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visit my web site at http://www.voicenet.com/~wbacon My ICQ# is 79071904 for a precise list of the powers of the Federal Government linkto: http://www.voicenet.com/~wbacon/Enumerated.html ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 09 Mar 2004 03:45:00 -0800 From: Media Research Center <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: MRC Alert Special: Bozell Columns on Brokaw, Hume, Media's Agenda, Kerry ***Media Research Center CyberAlert Special*** 6:45am EST, Tuesday March 9, 2004 Today, four recent Creators syndicate columns by MRC President L. Brent Bozell: "Tom Brokaw vs. Conservative 'Jihad'"; "Besmirching Brit Hume"; "The RNC Agenda vs. The Media Agenda" and "John Kerry, The Anti-War Antihero" For the archive of Bozell columns: http://www.mediaresearch.org/archive/newscol/welcome.asp Now, the text of four Bozell columns from the last couple of months, from oldest to newest: > Bozell's January 14 column, "Tom Brokaw vs. Conservative 'Jihad'" Once this presidential campaign has ended, Tom Brokaw will take his two-plus decades in the anchorman chair and his "Greatest Generation" millions and retire -- leaving Peter and Dan to soldier on desperately as if competing to see which one will become the Strom Thurmond Iron Man of the anchor desk. We must honor Brokaw for this, for having the humility to leave before the game of firing up the liberal-bias projector passes him by. But he's apparently going out like Walter Cronkite, declaring how his heart pounds for the less fortunate, spitting on his General Electric overlords, and beating his breast over how Big Money dashes the dreams of idealistic heroes � like the ones who cash their padded GE paychecks at the Citibank down the street. In an interview with Jane Hall in the most recent Columbia Journalism Review, Brokaw suggests there is no such things as liberal media bias...and then asserts that liberal bias is an "obligation" of journalism. Journalists should "represent the views of those who are underrepresented in the social context, or the political context, and to make sure that they're not overlooked, and that their wrongs get the bright light of journalistic sunshine." He's not talking about pro-lifers. He's not talking about tax cutters. He's talking about the "little guy" and the journalist's noble quest to better his world. Try to put that puzzle together. There is no liberal agenda. There is only a journalistic agenda to extol the virtues of the liberal impulse. Just before that lecture, Brokaw was asked about the voluminous content analysis of the Media Research Center (which I head), and whether that daily drumbeat of exposed liberal editorializing sullies the image of network news objectivity. "It's a little wearying," he said. "Most of the cases are pretty flimsily made...What I get tired of is Brent Bozell trying to make these fine legal points everywhere every day. A lot of it just doesn't hold up." Ouch. Them's fightin' words, or something. So I walked out to the street and called him on it. I challenged Mr. Brokaw to agree with me to assemble a neutral panel to review our evidence of liberal media bias, and let them determine whether this mountain is a molehill. I pledged that if the panel agreed with him, the MRC would contribute $1 million to the charity of his choice. But if it agreed with us, he'd have to give the MRC a $1 million gift Brokaw is liberal, but he's also wise: He didn't accept the challenge. But it begs the question: why even bother to deny the bias? In the last few months, Brokaw has really pushed the petal to the metal on his theory that Big Money is the enemy of democracy. On Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" January 6, he sympathized with Howard Dean and declared George W. Bush is a transparent capitalist tool. He said Dean "cannot equate with the fundraising power of a President of the United States who is a Republican, especially representing the corporate interests. He can go out there, push the button and get a lot of money." Bush is for the "corporate interests," while Dean stands for the "underrepresented." But if that's so, where was Mr. Brokaw when Bill Clinton was breaking all the fundraising records, not to mention fundraising laws? Brokaw's tilt was crystal clear when he unleashed a jeremiad against conservatives in a National Press Club speech last November 19. He declared that "in the social upheaval of the 60s and 70s, there was a kind of tyranny of the left, as there now is in too many quarters of commentary a tyranny of the right." A tyranny? Brokaw decried conservative outlets for liberal-media rebuttals as merely cesspools for "commercial nihilism." Radio stations are "instantly jingoistic and savagely critical of any questions raised about the decisions leading up to, for example, the war in Iraq." Conservative criticism isn't free speech, but the enemy of free speech: "They suffocate vigorous discourse, the oxygen of a system such as ours, by identifying those who refuse to conform and encouraging a kind of e-mail or telephonic jihad, which is happily carried out by well-funded organizations operating under the guise of promoting fair press coverage." Once again, let's try to puzzle out Brokaw's message. Free speech is good. Trying to promote fair press coverage and alert the populace to liberal bias is a "telephonic jihad," a tender little suggestion making conservatives sound a little like al-Qaeda. Try to agree with the notion that Tom Brokaw hosts America's finest example of stimulating "vigorous discourse," and NBC News is a level playing field for conservative expression -- and do it with a straight face. If Brokaw really believes that, I'm still waiting by the phone for his call. END Reprint of first of four columns > Bozell's February 5 column, "Besmirching Brit Hume" The dominance of Fox News in the cable news ratings -- and what liberals see as its annoying tendency to cover topics and angles which they believe should be buried for the good of liberalism -- has led to a great amount of Fox-hating in the anything-but-"mainstream" press. These liberal elites love to pretend that the patch of dirt where they stand is the hallowed ground of objectivity when in reality their idea of "mainstream" is floating out on a liberal sea, on a fanciful boat where everyone thinks Howard Dean is best classified as a political moderate, as were McGovern, Mondale, and Dukakis. As, one is meant to believe, are they. >From their vantage point, which is nowhere within boom-microphone distance of the center, Fox News Channel must look like Right-Wing Kooksville. Unique in standing to the right of the ossified liberal media establishment, Fox is now regularly disparaged as the only ideological news media outlet in the United States. The rest of them are all, to use Dan Rather's self-description, "common-sense moderates." Anyone with his feet grounded in reality realizes that in fact Fox is fairer and closer to the American center than any of the liberal outlets. Pick an issue -- global warming, taxes, homosexuality -- and Fox demonstrates the temerity to allow both sides to debate, whereas other networks still pretend that only one reasonable, quotable side exists. No wonder their audience numbers are sliding as Fox continues to climb. The latest sad anti-Fox outburst came when the National Press Foundation decided to honor respected Fox news hound Brit Hume with its "Broadcaster of the Year" award, Geneva Overholser, a former ombudsman of the Washington Post and a whining liberal windbag if there ever was one, resigned in protest since she felt Hume and Fox practice "ideologically committed journalism." How controversial was the Hume selection? Consider the previous winners of this award: "moderate" Dan Rather, fired New York Times editor Howell Raines, loopy leftist Ted Turner, tiresome PBS propagandist Ken Burns, and NPR bias legend Nina Totenberg, who tried to destroy conservative hero Clarence Thomas with phony-baloney sexual allegations and wished AIDS on conservative hero Jesse Helms in a TV appearance. No one, including Overholser, resigned over any of them. But wait, there's even more phoniness in this take-my-ball-and-go-home protest. In the November 28, 1992 edition of Editor & Publisher magazine, Overholser complained that there wasn't enough ideologically committed journalism out there. "All too often, a story free of any taint of personal opinion is a story with all the juice sucked out. A big piece of why so much news copy today is boring as hell is this objectivity god," she complained. "Keeping opinion out of the story too often means being a fancy stenographer." I saw this riotous act up close on a C-SPAN set a few years ago, as Ms. Overholser sat across the table from me and announced with a straight face and a calm voice that the Washington Post was committed to "presenting the news in a straightforward manner," while the Washington Times was only committed to "representing the conservative viewpoint." Fox News is routinely disparaged by the Left as a hard-swinging right-wing channel because of its top attractions. Populist maverick Bill O'Reilly is not reliably conservative but is regularly rebellious about liberal pieties. Then there's Sean Hannity, who is so packed with persuasive power that liberals never seem to notice he has a liberal co-host sitting across from him every night. Neither is a news reporter, thus rendering the liberal complain moot. But that won't stop the whining. Lost in the rage at the prime-time lineup is the performance of Brit Hume, who brought all the heft of his years of fairness covering Washington and politics at ABC to Fox's table. "Fair and balanced" are not silly marketing words to describe Hume. He earned an "A" from the Media Research Center for even-handed coverage of the Iraq war. But we're not alone. The radical left has trouble complaining about Hume, too. A report by the anti-Iraq-liberation media critics at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting put Hume in the middle in its guest selection: It "had fewer U.S. officials than CBS (70 percent) and more U.S. anti-war guests (3 percent) than PBS or CBS." FAIR's definition of "anti-war" may be ridiculously narrow (in their odd attempt to making liberal networks look conservative), but even FAIR credited Hume's show for giving air time to save-Saddam lobbyists like Rep. Dennis Kucinich and Rep. Fortney Stark. So credit should be granted to the National Press Foundation for having the courage to resist the Fox-haters and honor Hume's easily recognized professionalism. And shame should be awarded to Geneva Overholser, who, by her actions, is telling the world she doesn't have an honest bone in her liberal-activist body. END Reprint of second of three columns > Bozell's February 20 column, "The RNC Agenda vs. The Media Agenda" For several weeks now, the national media have looked like the servile monkey to Democratic Party chairman Terry McAuliffe's organ grinder. Not only have they pounded the Democratic attack line against the President, chanting "questions linger, questions linger, questions linger" about Bush's honorable National Guard service, they have touted the efficiency and electability of John Kerry, and implored his remaining opponents to quit immediately. Then, after all the Bush-bashing and the Kerry-boosting, they unveil a new media poll and squeal with excitement that Kerry's opened a lead. Who would have guessed media manipulation had anything to do with those numbers? On February 12, Republican Party leader Ed Gillespie, one of the few spokesmen allowed to deviate from the Sesame Street sweetness of the Bush team, gave a speech in Reno that revealed what could be called the Republican news agenda, the stories they would like to see the media develop and underline for the voters. Needless to say, the silence is so deafening you can hear the crickets chirping. So let's review some of Gillespie's list of particulars: 1. John Kerry has a long record of voting to slash spending on the military and intelligence agencies, even as al-Qaeda & Co. bombed the World Trade Center, the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the USS Cole. Network coverage? None. They're too busy replaying footage of Kerry in Vietnam, as if that's a coherent answer to Kerry's ultraliberal voting record. 2. Our forces found a 17-page memo in Iraq, allegedly written by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian with ties to al-Qaeda. The memo indicates that the resistance is recognizing our resolve to win the War on Terror. Of the United States, it says, "Our enemy is growing stronger day after day, and its intelligence information increases. By God, this is suffocation!" You mean, we're winning? This doesn't sound the nightly network news tone, does it? On the evening of February 9, the Big Three networks warily acknowledged the memo as potentially authentic, but only CBS quoted this "suffocation" line. Reporter Elizabeth Palmer immediately added: "But the letter, even if it's genuine, doesn't prove that al-Qaeda is responsible for violence in Iraq. On the contrary, it may be an appeal by desperate local operators to al-Qaeda to get involved." Unsurprisingly, ABC preferred a different line, one that demeaned the United States. Martha Raddatz pointed out that the letter says of Americans: "As you know, these are the biggest cowards that God has created, and the easiest target." 3. Gillespie reported that Sen. Bob Kerrey, the Vietnam veteran and Democratic presidential candidate in 1992, told the New York Sun that he supported the Iraq war in no uncertain terms: "It breaks my heart whenever anybody dies, but we liberated 25 million people who were living under a dictator. It puts us on the side of democracy in the Arab world. Twenty years from now, we'll be hard-pressed to find anyone who says it wasn't worth the effort." Network coverage? Zero. 4. The bald-headed leftist pop musician Moby was quoted in the New York Daily News as promoting the idea that his fellow Kerry supporters should work to "punk" Bush supporters by planting lies in Internet chat rooms. He suggested telling pro-lifers that President Bush drove a former girlfriend to an abortion clinic, and paid for her abortion. Network coverage? Zero. 5. Gillespie noted that Teresa Heinz Kerry gave over $50,000 to the League of Conservation Voters, which endorsed her husband's candidacy in January and has run ads on his behalf. Network coverage of this conflict? Zero. Instead, ABC touted the endorsement in two evening stories on January 24, and George Stephanopoulos touted it again on his show the next morning. On January 15, NBC's Kelly O'Donnell aired an entire story giving environmentalists free rein to attack Bush, beginning with the sentence: "The League of Conservation Voters grades the President with the first 'F' in the group's 34-year history." 6. Finally, the Kerry campaign engaged in nasty push-polling tactics in Iowa. Gillespie underlined: "It's on videotape!" A documentary filmmaker covering the Dean campaign was present in a home when the Kerry campaign called on the night of the caucuses and accused Howard Dean of being an environmental racist. Gillespie cited an ABC News report as the source. He's right, but there's a little problem. Protective ABC only put this January 17 report by Jake Tapper on its Web site, and spiked it from appearing on television, despite obtaining the damning videotape. CBS and NBC never bothered to cover this, either. Does this litany of Democratic favoritism give voters any confidence that the TV networks will be reliable referees of the campaign this year? The proper confidence level in network news coverage? Zero. END Reprint of third of four columns > Bozell's February 24 column, "John Kerry, The Anti-War Antihero" The venerable Associated Press would not wish itself to be seen as a silly institution of stenographers, forwarding whatever hilarious charges politicians can concoct. But then how do you explain their Sunday report that John Kerry sent a letter to President George W. Bush, accusing him of using the painful topic of Vietnam for his 'personal political gain'? Will someone please cue the laugh track, and a full orchestra playing the "Looney Tunes" theme song? Is there anyone in presidential politics who's tried to use his Vietnam experience for political gain more than John Forbes Kerry? Is there no end to Kerry fending off every examination of his decades-long contempt for seemingly each and every new weapon in the American arsenal by suggesting, as AP reported, that Republicans who didn't serve in Vietnam are fighting a war against war heroes like him? When liberal journalists are asked why the American people were subjected to three weeks of "news" about Bush's honorable National Guard record, they quickly respond that Bush brought it on himself by landing a plane and walking around in a flight suit on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. If that is a provocation for three weeks of intense scrutiny (not to mention wild "AWOL" hearsay to boot), then what about Kerry? For weeks, he's marched from state to state with a phalanx of Vietnam veterans suggesting he, not Bush, knows something about veterans and about fighting for his country. And yet, he's also the one who returned home to America and wrote vicious books and gave vicious testimony before the United States Senate defaming his fellow American soldiers as raping, slaughtering beasts. Investigative reporter Marc Morano of CNSNews.com unearthed a copy of Kerry's 1971 book "The New Soldier," in which Kerry proclaimed "We were sent to Vietnam to kill Communism. But we found instead that we were killing women and children." He also wrote, "in the process we created a nation of refugees, bomb craters, amputees, orphans, widows and prostitutes, and we gave new meaning to the words of the Roman historian Tacitus: �Where they made a desert they called it peace.'" That's on top of his Senate testimony, in which Kerry claimed -- without citing any evidence -- that on a daily basis, and with the assent of their superiors, soldiers "raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies [sic], randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside" of South Vietnam. Where, oh where, is our truth-loving press now? The truth is the media only want Kerry portrayed as a war hero, and not as an anti-war antihero. The dictionary defines antihero as a character in a story who is characterized by a lack of heroic qualities, such as idealism and courage. Kerry's anti-war record suggests not high idealism, but crass calculation. It takes courage to come home and fight against the slander of your fellow soldiers in a hostile political environment. He did not use courage. Instead, he cynically led a radical America-hating parade of protest, and let his Vietcong-loving protester buddies use him for sport. The clean-cut soldier changed teams to build a political career in the People's Republic of Massachusetts. The media are letting Kerry redefine the story in the most positive light, and the truth be damned. On CNN's "Inside Politics" February 19, Judy Woodruff asked vaguely about how some veterans "are saying, in effect, you were accusing American troops of war crimes." He brazenly denied -- no, let's just say it, he lied about -- what's on the public record. "I never said that. I've always fought for the soldiers." Instead of pressing further, instead of challenging this dishonesty, instead of showing viewers a clip or snippet of Kerry's actual remarks, Woodruff quietly witnessed this lie, and in a moment of blatant favoritism or sheer ignorance, responded by changing the subject. How about that John Edwards? Ronald Reagan never had to dodge bullets in a combat zone. But he called fighting communism in Vietnam a "noble cause," and in 1980, that was considered a grave political gaffe. In 2004, after decades of communist dictatorship in Vietnam and the collapse of despotic communism in most of the world, shouldn't Kerry's radical-left trashing of that war be today's grave political gaffe? After three weeks of sleazy "AWOL" heavy breathing after Bush, if the media fail to spend three weeks delving into John Kerry's half of the Vietnam war, then they cannot be defended as having the slightest care for fairness, balance, or the truth. END Reprint of fourth of four columns -- Brent Baker >>> Support the MRC, an educational foundation dependent upon contributions which make CyberAlert possible, by providing a tax- deductible donation. 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