Mr. L. Brent Bozell , III
President
Media Research Center & Parents Television Council

We must move on to our next speaker, who is known to many of us and seen by many of us on television on a regular basis these days. His topic today is, ?Did the liberal media cost Kerry the election?? Mr. Brent Bozell III is president of the Media Research Center and the Parent?s Television Council. Brent is very well known to those of us who live and work in Washington because he is a great leader and a great spokesman for conservatives who are standing up to the liberal left in the media. He is the founder and the president of the Media Research Center. He is the publisher of Cyber Alert  Notable Quotables, author of Weapons of Mass Distortion., coeditor of And That?s the Way it Isn?t, a Reference Guide to Media Bias. He is a nationally syndicated columnist. His work has appeared in many of the written publications and, as I mentioned, he is often on electronic media ? on Hannity & Combs, Fox & Friends, The Today Show (although I hardly know how he can stand to do that), Larry King Live, Good Morning America, and others. He has been a lecturer at Grove City College, very active in many political committees, the founder and president of Parent?s Television Council. He is a graduate of the University of Dallas, he is the father of five, and the husband of Norma  Brent.  Welcome to the podium.
[clapping]
Thank you Becky, I note that it?s a testimony to the great organizational skills of the Council for National Policy that after a profound lecture on polymorphous perversity I?m asked to talk about the liberal media. Let?s just call this ?part deaux.?
In 2002, after the 2002 elections, E.J. Dion of the Washington Post ?  those of you who know him know he?s a nice affable fellow, who?s more often wrong than right ? made a rather remarkable observation in a column. He wrote that it took conservatives a lot of hard and steady work to push the media rightward. It dishonors that work to continue to presume that (except for a few liberal columnists) there is any such thing as big liberal media.  With all due respect to E.J. Dion, and at the risk of dishonoring myself, a conservative response to that is, basically, ptooey.
Why? At the start of last year, some conservatives like this speaker made the prediction that the media bias against George Bush in the presidential campaign would be the most dramatic we had ever witnessed and it would, in fact, eclipse the hostility that the media showed to Ronald Regan.
Why? Because you had a perfect storm emerging ? a nexus of three major issues for the press.  Number one: A presidential campaign ? they had ? they would have, and they knew it ? a liberal democrat standard bearer they could support and they would want to support. Secondly, a personal animus against George Bush. I can?t explain it, it is deeper than anything I?ve ever seen before with any other political leader. They hate this man personally. They hate his guts. The third issue was the war in Iraq. The media, like the democrats, have become the peace party. And they are committed to ending America?s involvement in a global war on terror as Bush has reiterated it.
Those three forces would come together and they would do everything in their power to defeat George Bush. In fact, Evan Thomas, of Newsweek, made a statement that was rather profound in the summer of 2004.  On national television he said the bias of the press was so dramatic that it would ultimately deliver up to fifteen points to John Kerry in the presidential election.  Now later on, Evan Thomas would go back on national television and state that this was the stupidest thing he?d ever said - that it would only be five points.
We, let the record show, rushed to his defense. Pointing out that was not the stupidest thing he?d ever said, there are plenty of other, far more stupid things he said.
So we?ll just take those five points. Now we?re going to ask ourselves this question: What impact did the media have in 2004? Let?s go back to the campaign and let?s review it.
It begins in the preseason, in the fall of 2003, when activity began on the presidential front. You saw Howard Dean emerging. It was a rather exciting emergence ? here was a man who was unknown, with this ground swell of support that titillated the media?s attention and garnered a tremendous amount of press. But, as is always so predictable, as he emerged and as the media had now to define the man, how did they define him? 
Over and over again, we heard the media tell the American people: Welcome to Howard Dean, moderate.
ABC?s Michael Martin had the kind of statement that you heard on a regular basis when he said, ?The irony, being of course that he wasn?t a terribly liberal governor, Howard Dean is a moderate. That?s the kind of report you got.  At the same time, in the preseason on George Bush, it was hardball time. The economy, the war, the environment, energy costs, unemployment, the homeless, - day after day the media was beating George Bush up. And while we think of the homeless, does anybody here find it a little bit ironic that we had a homeless problem in the first Regan administration; we had a homeless problem in the second Regan administration; we had a homeless problem in the first Bush administration; we had a homeless problem in W?s first administration; but there was never a homeless problem during the Clinton years? Anybody find that ? anyway ?
On and on the attacks went on George Bush. Looking at the second half of 1999, we found a remarkable little piece of data that gives you a flavor of how the networks were covering this. If you go to 1999 -  if you look at all the questions that were asked of the Republican candidates running for president that year - you will find that, on a total of four occasions reporters invited Republicans to criticize the Clinton war administration.
During the exact same time period in 2003, reporters invited the Democratic candidates to attack Republicans fifty-eight times. The kind of question you got was ? my favorite from Renee Siler of CBS News to John Kerry on December fourth. She said ? and this is a question, this is a tough question here. She said, ?You called President Bush?s foreign policy, ?arrogant, inept, reckless.? Give us some specifics.?
That?s the kind of coverage that you saw.
Even on Thanksgivings, when George Bush stunned the world, shocked our troops, by appearing undercover in Baghdad to have Thanksgiving dinner with the troops.  With wild cheering on the part of our military for the gesture he made. Even then they had to try any way they could to throw any kind of cold water they could on it.
John Roberts of CBS actually said this on national television: ?What are the legalities of filing a false flight plan??
So we head into the primary season. Dean?s campaign implodes when his head explodes. Kerry emerges with Teresa?s money as the Democratic nominee. The same thing happened now with the introduction of John Kerry to the American people.
Was John Kerry a liberal? Any documentation of John Kerry?s record shows he was the single most liberal senator in America ? with a liberal record even more liberal than Ted Kennedy. Ladies and gentleman do you know that on twenty ?seven different occasions, on twenty-seven different national news reports, the media reported that the tag of ?liberal? was a Republican concept aimed at discrediting them. Not even John Kerry registered as a liberal.
Then on February first, Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe (that great, wonderful man) put up a sign at a press conference: ?AWOL.?
President Bush, when he was a lieutenant in the National Guard, was AWOL for two weeks.
The media went bonkers. For the next two weeks, there were not five, not ten, not twenty, not forty ? sixty-three stories on the national news.  Wondering where George Bush was for two weeks.
Now stop a second. Ask yourselves the simple question: Who cared?
Who in America cared where George Bush was for two weeks in 1971. And then ask yourself this question: ?Is there a greater definition of ?hypocrisy? then the media suddenly caring about a president?s past??
Don?t we remember Bill Clinton in a couple of scandals he had? And wasn?t the regular media mantra day after day, night after night, ?Move on?? There was even a group called Move On that was formed; but suddenly, we all wanted to know what happened in 1971.
Sixty-three national news stories.
In fact, it was that way throughout the spring of 2004. Virtually a week did not go by when it wasn?t Bash Bush Week in the campaign.
Go back to January. It began with Paul O?Neill book week. Where he emerges on 60 Minutes, the former Secretary of the Treasury, denouncing President Bush and his economic policies ? everybody picks up the story, they all run with it. That?s followed by 9/11 Ads are in Bad Taste Week.  With story after story denouncing the Bush campaign because they did ads ? remember? ? that had pictures of 9/11.
Again stop.  Do you recall a single story ever denouncing John Kerry for doing ads with Vietnam?
That?s okay.
That was followed by Richard Clark Book Week; where he comes out and attacks Bush on foreign policy - weekly coverage by everybody.
That was followed by Bob Woodward Anti-Bush Week - same coverage, and we?re still in January.
We get to February. February is two-and-half straight weeks of nothing but National Guard stories: Where was George Bush In 1971?
In March, we get the debut of Al Frankin in Radio America. He is covered everywhere. He gets on NBC, NPR, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC ? MSNBC even aired his show live - a great dramatic development.
Based on what? Based on a man who got seven stations. Consider that the very day that Al Frankin launched his show (for those of you here who are friends of Salem Radio) Bill Bennett launched his show on eighty stations and didn?t get a single interview from anyone. And on every single one of those interviews, day and night, Al Frankin and company were invited to do what?
Attack George Bush.
And the attacks continued. Mid-march through mid-April we got the 9/11 Commission. Now that?s a news story; it had to be covered.  There was a lot of grandstanding that needed to be covered - that?s fine.  But consider the other stories that were being run.
There were twenty-three widows who were put on national television to talk about what they thought about the war on terror. Do you find it a little bit strange that twenty out of those twenty-three widows denounced George Bush? Do you think for a second that that is in any way resembling the public mood of the victims of 9/11? That ninety-some percent denounced George Bush?
Even when they denounced it - George Bush - with comments that were preposterous, there was no come-back, no challenge from the press. For example when one widow said, on CBS, ?If the president had a put an emphasis on finding what the activity was within the United States, I do believe that we could have thwarted this attack.?
CBS let that run unchallenged.
April: Four full weeks of Abu Grabe, Abu Grabe, Abu Grabe, Abu Grabe. Now Abu Grabe is a story that needed to be covered. You had sixteen hundred, or sixteen thousand, or sixteen million ? I don?t know what it was -  pictures that were apparently on CDs. Every night - the networks:  ?Here?s another picture,  here?s another picture ??
Nothing new was added to the story. ?Here?s another picture, here?s another picture, here?s another picture ??
Now ask yourselves this question, ladies and gentlemen: What do you think?s more important? The story on Abu Grabe which involves the allegation that a handful of U.S. military mistreated a handful of Iraqi prisons of war vs. the story of the discovery of mass graves containing the corpses of thousands of innocent men, women, and children executed by Saddam Hussein.
If you?re NBC, clearly Abu Grabe is more important ? witnessed by the fact that NBC did ten times as many stories on Abu Grabe as they did on the graves.
So we get to the conventions. John Kerry arrives. But before he arrives, we have a thing called the Democratic National Platform. Once again, as we?ve documented since 1984 ? and it?s in black-and-white and you can predict this the same way you can predict occasional sunshine in Florida ? the Democratic platform was radical on virtually every issue - abortion, gay rights, taxes, regulation, the war, you name it - and ignored by the press; no coverage whatsoever.
In fact, over and over again the media told us it was a ?moderate? convention, a ?unified, excited? convention. And then John Kerry came, reporting for duty, and the media positively swooned.
I want to leave that for a second, we?re going to go to the Republican convention. What happened at the Republican convention?
At the Republican convention, they put forward three moderates, McCain, Schwartzenagger, and Giulliani, as their speakers, which is not something I am not happy with, but they did.
They didn?t back away from their platform. Their platform was not as good as it?s been in the past, but it was quite good overall compared to the Democrats. 
The media would have none of this.  The media wanted all of America to know that this was a fraud.
Do you know that Tom Brokaw, on the opening night of the convention, labeled the Republican convention ?a con game?? And in describing Giulliani, Schwartzenagger, and McCain, he equated them to a game of Three-Card Monte.
This is the man who says he has no biases.
And then they savaged the Republicans for their agenda; and then Zell Miller spoke [laughs].
I?m trying to remember that sci-fi movie from the seventies; where a head just shakes and shakes and explodes. That wasn?t Zell Miller, that was the media?s reaction to Zell Miller, which was just wonderful. And then, what came after that ? the swift boat vets. Now here?s [clapping] the swift boat vets is an interesting issue because this is really their second coming. The swift boat vets first emerged in May of 2004. They did a press conference. The press conference included this real band of brothers coming together to say, ?Ladies and gentlemen, the Democratic candidate is a fraud; he is a liar; and he?s a traitor; and he has besmirched an entire generation of war heroes by falsely accusing them of raping women, pillaging villages, and murdering children. And this must be exposed. ?
The reaction from the media to the fact that there were two hundred and fifty swift boat vets who were there with John Kerr ?  who were eye-witnesses and could document everything they were saying ? ladies and gentlemen, we saw the other half of media bias. There?s bias by commission ? we saw now bias by omission. They simply ignored them.
Only FOX ran the story. CBS did a little mention with the back of their hand, and that was it. Now these folks came to see me last summer, stunned. They expected five-page write-ups in Time Magazine type of thing.
I had to introduce them to a concept of liberal media bias. This is what happens in the real world to an institution that isn?t interested in news, that has an agenda to follow and you?re in their way.
They went back and did the only thing they could do, they put together a little website. And, oh Lordy, what happened next.
The money that began pouring into the website, the activity; people getting behind them. Suddenly, they reemerged in August. They got a million bucks in their pockets and some really, really good ads. They start running them on television. - now the media have to react.
How did they react? It is absolutely false to suggest, as so many have suggested, that the swift boat vets can control the debate in the summer of 2004, that the swift boat vets dominated news coverage.  What dominated news coverage was the attacks on the swift boat vets by the liberal media.
NBC ? consider this? in all the stories that they did, not once ? this is the network that had Kitty Kelley on last summer - that perverted, slimy, gossip columnist who tried to accuse the president of doing drugs and had as her one and only witness someone who denounced her as a liar. NBC put her on for three days in a row - on the Today Show, the biggest show on television - and yet not once ever found a moment to put John O?Neill on, to interview him.
NBC refused a single ? or CBS This Morning did only one interview, and attacked him. ABC didn?t report on John O?Neill until August nineteenth.
Now what was August nineteenth? The day that John Kerry attacked the swift boat vets. And that?s the story that they ran.
In fact, in what has to be one of the lowlights, the most shameless moments of modern journalism, Ted Koppel, ultimately, traveled to Vietnam to interview the communists there who defended John Kerry and attacked the swift boat vets and he didn?t see the irony in this.
So we now get to another date. Infamous little date: September eighth. CBS, 60 Minutes too. Dan Rather has the smoking gun ? the National Guard memo.
Tada! What we?ve been saying for four years, here it is. Tada!
All the evidence is trotted forward. George Bush is a liar. George Bush got favorable treatment. God knows what he was doing during those two weeks, but he wasn?t there. And after all those denials here it is. The memo from Lt. Col. Jerry Kilian proving that he gave him preferential treatment.
Boom! Everybody covered it; as you would expect. Then a couple of bloggers looked at that that night and said, ?Ya know? We didn?t have computers in 1971. We got typewriters. And this old boy?s ? this memo?s a computer.?
We looked at it the next morning and that was kind of our reaction too. So we did something that was rather rudimentary. We gave it to three experts in this field. We just googled.  The first three experts that we got were credited in whatever these expert directories are. We asked them to analyze it. They all came back within an hour and they said: This is a fraud. This is done on a word processor. There were no word processors in 1971. End of story.
So we came out with a story ? Matt Drudge ran it at noon, Sean picked it up and by that evening it was national news everywhere. But it didn?t stop there. All of a sudden we started learning the depth of what was nothing more than a con job by CBS.
We found now, for example, that Ben Barnes, the Lt. Governor of Texas who was there nodding his head and so sadly reporting that, yes, when he was lieutenant governor of Texas he had given preferential treatment to George Bush at his father?s request. Come to find out The Dallas Morning News comes forward and says, ?He gave us an interview two years ago and he said the opposite.?
And then Barnes?s own daughter, who?s on national television with Sean Hannity and said, ?I don?t like saying this about my father, but he?s lying. He told me the exact opposite last year when I asked him.?
And then they find out, who?s Ben Barnes? One of the top fundraisers for the Kerry campaign. On and on, witnesses start coming forward saying, ?It?s not true and we told CBS it wasn?t true.?
Including the son of Jerry Killian, who was asked about this by CBS and he said, ?I don?t know anything,? said, ?I do know who does know, Bush?s roommate. He was there. He could tell you exactly what happened.?
To which Mary Mavis?s answer was, ?He?s a Bush supporter. Forget him.?
And then came the experts. First, The Washington Post went to one of the three experts that Dan Rather said he had and that expert said, ?The only problem is, I?ve never seen the documents. I was given a signature and I said, ?looks like a signature to me.??
Then it turned out, he?s not even an expert.  He?s just somebody, but he?s not accredited. Then Brian Ross noticed everybody else had egg on their faces and they were not going to go down with CBS on this one. ABS and Brian Ross came out with the story. They interviewed the other two experts. They found out something rather interesting. First, neither one of them were experts and, two, both of them had been given the documents and both of them had told CBS not to run the story ? that it wasn?t true.
And still they did it. More and more of this evidence came out. And what did Dan Rather say?
Dan Rather denied it all. He said, ?I stand by it.?
By the time the entire world knew that this was a fraud by CBS, Dan Rather went on television the following Tuesday, and he announced, ?If this story is false, I want to be the one to break it.? [laughter]
That?s what the whole country was doing at this point. - laughing at the poor man.
The following Wednesday he put on the widow ? I?m sorry, the secretary, a Lt. Col. Killian to say that: No, it wasn?t true that he did this; but he really believed it!
Now by this time, 60 Minutes had gone from being the number one show on television to its time slot - a week later ? it was the last; in last place. There?s a wonderful thing called the market here. [clapping]
So he continued denying it, and after ten days the gig was up and Mr. Hayward, the president of CBS, and Dan Rather, the now soon-to-be former anchor of CBS, apologized and announced that it wasn?t true. It should be noted that Dan Rather proceeded then to tell the Chicago Tribune he still stands by it; and as part of this investigation, this fraud of an investigation that took place, he still stands by this. Dan Rather is now a committee of one in America who believes this. But the county had seen what the media were up to.
We get to the debates. Now this was interesting. The first debate ? there?s no question but that George Bush lost the debate and John Kerry won. And all the instant polls came out and ABC had its immediate insta-poll that came out; and it showed that John Kerry had won and they all reported that ABC reported that ABC insta-poll that showed that John Kerry won.
A few days later, Dick Cheney and John Edwards debate. As soon as that?s over, the ABC insta-poll comes out and it shows that Dick Cheney won. Immediately, ABC discounts that poll, saying, ?It?s just an insta-poll.?
Unbelievable.
And there?s the second debate and the third debate. Now, I personally believe George Bush won both those debates. But one could argue, one could argue that John Kerry won the debates. But even though they said that all their insta-polls showed that John Kerry won the debates, they were shocked when the polling numbers came out and not only did they not move but George Bush went up. He lost debates and he gained points. And they couldn?t figure out what in the world was going on.
Well I do know, which I?ll get to it in a second.
Last gasps, two more issues came out in the campaign, which demonstrate exactly the degree to which the media were willing to twist stories this year.
The third quarter GNP reports came out. It showed a growth rate of 3.7 percent. Now, how good is 3.7 percent? Well, put it this way. It is the best pre-election growth rate of any president in the last quarter century. Better than anything that Bill Clinton did, better than anything that Ronald Regan did. In fact, Bill Clinton did 2.7 percent in 2000, and 2.2 percent in 1996. Now when Bill Clinton got 2.2 percent in 1996, the report from CBS was: ?Many economists were encouraged by that because it means inflation is under control and interest rates will remain low.?
In 19 .. in 2000, when it was 2.7 percent, Dan Rather reported, ?Sure and steady as she goes? ? was his analysis.
What happened last year? Look at the reports; they were dismissed. CNN and ABC and CBS - both reported that they were slightly better than the spring, but not as strong as analysts had expected.
What analysts?! CNN went on and said that some analysts had predicted 4.3 percent. Does anyone know anyone who predicted 4.3% in America?
They couldn?t give George Bush the credit for a robust economy. Why? Because they?d spent the last two years saying it wasn?t when in fact, it became that way. And then you had the Al CaCa explosive story. And what was the interesting thing about this was that CBS had planned on running it on Halloween night on the eve of the election.
And they say we come up with October surprises.
This was a story about missing explosives. By the time it came out, nobody believed CBS. CBS has gone from being a noun to a verb you know, you now ?CBS? people, and they just saw CBS ?CBSing? once again, and no one believed them.
The elections come along; George Bush has won. The media are in a funk and they haven?t figured this out. It behooves us to ask the question, Why did George Bush win?
I submit there are five reasons. Number one: Give the candidate the credit ? you have to. Number two: The ground game, which was extraordinary. Number three:  The swift boat vets ? for putting Kerry on the defensive. Number four (and it hasn?t gotten the credit it deserves): Social conservatives. If that defensive marriage proposition had not been in on those eleven states ? including so many battleground states ? one wonders what the turnout might have been. But fifthly, fifthly, I?m going to propose to you, was the media - and we owe them a debt of gratitude for what they did.
Let?s look at some numbers. Now wrap it up with some numbers; because they?re rather interesting. They really don?t prove anything, but if we can have some fun here ?
What if Evan Thomas was right? What if the media delivered five points to George Bush or to John Kerry on election night?
Ask yourselves what would have happened had they not delivered those five points. If you could take those five points and you spread them across the country. What you would find ? if you take them away from Kerry and give them to Bush (i.e. That the media had not delivered those points to them). You would find that Bush would?ve won the states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, and ? one other one, I can?t remember which one it is ? He would?ve had a total vote count ? electoral vote count ? of 348 to 190. Landslide.
That?s scenario number one. 
Scenario number two, which I think is more likely: The media didn?t deliver the five points to John Kerry because the media were neutralized in 2004. Now if that?s the case, now ask yourself, ?What if they had? What if they had delivered those five points??
Now add five points to John Kerry and see what you get. John Kerry would?ve won the states of Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, and Florida ? a Kerry landslide. That?s how razor thin this campaign was last year.
But then there?s another scenario. We took a survey right after the election to find out what impact the media had. The numbers that emerged are rather dramatic. We found that, where the broad public is concerned, 46.5 percent believe that there was a media bias in the coverage of the campaign. Overwhelmingly, of that number, they saw it as against Bush, not against Kerry.
Of those people who believed that the media were biased, we asked them, ?Did it make you more or less committed to voting for a candidate??
We found by a net ten points within that group, they were more sympathetic to George Bush than before the media attacked him. If you take that ten points and you make it across the land nationally, it turns out there?d be four-point-six points added to the Bush campaign. I do believe the media attacks    on George Bush backfired, and if those numbers are accurate the media ultimately (God, I love saying this) gave him the election.
Now, where does that mean we stand right now? I was approached last week; last week I was at an inaugural event. I was actually in the offices - in the suites - of one of these multibillion dollar pharmaceutical companies, drinking their champagne and eating their brie, and looking down below at the huddled masses of freezing protestors knowing that those nose rings were glued to their nostrils, and really enjoying myself when I was approached by a fellow who said something remarkable. It was ? he shook my hand and he said, ?I want you to know that you?re on the cusp of something very profound.?
Now, that?s a nice comment, and I thanked him for it, but then he introduced himself to me. I can?t give you his name but I can tell you he?s a top official from Time Warner ? not a conservative activist by any means at all. And he went on to say to me, ?We recognize, we know, we now have to deal with conservatives. We know what happened in the campaign last year. We have to recognize the new realities.?
So this is good. As we look into the future, this is not  ?  last year was only a battle, and the elections were the battlefield, and we won it. The war continues, and we have to continue this fight every single day. But, but, and I close it with this. I do suggest we just stop for a moment and pause and recognize: We beat those bastards.
Thank you.