Topic: Media Research Center
Tim Graham and Brent Bozell complain in their Oct. 30 column:
The successful U.S. military campaign to bring swift justice to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is clearly a big, big victory for America. Rather than surrender, the world's most wanted terrorist tugged on a suicide vest and blew himself to pieces. He made sure the blast killed three of his children, too.
The media coverage could easily be predicted. Straight news has disappeared. Absolutely everything needs to be put through a political filter.
[...]
With the elimination of al-Baghdadi, the journalists and pundits gritted their teeth and acknowledged that this mission and Trump's approval of it reflected well on him. But that lasted five minutes. And then came the parade of "buts."
But this victory won't stop impeachment. But it won't stop ISIS. But Trump was too specific about the mission. But he thanked Russia first. But he didn't inform House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of the mission. But he was too raw in describing the dead terrorist as "crying" and "whimpering." And so on. And so on.
[...]
The media's mission never changes: shower this president with negativity and an overwhelming sense of horror.
[...]
All this proves that the media aren't primarily interested in facts. Journalists channel their own emotions and pretend they're facts. They cannot tolerate the idea of complimenting this president for a success. His failure and political demise are always the first goals. Facts are getting in the way.
Bozell is complaining that "the media" is doing to Trump what ... he did to President Obama after the death of Osama bin Laden.
In a May 2011 column (h/t Right Wing Watch), Bozell (and Graham, since he ghost-wrote the column) whined that George W. Bush deserved more credit than Obama for bin Laden's death despite having been out of office for more than two years at the time, and that Obama was being "rude" about it:
Unfortunately, while the president spoke for the whole country in remembering the pain of 9/11, his remarks left a gaping hole. He made no generous bow to all the efforts of his predecessor George W. Bush as well as his team. My one regret is that Bush 43 didn't get this scalp. He deserved it more than anyone.
Instead, Obama played subtle and wholly undignified games. He underlined that Osama had "avoided capture" under Bush and "continued to operate" during his tenure. But "I directed" CIA director Leon Panetta to make getting Osama the "top priority" (as opposed to?), and "I" gave the go-ahead to the final mission. Obama also avoided Bush in a Medal of Honor ceremony on Monday afternoon. Even in a Monday night "bipartisan" event at the White House, Obama honored the "military and counter-terrorism professionals" and "the members of Congress from both parties" who offered support to the mission....but no credit for Bush.
If the roles had been reversed, you know Bush would have been more generous. It's what Bushes do.
Then, in October 2012, Bozell complained about a film about the raid that killed bin Laden that was to air on the National Geographic Channel because it was airing too close to the 2012 presidential election and might help Obama get re-elected because it will associate bin Laden's death with the president:
Brent Bozell, president of the conservative Media Research Center, said, "we don't want to pass judgement on the content, because we haven't watched the film -- but timing is what matters."
He added: "If the National Geographic Channel puts off airing this documentary by just three days, and there's absolutely no reason why they can't, it shows they have no agenda. If they don't postpone it by just 72 hours, it will clearly show that they do."
If Bozell can't give proper credit to Obama for the death of binLaden, he has lost the right to play politics over al-Baghdadi's death.
