Editor’s Note: This is the second of a two-part series featuring an exclusive interview with Brent Bozell, Founder and President of the Media Research Center. In part one, he discussed the magnitude of the media’s unprecedented attacks on President Trump. This discussion will be aired in its entirety on Liberty Nation Radio this Sunday, July 14.
While naked media bias threatens the republic as never before in this age of Donald Trump, a far bigger threat is posed by the similarly biased social media giants. As CNN struggles to reach a million viewers in primetime, Facebook, Twitter, and Google have built worldwide audiences in the hundreds of millions or billions.
The magnitude of power wielded by these tech giants has become a major focus for the longtime purveyor of hard facts about the elite media, Brent Bozell, founder and president of the vaunted Media Research Center. In his new book, Unmasked: Big Media’s War Against Trump, Bozell thoroughly chronicles the 90% negative coverage of President Trump since he took office, and he joined Liberty Nation Radio for a wide-ranging discussion, which culminated in sounding the alarm about the existential threat posed by unaccountable purveyors of social media.
Tim Donner: This unprecedented media bias targeted at Donald Trump and all that he stands for and all that he says and all that he does, is this a conspiracy between the major media outlets or is a conspiracy unnecessary since all these leftist media outlets think exactly the same way?
Brent Bozell: I used to joke and say rhetorically "Is this a conspiracy? Do they get together at eight o'clock in the morning and say, 'How can we get conservatives?' Ha ha ha. No, it's not." I think it is now. I think they are on a mission and these people do meet, and they do talk, and they do coordinate, and they do lie together, and they absolutely do share the conviction that Donald Trump needs to be removed from office. It is the right thing to do. It is the just thing to do. It is the virtuous thing to do. Therefore, yes, they have no problem at all coordinating their attacks.
Tim: Now, we do notice that digital subscriptions to these legacy publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post have risen sharply since the unthinkable happened and Trump was elected. So in some sense, these media outlets that condemn Trump day after day are benefiting from his presence in the White House, are they not?
...there are more people in America who own pet chickens than watch CNN.
Brent Bozell: Yeah. It was the CBS president who made that very observation. He might be a bad guy, but he's great for business. In fact, he has been. You ask, you say "Why does CNN have this obsession with Donald Trump?" It's because they're trying to carve out a part of the market. They know, they know they can't compete with Fox. They know that as a news outlet that they're shot, but they're happy with a small fraction of the American population that is rabidly anti-Trump. We looked at their numbers. This was about a month ago. We looked at the audience for CNN. It was 761,000 people. That, in a nation of 335 million, if you're doing the math, is approximately 2/10ths of 1% of America that CNN, the network of record, is now reaching. To put that number in its proper perspective, there are more people in America who own pet chickens than watch CNN.
Tim: I see you put your researchers to work again, Brent.
Brent Bozell: Yeah. There are more prostitutes in America than there are viewers of CNN. I don't know what …
Tim: Now, that one I'm prepared to believe. What about the media's credibility in the eyes of the general public, not people who obsess about politics like you and me, but just the average American that just goes about his business, just wants to be left alone and hopes the government will do a few nice things here and there? Has the media actually become less credible in the eyes of the public during the Trump presidency or more credible or about the same?
Brent Bozell: Oh, I think that the numbers tell the story. If the public saw CNN as credible, CNN would have a credible audience. It's incredible in that sense. CNN, I think ... I'm asked the question "What's the future?" I think CNN has no future. I don't know that they can ever restore their credibility. I don't know that anyone will ever look at CNN again and say “this is an impartial network.”
Putting aside Trump for a second, technology is having a lot of ... It's kind of like the abortion debate where you've got it on a certain level, on a spiritual level, but it's science that's really carrying it right now. The same thing is happening in the news media. Science technology is moving people into social media. You no longer wait until 6:30 to get the evening paper or to watch the evening news. If you want something, you whip out your smartphone and you hit a couple buttons and there's the information you need. If you want to know what just happened in an election, you don't wait. You see it instantly.
So we are rapidly leaving the news era and going into the information age. When that happens, then all these networks become irrelevant, but that's why there's so ... They're all going into sensationalism mode because they're all trying to capture the story of the moment. That's why so much irresponsible reporting is coming out because you don't stop to get your story confirmed. As soon as somebody says a Stormy Daniels story, boom! You're out with the story. You don't bother to see that it was Avenatti who was lying again.
Tim: So Brent, the next big challenge for conservatives is bias reflected in the social media giants, Facebook, Google, Twitter, the rest, and you're attacking that problem as well at the Media Research Center. What specifically are you doing to unmask and counter social media censorship of conservatives?
Brent Bozell: If there's one thing that I hope that conservatives will begin to understand it’s that social media is more important than everything you and I have just discussed. Just look at audience numbers and it tells a story. NBC might have four million, but Twitter has 700 million. ABC might have four and a half million. Facebook has 2.2 billion. They are the information sources of the future. They're not nationwide. They are worldwide. Now, if they were just impartial platforms on which you placed your information, that'd be one thing, but they're not. Every single day, another conservative is being deplatformed. He is being banned. He is being suspended. Or she. Demonetized is another one that they're doing, making it impossible to do business – just ask Dennis Prager – on their sites.
On Twitter, a liberal professor in Canada said, "A woman is not a man," and was banned from Twitter because the gay owner refuses to allow anyone to make any kind of judgment on sexuality of a person. So she was banned. This is how radicalized it has become. Facebook, Twitter is doing this. YouTube, Google.
Then the question becomes "Well what do you do about it? What can you do about it? What can you do about Facebook that has the ability to swallow anything in its path? What do you do to compete with Apple that has a trillion dollars in the bank? What do you do to compete with Google that controls 92% of search engines in the world?" You can't compete with them. The late great Jeane Kirkpatrick used to talk about forces that were outside of the system of checks and balances as the founders had seen them. Social media is outside the system of checks and balances.
Remember this: They are worldwide. So when they set the rules, they are setting the rules for the entire world. "If you don't do what we say, you cannot be heard. You cannot be heard." Doreen Borelli on The Blaze yesterday was banned from Facebook; you can't be heard. James Woods, if you want to say something, we won't allow it. This is how dangerous this is. I'm urging conservatives: Understand this is a worldwide ... It's not an exaggeration, Tim. This is the greatest worldwide censorship of a movement in the history of man.
~
To read more from Tim Donner, visit his author page. At Liberty Nation, we love to hear from our readers. Comment and join the conversation!
.jpg&w=1920&q=75)
