Free Republic

When MSNBC gave Ed Schultz a nightly segment entitled "Psycho Talk," it was apparently in obedience to the truth in advertising laws. On Thursday night, the low-rated host of "The Ed Show" used that segment -- which is supposed to highlight over-the-top rhetoric from conservatives -- to call Rush Limbaugh "a racist, pill-poppin' radio guy." Schultz was outraged that Rep. Steve King, R-IA, had asked NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to apologize to Rush Limbaugh for denying Rush partial ownership of the St. Louis Rams while allowing Jennifer Lopez and Fergie to become co-owners of the Miami Dolphins after worse...

Radical-left protesters outside the G-20 summit meeting in Pittsburgh last week underlined once again that our friends in the news media see no real enemy or extremist to their left. But conservative protests against Team Obama are an ugly sign of incivility, and according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, even impending violence. HBO talk show host Bill Maher exemplified the liberal-media attitude on his Twitter page on Sept. 24: "Even with a face full of tear gas, these G-20 protesters (are) better looking than the teabaggers." But there's a big difference between the sea of tens of thousands of conservative...

Friday, August 28 Dorinda Bordlee, executive director of the Bioethics Defense Fund on the finer points of the Health Care Reform Bill being debated in Congress. Fr. Robert Sirico, president of the Acton Institute, on the ethical concerns of the health care debate and the passing of Sen. Ted Kennedy. Brent Bozell, founder & president of the Media Research Center, on media bias and the often toxic media culture.

It's a consistent line from the left: Conservative talk radio is a cauldron of hate. In the Clinton years, a CBS News promo set out to warn the public about the dangers of Gordon Liddy: "The words are shocking ... What he says may not be illegal, but is it dangerous? Has free speech gone too far? Hate radio under fire, and firing back." It is an unmistakable, unquestionable, resoundingly unequivocal exercise in liberal hypocrisy. The airwaves are now filled with the meanest, most insulting, most dishonest ad hominems in history. They are coming from left-wing talk show hosts. And...

Mr. Bozell also discusses the MRC's Four Day Call-A-Thon to the offices of Speaker Pelosi and Leader Reid - which is taking place right now and runs through close of business Thursday - where MRC Action Team members, many, MANY members of the FSA and a whole host of individual radio stations and hosts are having their grassroots/members/listeners place calls to their offices demanding a full, fair stand-alone vote on the Broadcaster Freedom Act (BFA), which would prohibit the FCC from reimposing the Censorship Doctrine, also mis-known as the "Fairness" Doctrine. And we are asking you to join in the...

Media watchdog Brent Bozell tells Newsmax that the national media are so slanted to the left that they have been "pamphleteers for the Obama administration." Bozell, founder and president of The Media Research Center — which tracks liberal bias in the media — also said that the major TV networks have refused to call Obama a socialist or even a liberal even though he is "the most radical left-wing president in the history of the United States." See Video: Brent Bozell explains how the mainstream media supports Obama’s socialist agenda - Click Here Now|

As the Democrat-dominated House and Senate thoughtfully passed judgment on a 1,100-page "stimulus" bill that Sen. Frank Lautenberg admitted no one would read before the vote, the media elite were positively giddy. On the "NewsHour" on PBS, liberal analyst Mark Shields proclaimed, "I think it's a monstrous success" for President Obama. That's correct, with an emphasis on "monstrous." Our news media have insisted on playing the White House soundtrack on this battle, to wit: The "stimulus" is vitally necessary, and by opposing it, Republicans are risking being flattened by the Great Obama Steamroller. A partisan victory is OK, but they'd...

Cast Two Giant Shadows Heather Latham, February 18, 2009 “Define or be defined; he who wins that debate wins the argument,” said L. Brent Bozell III, founder and president of Media Research Center and nephew of William F. Buckley, Jr., at a Heritage Foundation event. He holds that Ronald Reagan understood this, and nobody could touch him because of it. Nicknames like “the Teflon president” were given to him because no bad press would stick to him. He says, “He understood that there is perception and there is reality, and the perception of reality is all that matters, not the...

Some of President Obama's policies are not faring well in public opinion, but will anyone be told? On Feb. 2, a Gallup poll found that Obama's executive order "allowing U.S. funding for overseas family planning organizations that provide abortion" was decidedly unpopular: Only 35 percent approved, while 58 percent disapproved. You didn't know this? You're not alone: A Nexis survey finds none of the television networks, cable or broadcast, noticed these results, either. The Gallup survey found overwhelming approval for other Obama policies -- on higher fuel efficiency standards, on restricting lobbyists from joining his administration, on interrogating suspects according...

Even in economically troubled times, Christmas is still a prime opportunity for children to be showered with the latest in electronic gadgetry, from iPods to laptops. For decades, parents have worried about children wandering into the scariest corners of television. But with new technologies come a lot of new and even scarier trails to follow. Imagine a young teen with a new laptop, and add YouTube, now owned by Google, which performs 63 percent of the world's Internet searches. It's not a farfetched thought: Nearly half of boys and a third of girls ages 13-17 name YouTube as one of...

Hollywood can still mount a soapbox and recall the dark days when people lost their jobs in show business for daring to take an unpopular political position that was outside the mainstream. Whenever they're criticized, they proclaim, "McCarthyism," accuse their critics of "blacklisting," and condemn the deplorable "intolerance." Hollywood has yet to accept, perhaps even to understand, that it is the entertainment industry that excels at this slanderous behavior. After California voters narrowly approved Proposition 8, which amended the state constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman, it was revealed that Scott Eckern, the artistic director...

"She is dynamite,” said Morton C. Blackwell, who was President Ronald Reagan’s liaison to the conservative movement. Mr. Blackwell described vying to get close to Ms. Palin at a fund-raiser in Virginia, lamenting that he could get only within four feet. “I made a major effort to position myself at this reception,” he said, adding that he is eager to sit down with her after the election to discuss the future. Asked if the weeks of interviews had tarnished her among conservatives, he replied, “Not a bit.” Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, a conservative group, called it...

I just returned home from seeing the premiere of Ben Stein's new movie, "Expelled:No Intelligence Allowed". I was amazed that such an important movie that addresses serious questions would be so enjoyable and have such great entertainment value. The movie exposes Darwinism and the crushing of scientific inquiry going on in this country. Darwinism is the foundation science of modern liberalism, and just as liberalism is a failed philosophy and imposes political correctness to stifle debate, so is some of Darwinian theory wrong, and scientific study and debate about it is simiarly stifled. I urge everyone to see this movie...

By Mark Finkelstein | February 21, 2008 - 10:25 ET MSNBC has cited and discussed the press release issued today by Brent Bozell, President of NB's parent Media Research Center, excoriating the New York Times for its article on John McCain. The discussion came during the network's post-press conference analysis of McCain's appearance this morning. JOE SCARBOROUGH: Let me interrupt. This is interesting. Mika just handed me a Blackberry quote here. Chris Matthews, earlier this morning Tim Russert asked the question how would conservatives respond to this? Would they rally behind John McCain, against the New York Times, or would...

Hillary Clinton should be nobody’s idea of a paragon of civil discourse in the political arena. Her personal style of political warfare is ruthless, a bare-knuckles fight to the death. Ask Ken Starr. Her idea of employee relations is also rough. Paul Fray, an Arkansas campaign worker said she cursed him out with F-bombs and ethnic slurs after Bill Clinton lost his one race for Congress in 1974. A co-worker told NBC News in 1999 that he heard cussing from Hillary that night like he’d never heard before. So it’s a little strange to see Hillary appearing so upset over...

Howie made his grand return to radio on Nov. 18. In this weekly thread we follow his show plus I'll post interesting columns by him, etc. There are usually daily pings Mon.-Fri. and Sun with his column.

L. Brent Bozell, founder of Media Research Center, NB's parent, made an appearance on today's "Morning Joe." Brent is the author, with MRC/NB's Tim Graham, of the recently-released "Whitewash: What the Media Won't Tell you About Hillary Clinton, But Conservatives Will." Look for comprehensive coverage of Brent's appearance from my colleagues at MRC and NB during the day. But for present purposes, let's focus on one point Brent made that speaks volumes about the depth of the MSM's partisanship -- that for broadcast networks, promoting liberal ideology trumps even the bottom line. View video here.

Bozell Blasts Biased Media Coverage: National Press Is 'A Laughingstock' Posted by NB Staff on November 8, 2006 - 11:19. MRC President Brent Bozell appeared with other conservative leaders at the National Press Club this morning to urge that the Republican Party respond to their election defeat by returning to their conservative Reaganite roots. During his remarks, Bozell lambasted the national media?s biased campaign coverage, blasting them as ?a laughingstock when it comes to the idea of objective journalism.?Video available (1:13): Real (2.0 MB) or Windows Media (2.3 MB), also MP3 audio (355 KB)In the press conference televised live on...

Are television critics a menace to society? What do we do when our media tastemakers, the men and women entrusted to evaluate the artistic merit of Tinseltown offerings, exult in Hollywood's lack of taste? When perverse novelty and "edge" and complete moral confusion is what these critics live to watch and love to promote, they appear to be seeking to establish the polar opposite of a moral tone in our culture. Take as an example the critics' views on the new Showtime drama "Dexter." Its sickening premise makes a hero out of a sadistic serial killer, because he kills only...

To mark the third anniversary of launching the war to depose Saddam Hussein, the manufacturers of the "news" have established their usual template, Realistic Media vs. Pollyanna Bush. It's not pessimism versus optimism, but hallucination versus reality. How, then, do we greet the bleats of liberals as they wildly overstate the alleged utter awfulness of the war situation? On CNN, Time writer Joe Klein, one of the nation's leading worshippers of Bill Clinton, declared to Anderson Cooper, "Rumsfeld ran the most criminally incompetent military campaign, you know, in the last 100 years, perhaps in American history." Was Klein making a...

Every morning I log onto the worldwide web, not because I'm a computer geek, but because I want to understand what's going on in the world. I've long since turned my back on the print media for accurate and timely news reporting, and it's getting to the point where I can't even bring myself to watch a televised news broadcasts anymore, simply because tv networks can't seem to report on much of anything these days without insulting my intelligence with some sort of politically correct blather. ... I need a television news network that doesn't slip misleading statements like "after...

Will former White House reporter Helen Thomas ever go away? She’s now written up a jeremiad perpetuating the myth that our media are mere whimpering lapdogs of Bush, tinny arfs all around. She hones in on that old, diseased chestnut that the liberal media went all soft in the “rush to war” in Iraq. Helen’s harangue appeared in the appropriate platform: The Nation magazine, which advertises on its website the slogan, “If you think it’s time to impeach Bush, then it’s time for you to subscribe to The Nation.” In a preview of her forthcoming book on the “waning Washington...

"Introduction Welcome to the Media Research Center’s annual awards issue, a compilation of the most outrageous and/or humorous news media quotes from 2005 (December 2004 through November 2005)..."

John Murtha, overnight American idol By Brent Bozell Nov 23, 2005 Making a mountain out of a molehill is becoming a national media specialty. The news media ought to be awarded advanced degrees for fixing their political microscopes on whatever amoeba of a story will serve their stubborn template: The Iraq war is hopeless; it's Vietnam in the desert. Mr. Murtha boldly declared that the Iraq war could not be won militarily, going so far as to say America was making it far worse -- that we were "the problem," not the solution. Suddenly, by Thursday night, he was leading...

When cataclysmic events like Hurricane Rita capture the nation's attention, other significant news stories are pushed down, or off, the news agenda, particularly on television. One potentially big story was the most recent left-wing march on Washington to protest the Iraq war, which was reduced to snippets on some network shows. But the nation's biggest newspapers, with ample space to fill, were there. And based on their stories, it was hard to tell whether they were covering it -- or sponsoring it. The Washington Post won for the best biggest puff piece, a front-page story hyping how "Antiwar Fervor Fills...

I've made up my mind. I don't like Bernie Goldberg. Matter of fact, I hate him. Who does this man think he is? I've spent the better part of two decades exposing the outrages of the liberal media, and during most of that time, Bernie Goldberg was earning a comfortable living in that very industry. Along the way I'd thought about writing a book about media bias, but before I could do that, Goldberg decided there was a problem with bias and decided to write a book about it, and "Bias" shot to the top of the New York Times...

A new study by the Dove Foundation demonstrated that Hollywood may not love money as much as it loves its "adult" themes of sexual perversion, violent death and ear-bending profanity. The foundation's founder and chairman, Dick Rolfe, reported: "While the movie industry produced nearly 12 times more R-rated films than G-rated films from 1989 to 2003, the average G-rated film produced 11 times greater profit than its R-rated counterpart." Wow. Defenders of Tinseltown's antics might argue that there's a lot more R-rated movies around to flop and ruin the averages. The Dove Foundation does note that R-rated films are declining...

Last week, FOX anchor Neil Cavuto secured a White House interview with President Bush, and liberals were upset. It wasn't tough enough. Washington Post correspondent Daniel Froomkin reported that Cavuto asked about Mrs. Bush, John Kerry's grades, and media overcoverage of Michael Jackson, but sneered: "Who wants to talk about that messy war in Iraq, or the Downing Street Memo? Not Neil Cavuto, FOX News executive, anchor, commentator and Bush campaign contributor." FOX-defending blogger "Johnny Dollar" noted two problems with Froomkin. First, Bush was asked about Iraq and that memo at a press conference the day before, so would that...

If Howard Dean thought it would be a great idea to heighten his profile by becoming chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), he was making a big mistake. Since he was elected to the top party spot on Feb. 12, Democrats have been hiding him like the Clinton staff hid mistresses. They've had big help from a national media blackout. As Dr. Dean traveled the country dispensing gaffe after gaffe, the national networks ignored him almost entirely. On Thursday, June 2, he cracked at a left-wing convention that a lot of Republicans "have never made an honest living in...

A media watchdog group blasted Newsweek for its initial refusal to issue a retraction of its report that U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay flushed a Koran down a toilet, and compared Newsweek's journalistic integrity to that of CBS News during the National Guard controversy. "Newsweek is guilty of pushing a false story they knew was unconfirmed but wanted to believe was true, and this time the result was tragic," said Media Research Center President Brent Bozell. "The Newsweek story is the same CBS/National Guard 'gotcha' journalism story all over again, only this time with riots and deaths as the deeply...

The old news: PBS is still a liberal monstrosity transforming the hard-earned dollars of many Bush-loving taxpayers into fire-breathing Bush-loathing programming. The new development: The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has plans to get serious about seeking a better balance of political views on PBS. From the sound of a New York Times front-page story May 2, they must have been waving smelling salts in the face of liberal reporters. Kenneth Tomlinson, the "Republican chairman" of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was said to be pressing aggressively to correct "what he and other conservatives consider liberal bias." The Times approach, pretending...

For years now, liberals have snidely suggested that watching Fox News Channel makes dumb conservatives even dumber. They've even produced trumped-up studies trying to prove it. This is in marked contrast to the enlightened viewers of the fusty old news networks, the ones upholding the standards of seriously weighty journalism, you see. How vague and uninformative can these tired Old Media types be? Take the issue of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. From the vantage point of these news networks, it's unimportant to debate the substance of liberal attacks on DeLay. The charges don't even have to be explained. No,...

Wherever Jesse Jackson goes the media usually follow and on Tuesday the cable news networks highlighted his arrival outside the Florida hospice care facility holding Terri Schiavo, but the day Jackson took the side of those wishing to save Schiavo, and put a Democratic face with those on the side of her life, ABC's World News Tonight suddenly found the whole matter unnewsworthy. For the fist time in more than ten days, the newscast had no Schiavo story and didn't utter a syllable about Jackson, but Peter Jennings found time to pick up on a liberal cause celebre, abuse of...

It was a surprise to NBC in 1992 when "Saturday Night Live" aired pop star Sinead O'Connor ripping up a picture of Pope John Paul II and crying "Fight the real enemy!" But now NBC has aired a planned, scripted episode of a sitcom that attacks not the Pope, but Jesus Christ Himself. The Feb. 22 episode of the painfully unfunny new sitcom "Committed" made a mockery out of the sacrament of the Eucharist. As William Donohue of the Catholic League explained about the show: "By far the most offensive scene occurs when [male characters] Nate and Bowie accidentally flush...

Have our partisan liberal media evaporated? Are we now in an era when President Bush has as much control of Washington's journalism output as Vladimir Putin's defenders assert he does? (The Moscow line, if you haven't heard, is that Bush ordered the firing of Dan Rather.) These questions are overwrought and self-evidently silly, and yet, the Left is on Orange Alert over its slipping control of the public agenda. Witness the still-ongoing attempts to inflate the teeny-weeny scandal over James Guckert (a.k.a. "Jeff Gannon"), the former White House reporter and alleged male escort. Here we have the supposedly momentous scandal...

The New York Times seems highly upset that anyone would question the existence or objectivity of what they call the Public Broadcasting "Service." Last week, the paper put PBS's internal worries on Page One, concerned that pressure from conservatives threatens to send PBS lurching -- horrors! -- to the right. Liberal lobbyists inside and outside PBS, including the Times editorial page, are once again trying to convince the Congress to allow them to create a massive $5 billion endowment so they may achieve "financial independence." When PBS stations go digital, requiring less space on the broadcast spectrum, they want to...

American TV watchdogs have rejected a raft of complaints about everything from Friends characters discussing a phallic-shaped cake to mention of homosexual kissing on Will And Grace. Clean-up campaigners the Parents Television Council filed 36 complaints about incidents they thought were dragging down standards. They also included an episode of The Simpsons in which striking students carried banners saying "Don't cut off my pianissimo" and the scene in the Austin Powers movie where a naked Mike Myers had his genitals hidden by cunningly-placed objects. The Federal Communications Association rejected all the complaints, ruling: “None of the segments were patently offensive...

As Christians prepare to celebrate the birth of the Christ child and Jews give thanks and praise to God for sustenance even in alien lands and hostile cultures, it's a great time to reflect on how the relentlessly secular entertainment industry reflects -- in fact, mocks -- the religious beliefs of its American audience.  In the arid land of secular orthodoxy, there is no alarm at simple "spirituality" if it is trendy and harmless, and the God-idea is conveniently controlled by the individual, instead of the individual submitting to a sovereign you-know-Who. Even traditional faiths can be tolerated by Hollywood...

While so many in the media have found it outrageous that Bill Clinton could be accused of having "blood on his hands" over administration inaction on violence in America, for CBS it is perfectly acceptable -- even worthy of nationwide TV promotion -- to charge a Pope had the blood of six million Holocaust victims on his. On March 19, CBS’s "60 Minutes" promoted the book "Hitler’s Pope," by British journalist John Cornwell. If an author of Cornwell’s disposition were writing about Bill Clinton, CBS would have no trouble dismissing him as a "Clinton hater," as a vicious tool of...

For decades, kids have enjoyed following the out-of-this-world exploits of comic-book heroes, learning along the way about courage and heroism, and the need for the forces of good to triumph over the nefarious plots of those possessed by evil. Every generation needs to learn their own duty to sacrifice and fight for the good. But lately, ever since the first "Spiderman" live-action movie roared at the box office, fans of the long-lasting Marvel Comics stable of superheroes have been inundated with big, noisy, expensive blockbusters bringing these two-dimensional pen-and-ink heroes to life. Unfortunately, in attempting to dramatize Marvel honcho Stan...

Election Night Sweats by L. Brent Bozell III November 9, 2004 Anyone who is a political junkie -- if you stayed up into the wee hours of Election Night, you qualify -- had a couple of beefs with the national media amidst an otherwise riveting evening. First, just who were those so-called polling professionals hired to do the exit polls for the networks? For about six hours on Election Day, the Kerry camp was positively giddy and the Bush folks were forlorn as word spread of exit polls indicating not a Kerry win, but a Kerry landslide. All of those...

Who Dares to Question the Great and Powerful? Last weekend the media made great sport of the expressions on President Bush's face during the first presidential debate. Many surmised that he looked irritated because he is unaccustomed to being questioned. Yet a certain media figure has come right out and expressed his annoyance at being questioned. Tom Brokaw, soon-to-retire anchor of NBC Nightly News, has had about all he can stand of media bias activism. One in particular has been irritating enough to be mentioned by name. "It is a little wearying, but you've got to rise above it and...

Speaking to a media conference thrown by the financial giant Goldman Sachs last week, CBS boss Les Moonves gave his view from the mountaintop about the Dan Rather forgery scandal and how the network's independent investigation would proceed:     "Obviously, it should be done probably after the election is over, so that it doesn't affect what is going on."     What? Dan Rather and CBS try to destroy the Bush campaign with a file of phony military documents, and now they think it would be politically sensitive to release an independent critique of their bias before the election. Obviously, CBS and...

URGENT ACTION ALERT! FORWARD THIS E-MAIL TO YOUR FRIENDS, RELATIVES AND COLLEAGUES! Enough’s enough! Please join me in demanding that CBS News suspend Dan Rather. More than three years ago, CBS Evening News anchor Rather showed his true liberal colors when he appeared as a speaker at a Democratic Party fund-raising meeting in Texas. And now he’s exposed his liberal partisanship for all to see by using admittedly phony documents on CBS’s “Sixty Minutes” to try to influence the presidential election. It’s even been revealed that Rather’s “Sixty Minutes” staff went so far as to put the provider of the...

Rather's Game Is Over by L. Brent Bozell III September 21, 2004 The jig is up. The game is over. CBS tried to energize the country into voting against President Bush by highlighting forged documents it said would prove Bush’s failure to serve honorably in the Texas Air National Guard. The smoking gun went up in smoke. Once caught, CBS and Dan Rather could have responded with a simple apology. Instead, they went ballistic – and now mus pay the price for their defiance. For more than a week, Dan Rather responded like a cornered politician, blaming a vast right-wing...

The jig is up. The game is over. CBS tried to energize the country into voting against President Bush by highlighting forged documents it said would prove Bush's failure to serve honorably in the Texas Air National Guard. The smoking gun went up in smoke. Once caught, CBS and Dan Rather could have responded with a simple apology. Instead, they went ballistic -- and now must pay the price for their defiance. For more than a week, Dan Rather responded like a cornered politician, blaming a vast right-wing conspiracy of "partisan political activists" for unfairly trying to change the subject...

CBS News and anchorman Dan Rather have entered the journalistic equivalent of one of Dante’s circles of Hell, forced to live forever with a scandal they created. With their Texas Air National Guard forgeries, they now live in a neighborhood of national media embarrassments. Faked Food Lion resumes. Staged GM pickup truck explosions. Janet Cooke’s profile of Jimmy the eight-year-old coke addict. Jayson Blair’s phony travelogues from "West Virginia." Watergate was a scandal Mr. Rather thoroughly enjoyed, since he built his career on ripping into Richard Nixon. Now Rather is Nixon, a bitter, vengeful man who allowed his friends to...

The Media Research Center, the parent organization of CNSNews.com, says CBS must "immediately suspend anchor Dan Rather, producer Mary Mapes and all other staff involved" in the "60 Minutes II" report that used memos of questionable authenticity to slam George W. Bush's National Guard service Letter to CBS News President By Media Research Center CNSNews.com Information Services September 15, 2004 (Editor's note: The following letter has been sent to CBS News President Andrew Heyward by L. Brent Bozell III, president of the Media Research Center, the parent organization of CNSNews.com.) Mr. Andrew HeywardPresidentCBS News524 West 57th StreetNew York, NY 10019...

It’s late August and someone in America decided it’s time to scrutinize John Kerry’s life story on television. For a week in Boston, John F. Kerry wrapped himself around a war effort he had spent decades denouncing, and Dan, Peter, and Tom sat around and nodded. No one even considered the possibility that Kerry could be – should be – challenged on any point of his self-serving history. Then the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth came along and shattered that mythology. Without their TV ads, the pro-Kerry media would have spent the entire election year with their collective fingers in...

Bruce Springsteen has been the darling of the rock press for three decades, first marked by simultaneous Time and Newsweek cover stories in 1975, when he hadn't yet had a big hit song. Two years ago, Springsteen was the toast of rock music again for his album "The Rising," a sober set of songs about the losses of September 11, and Time put him back on the cover. He offered the response the press had wanted: sad literary chronicles of loves lost and hopes dashed, without any of what they saw in country star Toby Keith, oafish flag-waving bravado with...