Topic: Media Research Center
An April 7 MRC NewsBusters post reads:
Media Research Center (MRC) President Brent Bozell issued the following statement praising CNN and MSNBC for their decisions to ban Roger Stone, a close associate of presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has called for intimidation of delegates at this summer’s Republican Convention.
A report by Politico on CNN’s decision to ban Stone cited his attacks on Ana Navarro (a Jeb Bush supporter and CNN analyst) in which he called her an “Entitled Diva Bitch,” “Borderline retarded,” and “dumber than dog s---.” Stone has also referred to Roland Martin and Ana Navarro as “quota hires” by CNN.
Media Research Center President Brent Bozell:“CNN and MSNBC should be applauded for banning Roger Stone from their airwaves. Stone’s recent threats to intimidate delegates at the Republican Convention by broadcasting their hotel rooms and his long history of incendiary and offensive rhetoric add no value to the national discourse. Agree with them or not, Trump's surrogates are fine people. But Stone is a thug who relishes personal insults, character assassination, and offensive gestapo-like tactics that should be unequivocally dismissed by civil society, most especially those who might give him a platform from which to spew his hatred.
“The news media have for far too long ignored Stone’s inflammatory words. I hope all media outlets that lament the debasement of political dialogue and the gutter politics for which Stone is infamous follow the lead of CNN and MSNBC. The media should shun him. He is the David Duke of politics. Those with whom he is affiliated should denounce him in no uncertain terms.”
Good on Bozell for doing that, but he's sadly late to the party. That Politico story on CNN banning Stone is dated Feb. 23, a full month and a half before Bozell's statement. NewsBusters made no mention of the ban at the time, according to a search of its archive.
Bozell is (perhaps understandably) silent on another thing noted in the Politico story: Stone's nasty remarks about Ana Navarro were first flagged by the MRC's liberal-leaning counterpart, Media Matters (disclosure: my former employer). There's no contemporaneous record of Stone's remarks about Navarro in NewsBusters, either.
It's only when MSNBC followed in banning Stone on April 5 that Bozell was moved to make his statement. It seems Bozell was waiting for enough stars to align agenda-wise to say something nice in public about CNN and MSNBC.
