Review
“This is an important piece of work. And I urge everybody to get this book. . . . There’s a lot of ammunition in here to go after your liberal friends.” —Sean Hannity
“L. Brent Bozell III is, as has been frequently noted, a national treasure.” —National Review
“A true—and timely—masterpiece.” —Steve Forbes, editor in chief of Forbes magazine
“[Provides] the evidence of the coming meltdown of the liberal media. . . . The whole book chronicles where we have arrived with the mainstream press.” —Rush Limbaugh
“No one knows the big media and their ideological distortions better than Brent Bozell. In Weapons of Mass Distortion, Bozell not only documents the media’s continuing liberal slant, he also shows how they are slowly committing professional suicide.” —Cal Thomas, syndicated columnist
From the Trade Paperback edition.
From the Inside Flap
Could Al Franken and his left-wing cronies possibly be right? Is liberal media bias just a myth propagated by conservatives, and have the mainstream media actually swung to the right?
Absolutely not.
In the new book Weapons of Mass Distortion, L. Brent Bozell III—founder and president of the Media Research Center, America's largest and most respected media watchdog organization—presents the definitive account of how liberal bias in the news industry is alive and well.
But here's the thing: The liberal media are headed for a downfall. Bozell demonstrates how their monopoly on information is at last coming to an end, in large part because journalists continue to deny the bias that infects their news coverage. His unrivaled expertise allows him to show readers exactly how the media landscape is changing—and to expose the even bigger changes that are coming.
Marshaling an astonishing amount of evidence, Bozell documents exactly how the news media deliberately attempt to set the national agenda through their slanted coverage. In the process he destroys the arguments that Franken and many other left-wing commentators have put forward regarding media bias.
Weapons of Mass Distortion also reveals:
• How the liberal media's slanted coverage of President George W. Bush will play a huge role in the 2004 elections
• Why liberals' claims about the influence of Fox News and the "conservative media" are wrong—and deliberately misleading
• How the mainstream press has waged war on the war on terrorism
• Never-before-told stories of how leading journalists, behind the scenes, betray the liberal bias they so forcefully deny in public—incidents that Bozell has witnessed firsthand
• How the same journalists who condemn the Right for "hate speech" regularly launch (and get away with) vicious personal attacks on conservatives
• Clear evidence that the major news outlets are hemorrhaging viewers, readers, and listeners precisely because of their liberal bias
By dominating the news media for so long, liberals have been able to control what we see and hear. But as Bozell makes clear, the Left will lose that control soon enough.
About the Author
L. Brent Bozell III is the founder and president of the Media Research Center, the nation’s largest media watchdog organization. He is regularly invited to provide media expertise for all of the major television networks, the cable news channels, and hundreds of radio programs, including NPR’s Morning Edition, the Sean Hannity Show, and the Rush Limbaugh Show. Bozell is also a nationally syndicated writer whose work appears in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the New York Post, the Los Angeles Times, and National Review. He lives in northern Virginia with his family.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Introduction
Weapons of Mass Distortion
In an April 10, 2002, appearance on CNN’s Larry King Live, ABC News anchor Peter Jennings gave a remarkable answer when he was asked about media bias.
“Historically in the media, it has been more of a liberal persuasion for many years,” Jennings said. “It has taken us a long time, too long in my view, to have vigorous conservative voices heard as widely in the media as they now are. And so I think, yes, on occasion there is a liberal instinct in the media which we need to keep our eye on, if you will.”
It was an astonishing statement. For years, media analysts had been pointing out the pervasive liberal bias found in mainstream news coverage. In fact, in 1987 I founded an organization called the Media Research Center specifically to bring balance and responsibility to the news media, and for some fifteen years the center had been carefully and systematically documenting the extent of media bias. But despite all those efforts, news leaders had vigorously denied any charge of bias, no matter how thoroughly documented. Actually, for the most part the Jenningses, Brokaws, and Rathers refused even to acknowledge the charges, which they could get away with at a time when the American public was less attuned to the leftward slant in the press.
But that time had passed. Now, here was Peter Jennings, one of the most important journalists in the country, acknowledging on national television that, yes, the charge of liberal bias was true.
Then again, was the statement really all that astonishing? Well, yes, simply because no one of his stature had ever come close to admitting that liberal bias existed. (Though Walter Cronkite had acknowledged the leftist bias permeating the airwaves, he did so long after he had retired from CBS News.) But if one looks closely at Jennings’s answer, it becomes clear that, to the distinguished anchor of ABC News, media bias really isn’t much of a problem at all. It’s just an “instinct” that is evidenced only “on occasion.” Like a slow leak in a tire, it’s not something that demands an immediate repair. It’s just something “we need to keep our eye on.”
Jennings also betrayed a fundamental misunderstanding of why media bias is a problem. For “too long,” he said, “conservative voices” were not “heard as widely in the media as they now are.” Quite true, but that statement is slippery on two counts. First, who does Jennings mean by “conservative voices”—journalists or their guests? There is no empirical evidence I’ve seen that there has been any marked increase of conservatives in the newsrooms—note that we’re talking about newsrooms, not the pundits’ roundtables—of ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, and PBS. Second, if by “conservative voices” Jennings is referencing the opinions of conservatives within news stories, even if journalists are giving more airtime to conservatives, it doesn’t follow that the coverage of those “conservative voices” is any more positive. The implication of his statement is that conservatives now are getting a fair shot in the media, which, as we’ll see in this book, is patently untrue. Even more important, having more conservative voices heard in the mainstream media is just one small step toward balanced news coverage. Liberal bias affects much more than simply how certain political figures are covered and how certain news stories are reported. The media’s pervasive bias determines precisely which stories are (and are not) covered, and in how much detail. Indeed, the media elite deliberately attempt to set the national agenda through their coverage of the news.
I have learned this firsthand in a career spent closely analyzing the news media, but the point was driven home to me several years ago at a meeting with a Los Angeles newspaper. The Media Research Center had just released an exhaustive study regarding liberal bias in the news media, and I was scheduled to meet with the editorial board of the (now--defunct) Los Angeles Herald-Examiner to discuss the report’s findings. When I arrived, however, I was ushered into the conference room and met by a solitary figure, a member of the editorial board obviously pegged with the unsavory assignment of listening to this pesky conservative. The ponytailed hair and the cold body language—he silently pointed me to a chair—hinted that this would be anything but a productive meeting. I made an opening statement, then passed him the voluminous report we were to discuss. Without bothering to open it, the editor shoved it back at me and unleashed a vitriolic harangue against conservatives. Niceties flew out the window as he snarled, “All you conservatives care about is making money!” Clearly we weren’t going to discuss the report, so I asked him what liberals like him cared about. Without bothering to deny my description of his ideological persuasion, he quickly shot back, “You just don’t get it: We are the social conscience of this country and we have an obligation to use the media.”
At least this editor had the decency to admit what so many others steadfastly deny. Yes, the mainstream news media’s view of conservatives is less than flattering—the liberal media see conservatives as “the great unwashed,” as Republican congressman Henry Hyde aptly put it—and that is a big problem. But just as important, and too often overlooked, is the problem of how the media view themselves. The media elites feel they must be the “social conscience of this country”; they seem to have a higher calling beyond objectively reporting what happens on a day-to-day basis. Reporters, editors, and producers routinely display an arrogance driven by an inflated sense of self-worth. They are the enlightened, the elite. This attitude cannot help but distort the way the news is covered.
Media bias is more than just something “we need to keep our eye on.” It is an endemic problem, and even now, when the media have actually come under some scrutiny, the problem is not being seriously addressed. Although media bias has become the subject of debate in this country, the terms of that debate are far too narrow. Usually it is focused on a small subtopic, like the number of conservative commentators on television, when news commentary isn’t even the issue—it is in news reporting that the journalist must strive for objectivity. Or it is focused on a particular statement that galls—say, CNN boss Ted Turner’s insulting Christians—but examining such a statement, while instructive, doesn’t begin to plumb the depths of the problem of liberal media bias.
Peter Jennings might think that the problem of media bias is pretty much solved, but as this book will show, liberal media bias is alive and well. The evidence of such bias is simply staggering.
The Liberal Counterattack
Although overwhelming evidence indicates that liberal bias in the mainstream news media continues unchecked, something important has changed in recent years. It is not just that news leaders like Peter Jennings have been forced for the first time to answer questions about media bias. No, the Left has come to believe that a battle is on and has begun to attack those dreaded conservatives who dare to challenge the authority and legitimacy of the “mainstream” news media. But the liberal counterattack has been bizarre. Some on the Left, refusing to admit to the longtime liberal dominance over the mainstream news media, go so far as to claim that there is actually a conservative media bias. According to a series of books released in 2002 and 2003, the vast right-wing conspiracy has somehow managed to conquer the news media as well. It is important, and won’t take long, to demolish this mythology.
First out of the gate was The Nation’s Eric Alterman with the book What Liberal Media?: The Truth About Bias and the News, a response to the number one bestseller from former CBS newsman Bernard Goldberg, Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News. (In his book Alterman condemns me for praising the media’s powerful, if short-lived, patriotism in the days following the September 11 horror.) The New York Observer’s Joe Conason followed with Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth, in which he tries to “debunk conservative mythology,” devoting a whole chapter to the “palpably ridiculous argument” that “liberals control the media.” (It’s instructive that Conason says of this writer that the “belligerent, red-bearded Bozell, a nephew of William F. Buckley Jr., scarcely pretends to be anything more than an instrument of the Republican Party’s conservative leadership,” an extraordinary accomplishment given that I’m not even a Republican.) Finally we got comedian Al Franken’s Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. A quick review of Franken’s book begs the question: Is this man serious? And a related question: Just how serious is a movement that relies on this man as its spokesman? We will spend more time with Mr. Franken later in the book.
The Conason/Alterman/Franken argument that the media are conservative revolves around four major points, all of them fallacious:
1. Liberal bias? Just look at all those conservatives in the media! By far the most common trick of the Left is to focus on the “media,” not the “news media.” How many times do we hear liberals cite Rush -Limbaugh, William F. Buckley, Robert Novak, Cal Thomas, Sean Hannity, and so on, as evidence of the conservative “dominance” of the media? What these liberals know full well is that all of these conservative...
