recorded interview about his new book with Tim Graham, Collusion: How the Media Stole the 2012 Election and How to Stop Them Doing It In 2016.
"The people that they chose for interviews were either entities that weren't news to begin with, i.e., entertainment shows that he did appearances on, or, if they were news personalities, they were so much in the tank for him, that he could go to them over and over and over and then would give him... the kind of puff-ball treatment that he wanted" with "Brian Williams of NBC" and "Steve Kroft" of CBS's 60 Minutes being "prime example[s]," the Media Research Center president noted. [Listen to the full interview at PJ Media or download the MP3 here; to buy your copy of Collusion, click here]
Later in the interview, Bozell chalked up Republican nominee Mitt Romney's atrocious campaign and handling of the liberal media to his campaign staff being disconnected from the pulse of the conservative movement and to the campaign's desire to be respected by the liberal media.
"Mitt Romney is the only candidate in my lifetime that I've known to deliberately go into a prevent defense while losing and if I never see that again I'll be a happy man," Bozell quipped. "Why did [Romney] and John McCain [in 2008] do that? Because the one entity they fear is the Washington press corps" and that's because "they want to be on the A-list. They want to be accepted."
By contrast, the MRC founder noted, "Ronald Reagan did the exact opposite" by "tak[ing] on the press with aplomb and with gusto and with a smile on his face and he destroyed them in the process."
