Topic: Media Research Center
Last week, the Media Research Center issued a press release designed to ride the wave of (manufactured) conservative outrage over Journolist, the left-of-center listserv that purportedly allowed journalists to collaborate in attacking conservatives -- never mind the cherry-picking of carefully selected emails out of thousands upon thousands that is being done in order to push the claim.The press release claimed that the Journolist emails shows "blatant intentions of covering up the Rev. Jeremiah Wright news in 2008 to protect Obama" -- again, never mind that this was occurring well after the story had exploded in the media.
Remember, MRC chief Brent Bozell doesn't care about facts, especially when he has a good froth going:
“The revelation of these e-mails simply proves that we have been right all along. The liberal media have no interest in being fair or unbiased. In fact, they are deliberately violating any sense of journalistic ethics.
“There is no excuse – none – for the attitudes and lack of professionalism these so-called journalists displayed not only in these e-mails but in their reporting. Any member of the media that was privy to these Journolist emails, and remained silent, is just as much to blame as the folks that crafted these e-mails. Their silence indicts them.
“We said in 2008 that the media were making excuses for Jeremiah Wright and now we have the proof. And we learned from the Daily Caller that these people went so far as to say that Rush Limbaugh ‘deserves’ their hate.
“Sadly, I am not surprised, as this is what we have been exposing year after year about the media. And it’s exactly why Americans refuse to trust them.”
Of course, this outrage is utterly hypocritical. As Salon's Joe Conason details, off-the-record planning meetings to set agendas are popular on the right wing, the most prominent of which are the Wednesday morning meetings led for more than two decades by the Club for Growth's Grover Norquist.
As it so happens, one member of the Club for Growth's Founder's Committee has been none other than Brent Bozell. This is relevant because Bozell operates a "news"organization, CNSNews.com, that is much more biased than the mainstream media he loves to attack ever dreamed of being.
If Bozell really wants us to believe he has any moral ground on this issue, he must disclose all of his dealings with secret agenda-setting groups like Norquist's Wednesday morning meetings and the ultra-secretive Council for National Policy of which he is also a member. Bozell must also disclose the contacts between such organizations and CNS editors and reporters, including editor in chief Terry Jeffrey, as well as how this agenda-setting manifested itself in CNS "news" stories.
Then, and only then, will Bozell have any credibility to criticize Journolist. After all,, why should anyone trust his judgment on journalistic issues when his own news organization operates in such a biased manner?
So what do you say, Brent? Do you have the guts to tell the truth, or will you continue to hide your agenda-setting machinations in the darkness?
