Topic: Media Research Center
Recent MRC appearances on Fox News bashing ABC over an upcoming broadcast from the White House not only have mostly adhered to the template, they ignored pertinent facts about the news channel on which the MRC reps appeared.
The MRC's Seton Motley appeared on the June 17 edition of "America's Newsroom." He appeared solo, and host Bill Hemmer fed him softball questions and failed to identify Motley as a conservative (though a brief instance of on-screen text stated that the "MRC documents liberal bias in the media").
Later the same day, Fox News correspondent Mike Emanuel aired a clip of Brent Bozell saying, "Just try to imagine a world wherein ABC would give George W. Bush a two-hour opportunity to have a quote-unquote "discussion with the American people" on the war on terror. They didn't even cover some of his press conferences." Emanuel then added, "Bozell saying that a lot of the critics haven't seen any kind of press coverage like this in the past 50 years." Bozell was not identified as a conservative, nor did Emanuel clarify that the "critics" Bozell was talking about can be presumed to be conservative as well.
Further, Bozell has, in fact, seen this sort of coverage in the past 50 years -- the past eight years, to be exact.
As Media Matters has detailed, Fox News was given numerous instances of exclusive access to the Bush White House, during which it tossed softball questions and served as a platform for advancing Bush talking points. Bozell even feebly defended the practice in 2005, insisting against the evidence that an interview of President Bush by Fox's Neil Cavuto "was no puff job," though he made no effort to actually list any of the "challenging questions" Cavuto supposedly asked Bush.
