Liberal Media is Hillary’s Secret Weapon

By Amanda Carpenter
Monday, December 3, 2007

Hillary’s Clinton’s secret weapon to win the 2008 election isn’t her former president husband.

It’s the liberal media, according to L. Brent Bozell, III, president of the Media Research Center.

Bozell and Tim Graham, MRC’s director of media analysis, document how Clinton enjoys “unprecedented media favoritism” in their new book Whitewash. Bozell and Graham say the “establishment” media makes no secret of actively supporting Clinton’s political ambitions with favorable articles, interviews and news reports.

Townhall spoke with Bozell about his book over the phone last week. Here is the edited transcript of the interview:

In the book you start right away by talking about the Lewinsky affair-

When people think of Clinton scandals that is the most prominent one, but as we point out in the book, it is my belief others are much more serious than that. I believe it is far more serious they were holding the FBI files of 400 Republicans. And as any other scandals involving the Clintons, the media has refused to try to get to the bottom of any of them. They’ve left them all alone.

What new information have you turned up?

Hillary Clinton flat-out lied in her book and the media never called her on it. Probably the most quoted passage in her book dealt with how she was gasping for air, et cetera and et cetera on August 15, 1998 when she heard about Monica Lewinsky. That’s a flat-out lie. Why do we know that’s a flat-out lie? Never mind the fact that’s she’s a woman, back in her Arkansas days, who hired detectives to follow her husband. She knew more about her husband’s philandering than anyone in America, other than her husband. Put all that aside. Look at the date, August 15, 1998. That’s two weeks after the July 29th date. Why was that date important? That’s the date we learned about the blue-stained dress. So, therefore, Hillary would like us to believe that she didn’t know what all of America knew, two weeks after all of America knew it. And she dictated this, actually dictated this passage in her book. Why would she do that? Because this is the same Hillary Clinton who went on national television accusing a vast-right wing conspiracy of having come up with this story about Monica Lewinsky. She tried to blame conservatives for it. So now she had to act the victim. That she had just learned and had no idea. It is documented that it is untrue.

Even though she says things like this, people believe she’s a moderate. Why do you think the media labels her as a moderate? How does she pull that?

This gets to the heart of the matter. The media are packaging her the way she wants to be packaged. She wants to be a moderate because it advances her presidential aspirations. All you have to do is look it up. How hard is this to do? It would take a reporter about five nanoseconds. When you’ve got an “F” from the National Taxpayers Union, a zero from the National Tax Limitations committee, an eight from Citizens Against Government Waste, a twelve from the American Conservative Union, an “F” from the Gun Owners of America, how are you moderate? When you’ve got a 95 from the ADA, when you’ve got a 100 from the Brady campaign against guns, a 93 from the AFL-CIO, a 100 from the State and County Municipal Employees, that doesn’t make you a moderate! You know what it makes you? It makes you someone who had a voting record almost identical to Ted Kennedy’s, but you look at that and the media says “that’s a moderate.” So they are either lying, or it shows you unequivocally, how far to the left they really are if they consider that a moderate position. It can’t be anything else, Amanda!

Let’s talk about the debates. Do you think Tim Russert did a good job? Who do you think of the moderators are giving her the fairest shake?

I don’t know that anyone is doing a good job because no one is talking about substance. Diamonds or pearls? Boxers or briefs? Here we go again. The networks are doing a great disservice to the public when they will not focus on the issues, and the formats of these debates are silly with the one minute answers. Hillary Clinton is a genius at speaking for an entire minute without saying anything. She’s very, very good at this. No one ever pins them down. To me, it’s not the question that’s important, it’s the follow-up question. Go back to her pink dress press conference when the media just had a unanimous orgasm over her that night in the news about the wonderful performance that she put on, and it was just that: a performance. She didn’t answer any questions, but the incredible thing was if you go back and look at it, whenever she gave a non-answer to a question, no one ever challenged her on it.

This is, allegedly, the most brilliant woman on the face of the earth unless she has to answer a question. She says, “I don’t know how the Rose Law Firm records got into my bedroom. I don’t know how those FBI files ended up in the White House. I don’t know who hired the guy I hired.” And then they accept it!

So why is that? Does it have anything to do with the fact that she’s a woman and they don’t know what to do with her?

I don’t know that. I don’t know that it is a negative gender situation; I think it is positive gender situation. I don’t think they treat her with kid gloves because she’s a woman. That was never the case with Marilyn Quayle. It never applied to Jean Kirkpatrick. That doesn’t apply to Laura Ingraham, or Ann Coulter, or you. It doesn’t apply to conservative women ever. So that’s not the issue. I think it’s exactly the opposite. It’s because they are so supportive of her. They don’t want to ask her tough questions.

There is just a gaggle of pom-pom queens from the network that Hillary can turn to and does turn to every time she has a problem and they just run interference for her.

One of the themes we found in the book is that every time someone raises a criticism of her, that person is put on trial for the audacity of bringing it up. Look at the way they’ve handled books about her. She dismissed it all as old news, but when she wrote her book, giving her side of the story, every red carpet in town came out for her.

Who do you think gives Hillary the most softball questions, who is the worst interviewer? Is there one?

I would say the worst one because she is so pathetic is Maria Shriver, but quantitatively probably Katie Couric. If you go through the book and read some of the transcripts of he interviews you see it is embarrassing, just embarrassing that this woman was hired as a “reporter.”

But don’t you think these reporters come into it with the attitude that if we’re not nice to Hillary we won’t get interviews with her? How does this access angle play into it?

We know that is an absolute fact of life. We just saw it again last month with the GQ article on Bill Clinton that was killed because word came down if they ever wanted access to them they needed to kill that article that had critical things to say. So, they killed it. If a conservative or a Republican tried that that person would have hell to pay, but that’s a fact of life. It’s an intimidation factor.

As she gets closer to the presidency the press might be more willing to go after her because just because she’s in power. Is she getting as taste of that now?

She’s getting a taste of it, Amanda, but it’s been manically blown out of proportion. The “taste” that she’s getting is NOTHING compared to the “taste” Cheney gets every day. The reason it stands out is because she’s gotten no taste of it. Isn’t it interesting when a reporter with the audacity to ask her a single question of substance that reporter is vilified. Look at what happened to Tim Russert when he asked her about the driver’s licenses for illegals. He was vilified for this. Now, go to the book and you’ll find that is exactly what happened to the very same Tim Russert when he asked her in 2000 why she wouldn’t apologize to conservatives for the slanderous “vast-right wing conspiracy” accusation?

The way the media has fawned over her had led to the development of alternative media, like what you’re doing and Townhall and others. Has this helped the conservative movement?

I’ve said this many times and I will say it again. God help this country if there weren’t an alternative media at this point. God help this country if there wasn’t talk radio and the internet because what you would be getting is nothing more than the press releases of the left.

But the establishment media has become radicalized because of the new media. They are far more aggressive in promoting a left-wing agenda in this country. Witness their coverage of the war. And, if it weren’t for the alternative media the country wouldn’t know anything about Hillary Clinton other than what her press releases say.