Brent Bozell (Bozo) tries to control the media, but EPIC FAILS instead

[ck4829]

The Media Research Center has declared war on ABC and "This Week" host George Stephanopoulos. The only casualty so far, however, has been MRC president Brent Bozell's self-inflicted wounds.

The war was set off by a Jan. 27 Politico report that Stephanopoulos engages in daily round-robin calls with former colleagues James Carville, Paul Begala and Rahm Emanuel, as they have since they worked together in the Clinton administration. What caught the eye of Brent Bozell and Co. was the article's statement that "it is quite likely that Washington’s prevailing political and media interpretation — at least on the Democratic side — is being hatched on these calls."

Bozell decided to interpret that statement as proving Stephanopoulos is a shill for the Obama administration -- never mind that it's just as likely that they weren't conspiring to set a media agenda -- and has been on the attack ever since.

A Jan. 29 MRC press release featured Bozell demanding that Stephanopoulos "must from this point forward recuse himself from any reporting involving the Obama Administration." This was followed by a Feb. 4 open letter to ABC News president David Westin demanding that "ABC News must address this publicly and comprehensively" (bold underline in original), adding the not-so-subtle threat:

With each passing day, ABC’s failure to speak to and about this issue tarnishes further your network’s reputation as a legitimate news entity.

...

ABC News may decide that silence is the best policy. I assure you that will be a mistake. We will not stop this discussion. If you think you are bleeding audience numbers now, what do you suppose will be your audience’s reaction when it is established that your Chief Washington Correspondent continues to be a key strategist for the Democratic Party?

A letter by Kerry Smith, senior vice president of editorial quality at ABC News, was posted the next day by Politico's Michael Calderone, accused Bozell and the MRC of deception:

In your letter and public utterances you falsely assert that ABC News has been silent on this matter. That is simply untrue. Upon reading your press release last week, we reached out to the MRC to make it abundantly clear that you had totally mischaracterized the Politico story written by John Harris last Tuesday. Indeed, Politico posted a story last Friday by Ben Smith pointing out exactly how badly you had mangled the facts.

But that's not the only example Smith cited:

Furthermore, last Friday, a reporter from CNS News, which was founded by you and continues to be directly affiliated with the MRC, contacted our media relations staff for a piece he'd been assigned to write on this very topic. We cooperated immediately and provided him an on the record response. We have since learned from your reporter that his story was killed.

As Media Matters blogger Jamison Foser pointed out, this raises the question of whether the CNS story was killed so that Bozell could claim that ABC refused to talk about it.

http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/stories/2009/bozellsteph.html

[Cha]

1. Why doesn't he rag on rush limpbaugh

and fauxsn00ze while he's at it?