Transcript of MRC President L. Brent Bozell's Appearance on CNN's Crossfire on February 5th, 2003

On February 5th, MRC President L. Brent Bozell appeared on CNN's Crossfire debating the existence of a liberal or conservative bias in the national press.  Hosted by Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson, President Bozell was joined by fellow guest Eric Alterman, author of the new book, "What Liberal Media?" We join the transcript following a commercial break.  Transcript courtesy of CNN.com.

BEGALA: Welcome back to CROSSFIRE on a night I bet you're glad you paid the cable bill. The debate's been that good tonight. We're going to keep it coming. We are live, of course, from the George Washington University here in downtown Washington, D.C., home of the Colonials. 

During the Clinton administration, it was part of the right wing's mantra to chant and whine endlessly about the supposedly biased liberal media. But a new book argues that the facts state just the opposite. The book is called "What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias in the News." 

The author is Eric Alterman. He says the media have grown increasingly cowed by false complaints of liberal base, and hence, progressively more sympathetic to the most outlandish conservative complaints. Eric Alterman steps into the CROSSFIRE tonight with Brent Bozell, the president of the Media Research Center, the conservative watchdog group. 

(APPLAUSE)

CARLSON: All right. Eric Alterman, let me say, there are some honest parts in your book. Right at the very beginning. 

ERIC ALTERMAN, AUTHOR, "WHAT LIBERAL MEDIA?": I spelled your name right, Tucker. Didn't I?

CARLSON: You did. All 12 times. ALTERMAN: Well you say a lot of silly things. 

CARLSON: And so do you. But let's start with the one honest thing you say. At the very beginning on page 20 you admit what all of us who work in the press know, and that is that most reporters are liberal. You concede that most of them voted for Clinton you think. 

"The vast majority are pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro separation of church and state, pro-feminism, pro affirmative action, and supportive of gay rights." It kind of cuts against your argument, doesn't it?

ALTERMAN: Well, socially liberal, yes. Economically conservative. And the fact is that, while I admit and agree that most elite reporters are socially liberal, it's not up to reporters what gets on the news, Tucker. Do you think that the owners of most corporations that own media corporations are liberal? 

CARLSON: Actually, having worked in media corporations and grown up around the, for one, and worked in them all my adult life, I can tell you, as I think you already know, most reporters don't take orders from the owners of their companies. Most reporters don't know who the owners of their companies are and have zero contact with them. So that's not a plausible claim. 

ALTERMAN: Well, Tucker, who hires the pundits, who hirs the people that determine the agenda? Why is it that virtually all of the people that appear on network television as pundits are conservatives, not liberals?

CARLSON: Well I'll tell you why. Because the talent pool -- there are only two that I know of -- good liberals and they work on the show. It's a tiny talent pool.

(APPLAUSE)

BEGALA: Let me move this, Brent, into the realm of quantitative data. First off, congratulations, Eric. I think it's a terrific book.

ALTERMAN: Thank you.

BEGALA: And it inspired me and actually Josh Cowan (ph), who is this very able research man on our staff, to punch up a couple of stories to just look at the 2000 campaign and how the media covered Mr. Bush and Mr. Gore. And we contrasted different negative stories about the two men. Take a look. We'll put it up here. 

There were 1,282 stories about Al Gore going to a Buddhist temple. Bad story for Gore. There were 10 stories about Dick Cheney selling oilfield equipment to Saddam Hussein in Iraq, to Momar Kadafi in Libya and to the Ayatollah in Iran. There were 817 stories about Al Gore claiming he invented the Internet. 

BRENT BOZELL, PRESIDENT, MEDIA RESEARCH CENTER: Which he never claimed. BEGALA: Which he never claimed. Fourteen stories about George W. Bush avoiding service in the National Guard. There were 263 stories about Al Gore wearing earth-tone clothes. Not the most important thing in the world. But only 12 about George W. Bush allegedly committing insider trading at his oil company. Tell me again about the liberal media, because it cracks me up, man. 

BOZELL: Let me stop you right now. Let me ask you a question. In that very last point you made, allegedly with insider trading. 

BEGALA: Because his daddy found him not guilty. He ran the SEC. His father said, oh, we'll drop everything. That's why...

BOZELL: Did George Bush, this president, commit insider trading? 

BEGALA: I said he was investigated for it. He won't release the records. 

(CROSSTALK)

BOZELL: Is there evidence that he did it? Stop accusing this man of doing things he didn't do. 

(APPLAUSE)

BEGALA: I said...

(CROSSTALK)

BOZELL: You don't have the evidence. The problem is -- the media are not. I will grant you this, most reporters are not as liberal as you or you. Now, that does not make them conservative. The reality is...

BEGALA: How do you explain the disparity (UNINTELLIGIBLE), Brent?

BOZELL: I can give you thousands...

BEGALA: Give me one. 

BOZELL: I can give you thousands of examples of anything we've ever put out, where no one has ever refuted the evidence we've put out. I don't believe -- Paul, I'm sorry, I don't believe what you and your researcher put on the table. I don't believe it. I don't believe what you and the political operative put out. 

BEGALA: Does anybody here think there are more stories about Dick Cheney selling oilfield equipment to Iran than Al Gore in earth tones? Does anybody think? Apparently not.

CARLSON: Of all the explanations you have and evidence you provide that the press is secretly right wing, this has to be my favorite.

ALTERMAN: It's no secret. CARLSON: I read your Web site and I pulled this off your site this very morning. 

ALTERMAN: It's called altercation. 

CARLSON: I guess dot-com. If you have a 1-800 number I'll throw it out there. "The problem with self-flagellation in the face of an ignorant and dishonest conservative offensive has grown much worst over the past decade." 

Your evidence? "When I originally published "Sound and the Fury" -- an earlier book -- "as a relative unknown in 1992, I was invited on "The Tonight Show," "The Today Show," "Nightline," "All Things Considered," "Fresh Air," "C-Span's Book Notes," et cetera. The book was even excerpted in the women's fashion magazine, "Mirabella."

Now your evidence is that you haven't -- the "Miraella" (UNINTELLIGIBLE), but you haven't been on television enough for this book. Therefore the press is right wing. 

(APPLAUSE)

ALTERMAN: Tucker, two things. First of all, this is the problem with the conservative onslaught. A, I didn't right the "Sound and the Fury," William Faulkner did. I wrote a book called "Sound & Fury," which actually is an accurate rendering of the Shakespeare (UNINTELLIGIBLE), not Faulkner's.

CARLSON: OK.

ALTERMAN: Second, you left out the introduction to what I said. That's not a direct quote. It is a direct quote, but it has an ellipsis in it. I said I'm not one to believe in single anecdotes as evidence of anything. I said if you take my example -- and then I took myself out of it and I made the larger case about a media that takes people like Anne Coulter and Bernard Goldberg seriously, is evidence that the most ridiculous conservative arguments can be...

CARLSON: But the flip side here is...

(CROSSTALK)

ALTERMAN: Tucker, my point...

CARLSON: You're saying, I'm being discriminated against. 

ALTERMAN: No, I'm not. What I'm saying is that the media is somehow more receptive to someone like Anne Coulter -- who I admit is very good looking; I used to work with her -- but whose book is a travesty and a shame. 

CARLSON: Maybe she had better arguments than you do.

ALTERMAN: Well, no, Tucker, I have evidence. I have 30 or 40 pages of footnotes which you can check. She's got nothing but nonsense. Bernard Goldberg doesn't even have evidence. He doesn't believe in it. And yet these books are embraced by the media because they attack the media, and I think it's evidence of self-flagellation. 

BOZELL: I'm confused. Today, we are talking about this onslaught, this vast right wing onslaught. Just a few years ago it was a quiet conspiracy. What which one is it?

ALTERMAN: I never use the word "conspiracy." 

BOZELL: But you did. 

BEGALA: No I didn't. It's not conspiracy. Conspiracy, Brent, suggests it's hidden. It's very overt. 

BOZELL: Then why were you guys talking about a vast right wing conspiracy?

(CROSSTALK)

ALTERMAN: Why am I being held responsible for what Hillary Clinton said? 

BEGALA: Because they hate Hillary and they bring her up in every argument.

ALTERMAN: Wasn't there another word for that, McCarthyism?

BOZELL: Oh my goodness.

BEGALA: Brent, let's take a look at another story from this week. OK. The day that our president was traveling to Houston, where he spoke wonderfully at that memorial service for the astronauts on Columbia, I believe it was "The New York Times" that wrote that Mr. Bush had never visited Johnson Space Center in Houston.

As somebody who grew up outside of Houston I found that odd. I know that he flew fighter jets right next door, he lived in Houston. He was the governor. It's one of the largest employers in his state.

Well apparently the White House staff didn't like it either and they pushed back very hard. And they said, no, the president went there in 1995 or 1996. It turns out that's not true. He never has been. 

Now that's not very important, but there were 10 stories about that. Ten in the whole wide world. It never went on CNN, except for me, never went on any other TV network that I saw. But when Al Gore said he went to Texas with the director of FEMA instead of the assistant director, who he actually met with there, there were 139 stories about that. Now why is a simple misstatement by Mr. Gore a major news story for several days after the debates, why is a minor misstatement from our president not a story at all?

BOZELL: Because George Bush does not have a reputation for lying, Al Gore did. And why is that?

BEGALA: The majority of the American people...

(CROSSTALK)

CARLSON: Because there was a campaign going on, is the real answer.

BEGALA: No, you're right. He said there was a campaign going on and the Republican campaign was more effective at cowering the media. 

CARLSON: I don't want to put words in your mouth. I'll just ask you a simple question. Do you believe that this conspiracy -- or call it what you will -- these right wing forces in the press helped lose the election for Al Gore? 

ALTERMAN: Yes, absolutely. But it's not about right wing. In the case of Al Gore, it's about the media for some reason -- or for reasons that we all probably understand -- hating Al Gore. It wasn't political, it was personal. 

CARLSON: We're almost out of time. But in one sentence, tell us what those reasons were. I'm interested. 

ALTERMAN: I wrote a 336-page book. I can't do things in one sentence. 

CARLSON: Well maybe that's -- yes. Well thanks very much for joining us. 

BEGALA: It is a terrific book, though. 

CARLSON: We are completely out of time. 

(CROSSTALK)

CARLSON: That's right. Thank you both very much for joining us, Brent Bozell. Eric Alterman, thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

CARLSON: One of our viewers has been observing the slant in the press. We'll let him fire back at us next. We'll be right back.