Frequent media critic Brent Bozell was shocked when research for a new book threw up just how biased the establishment media was during the last election, he tells Newsmax in an exclusive interview.
"When the publishers first approached me on the content, I thought it was so self-evident, the bias, that there wasn't going to be anything that hasn't been covered already," he explained. "But my colleague, Tim Graham, wanted to take a crack at it so he went off and did several months' worth of research. When he came back, the information that he put together was shocking and startling so much so that we threw ourselves into this book."
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"It was far worse than we thought it was," Bozell, the founder of the Media Research Center, told Newsmax TV. "This was an effort by the national news media deliberately, conscientiously, to deliver the presidency to Barack Obama."
The book, "
Collusion: How the Media Stole the 2012 Election — and How to Stop Them from Doing it in 2016," hit shelves Tuesday. It is co-written by Bozell and Graham.
Asked why he used the word "collusion" in the title, Bozell responded, "Collusion was a tough word; 'stealing an election' is a tough phrase and at first I was uncomfortable with it but then when we looked at the research I stood by the statement and by that headline.
"Let's look at one example, the scandal coverage," he continued. "With every single Republican who appeared on the scene in 2011 and 2012 in the primary process, every single one had a major negative story attributed to them which became national news. Things like a rock on a ranch that the Perry family used in 1988 was a national news story. Herman Cain and the alleged affairs that he had. Even a national news story on who Karen Santorum dated before she even met Rick Santorum."
On the Democratic side, however, Bozell, said the media "actually presented to the American people the idea that there was no scandal involving Barack Obama, never mind covering up."
Bozell said the collusion is continuing, pointing to the media coverage of the Obama administration's recent decision to delay implementation of the employer mandate in the Affordable Care Act.
"There is a deliberate decision to censor news from the American people if it goes against the narrative of the Obama presidency and the Obama legacy and [that] is a perfect example," he explained.
"How could that not be news? How could the IRS scandal have disappeared as a news story? How could it not be news what's going on in Benghazi, which we have not resolved? So many of these things are absolutely unquestionably news stories and the media are deliberately avoiding them. It's censorship."
Asked how he would grade the major television networks, Bozell said NBC and MSNBC are "probably the worst because NBC should denounce MSNBC but they've become two peas in a pod."
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He continued, saying "ABC and CBS are deliberately involved in the act of censorship. Both of them are guilty of not covering stories that hurt the Obama narrative" and "CNN has become a laughing stock. It used to be a serious journalism enterprise. No one's watching it and the reason no one's watching it is because there's nothing serious there."
As for Fox News, Bozell said, "There's one reason why it's public enemy number one. It's because it's the only network that covers the news."
Bozell also warned that conservatives need to stop the media from doing in 2016 what it did in 2012.
"Conservatives have to be a lot smarter with the news media and they have to understand that the news media is their biggest problem. If they can't get their message to the American people free of these distortions, then it doesn't matter how good their message is," he said.
"I do believe, however, that there are ways around it. There is this growing entity called social media where you can communicate directly with the public. The Romney effort ignored it completely. The Rove effort ignored it completely. The Obama effort spent tens of billions, and it worked."
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