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CyberAlerts Annoy Brokaw Who Blasts Brent
Bozell’s “Newsletter”
These MRC CyberAlerts really annoy NBC anchor Tom Brokaw and ABC’s Peter Jennings is worried that the “noise” about media bias being made by conservatives has “had an effect in the corporate suites.” On Sunday, at a forum on media coverage of the presidential campaign, held by the Shorenstein Center for Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University’s JFK School of Government, Brokaw blasted MRC President Brent Bozell by name: “There are organized interest groups out there. There’s a guy by the name of Brent Bozell, who makes a living at, you know, taking us on every night. He’s well-organized, he’s got a constituency, he’s got a newsletter. He can hit a button and we’ll hear from him.”
C-SPAN2 on Tuesday morning ran a tape of the July 25 session, which took advantage of the Democratic convention across the Charles River in Boston, to hold the forum which featured ABC’s Peter Jennings, NBC’s Tom Brokaw, PBS’s Jim Lehrer, CBS’s Dan Rather and CNN's Judy Woodruff.
Jennings reported that on media bias “I hear more about conservative concern than I did in the past,” and he illustrated that by choosing an anecdote which portrayed media critics as a bunch of rude wackos as he recounted how on the plane trip to Boston a guy denounced him: “America hater! Leave the country immediately.”
MRC intern Mary Fisher took down Brokaw’s comments, which were prompted by Alex Jones, a former New York Times reporter who is now Director of the Shorenstein Center, who suggested to Brokaw: “It seems to me that one of the things that you have to tell, that would be very illuminating, is just what kind of political pressure and ideological pressure you’re under as you go about putting your news reports together?”
Brokaw replied: “Well, Alex I think the pressure has always been there. I mean the sixties were a very emotional time of a great deal of pressure. The first story that I covered, and Dan was in the thick of it more than I was on a national bases, was the civil rights story. You can’t imagine the pressures that came to the networks then. They didn’t have the same mechanics that they do now, it’s just much more efficient. And they’re able to hit a switch in effect and the newsroom is flooded with not just telephone calls, but especially with e-mails. I can’t remember a time in the newsroom, however, in which we said we better back off because we don’t want to trigger that. What often happens is that if we prepare a story we all look at each other and say somebody better be monitoring the e-mails tonight because they’re coming in. And we look at them the next day and I make a point a deliberate point of not wading through all the e-mails. I’ve got kind of an editor of the e-mails who will say, ‘you should look at these or these,’ or ‘this was the tone’ or whatever because I believe that it would have, at some point, an effect on me and I’m trying to build a barrier. And by the way, it’s left to right across the spectrum.
“But these are the pressures that come with the business. They’ve always been there, it’s just now that there are all these tools that make them kind of a tsunami, if you will, when they want to have it happen. Also there are organized interest groups out there. There’s a guy by the name of Brent Bozell, who makes a living at, you know, taking us on every night. He’s well-organized, he’s got a constituency, he’s got a newsletter. He can hit a button and we’ll hear from him.”
Humorously, just as Brokaw was referring to how “there are organized interest groups out there,” C-SPAN cut to a brief shot of Al Franken in the audience.
(This isn’t the first time Brokaw has complained about the MRC and the constant drumbeat delivered by CyberAlerts. The January 9 CyberAlert relayed: Tom Brokaw can’t escape the MRC -- and that annoys him. In an interview in the latest edition of the Columbia Journalism Review magazine, Brokaw denied he’s guilty of any liberal bias and seemed to be referring to the MRC’s CyberAlert as he called the constant drumbeat of criticism from the MRC “a little wearying” since the MRC’s “fine legal points” are “everywhere every day.” He charged that “most of the cases” of liberal bias complaints “are pretty flimsily made,” but Brokaw had no problem seeing bias on FNC: “It’s a lively, right-of-center opinionated all-news channel.” See: www.mediaresearch.org)
At Sunday’s Harvard forum, Jennings picked up on Brokaw’s concern about the impact of pressure from conservatives: “I think there is this anxiety in the newsroom and I think it comes in part from the corporate suite. I think that the rise, not merely of, the presence of conservative opinion in the country, but the related noise being made in the media by conservative voices these days. I think it’s had an effect in the corporate suites. And I think it worries people...I hear more about conservative concern than I did in the past.
“On the plane yesterday coming up here a guy walked by me and I said, as I would under normal circumstances, ‘good morning,’ and he looked at me and I went by. And he was waiting for me when I got out of the plane and he said, ‘America hater! Leave the country immediately.’ And I was aghast. But it reminded me that not only is the differences in the country so string at the moment, and we are perceived to be, I think, infinitely more liberal, by the way, than the news media establishment is, that the general, you used the word ‘tsunami,’ this wave of resentment rushes at our advertisers, rushes at the corporate suites and gets under the newsroom skin, if not completely into the decision-making process, to a greater degree than it has before.”
One wonders what changes at ABC News, which disturb Jennings, were the result of corporate decisions influenced by complaints from conservatives.
For an article in the Harvard Gazette, the university administration’s newspaper, on the forum -- with photos: www.news.harvard.edu
Check the posted version of this CyberAlert for a RealPlayer video clip of Brokaw complaining about Bozell and his newsletter.
The MRC’s Rich Noyes first heard of Brokaw’s reference to the MRC and Bozell from a July 26 Boston Globe story in which Mark Jurkowitz reported on the forum: “Brokaw, referring to the president of the conservative watchdog organization, the Media Research Center, said conservatives ‘feel they have to go to war against the networks every day.’" For that article in full: www.boston.com |
