This Is How The Media Spins The News | Episode 111

0:00Dan Bongino:Hey everybody, welcome to Vince on a Tuesday. It is great to have you here with us today. We've got a very special episode for you today. I'll be speaking with David Bozell. He's the president of the Media Research Center, a guy who's an expert on the way the media operates and what to expect from them next. He's been watching it really closely. I've got all of that straight ahead on this edition of Vince. I'm glad you're here to join us for this. Hey, I got to thank our great sponsors. Blackout Coffee supercharges this show every single day, quite literally. It gets me completely amped up. And you know this name, Blackout Coffee.

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1:43Dan Bongino:The Media Research Center has been the brain room of the American right when it comes to assessing how the media operate, the lies that they are telling you, and just all of the nonsense constantly. And has been doing that for now four decades, a long time. And the guy who's currently running the operation is the son of founder Brent Bozell. David Bozell joins me today in studio, the president of the Media Research Center. David. Thank you. Nice to see you. A lot of fun. Thank you. Appreciate it. How is your dad doing, by the way? The president appointed him. He's a royal pain in the you-know-what right now.

2:23He's president emeritus in the Media Research Center, which means he's got my old office. And he's held up a sign, napping in progress. And he sends emails out to the staff not to wake him up. Uh-huh. But he's having a blast.

2:39Dan Bongino:That's great. And he's a South Africa ambassador designee. So I think his hearings are going to be right after Labor Day. Oh, finally. Yeah, finally. Yeah, he got caught up in the logjamp. I think somebody said that the Senate is on a record pace for presidential confirmations, except for the fact that if they kept up that pace, President Trump's administration would be confirmed in five and a half years. It's so crazy that it's taking this long. I just talked to Senator Schmidt, actually. Senator Eric Schmidt was with us on the radio show on Friday, And he told me that when they get back from recess, that they're going to accelerate everything.

3:21Dan Bongino:Yeah, they're going to have to. They've basically come up with an agreement that they're going to try and blow past all this Democrat obstruction. Yeah, I mean, there's probably, I mean, on balance, there's probably too many people for them to confirm. There's 1 ,400 political appointees. And then all the ambassadorships go through Senate foreign relations. That's the biggest quantity. And so you just get stuck in this log jam. But the founders did not intend for the president of the United States to never get some of his nominees through. That was not the point of this. Nor did the founders intend for the United States Senate to be conferring the deputy deputy of deputy XYZ agency.

3:57And so they're just, I think they, there's just too many people. And frankly, this goes to government largesque questions and just excessive size of government. there's too many people for them to confirm as the schedule presents itself and you know frankly I

4:14Dan Bongino:mean not to not to diminish my father's chances of confirmation but they need to work harder you know they they they have this sort of Tuesday through Thursday schedule yes that needs to be expanded well I mean but Democrats it's not it's also the Democrats are intentionally obstructing this a lot of these nominees used to make it through through something we call unanimous consent, which is they didn't actually have a hearing. There weren't objections raised. The president is entitled to get the guys he wants in place. The ambassador to South Africa, really, we're going to make a national issue out of this.

4:44Dan Bongino:But in your father's case, my suspicion is we are because the left hates your dad and is going to do everything they can to stop him. Probably some in the Republican echelon as well. But look, yes, his is, I don't think his nomination is controversial at all. Now it's a hotspot. I mean, South Africa is no joke. That's true. And there's a lot of saber rattling going on in China, et cetera. That's his story to tell. However, I could see why the Senate would have a vested interest in who's going to get that spot. Geographically, it's an important spot. The president wanted a pit bull. My father's a pit bull.

5:24And so I can see them wanting a vested interest. That said, there's just little things in the confirmation process that you sort of see throughout. At one point they asked, is he a published author?

5:39Dan Bongino:Mm-hmm. Okay, yes. Yes, he is. Yes, he is. Could you send us everything you've ever written? In 40 years. Yeah. I mean, a twice-weekly national column. I mean... Did you guys go in? Did you guys go find all that stuff? You did a big dig? We had a huge dig. Well, not only that. Thank God for ChatGPT, by the way. Well, you know what they want, too. You know what they want for these confirmation processes is not just everything he's ever written, which is already a big haul. They want every interview he's ever done. Yep. They want every... Transcript, everything. So your dad, didn't your dad appear on Hannity like once a week?

6:12Dan Bongino:Once a week. Like a thousand years. In the old days of the Crossfire, he was on there once or twice a week, you know, with Buchanan and Kinsley and all these guys. So, I mean, the McLaughlin show, you did that plenty of times. Yes. This is a real test. He gets social rush a couple of times. This is a real test of the Media Research Center's resources. Yeah. Are you legit? Do you have the library? Exactly. Exactly. We've had to do our own digging for all that stuff to try to help them out. And, you know, thank God we've had, you know, most of all the television stuff we've had. Yeah. I mean, we just crossed our one millionth hour of recordings at the Media Research Center.

6:48Dan Bongino:So tell people, in terms of like your library, you do this. I tell my reporters at The Daily Caller, whenever we run up against the wall, we're like, we got to find something from some old CNN thing from a decade ago. Yeah. I was like, I'm pretty sure the media research center has it. What do you have? What's the library that you guys maintain a million hours? Everything that's ever been on news aired on television since 1987 is either on VHS or digitized right now Every so we and we've had to and we've had to because VHS tapes only have a shelf life about 13 14 years. Yeah, we've had to Convert all those things digitize to digitize them.

7:24Dan Bongino:So so you have every million hours You have every hour of cable news since 1987? Just about. I mean, we used to, we were in competition, I think, with Vanderbilt for the largest television archive in the world. And I think they even stopped. So I think, yes, we can say confidently that we have the largest television archive in the world. You know, sometimes we'll press pause. Because with, it's actually cheaper, believe it or not. Yeah. It was cheaper back then to house the archive than it is now. now it's because you think well it's digitized and it's just cloud and everything's in the cloud and and it should be cheaper yes the VHS tape was like three bucks yep right and so you could put you know it's 10 hours on a VHS tape and no problem you can hold it presumably for forever AWS and all the cloud digitizing systems mean they they know that you know we're the only game in town so it's it cost us a pretty penny yes to put it all together but it's important to have the verifiable record of how these guys are presenting news and information.

8:25And to be able to see, to chronologically go back in history to see how they've changed or not changed.

8:30Dan Bongino:So my guess is that this, your dad, it can't be. Your dad's confirmation process is not the first time that your media library has been consulted for presidential nominees. No. My guess is Republicans have often come to you and said, hey, can we get access to the archive? Oh, Democrats too. I mean, because we're a C3, we have to answer those phone calls. And so typically in the presidential years when these things get magnified And we get a lot of phone calls from both presidential campaigns and then a lot of senatorial campaigns as well. So we'll, you know, we'll dish them out because we have to.

9:00We're an educational foundation, so by law we have to do that. Back in the late 90s, early 2000s, Daily Wire kind of had us on a speed dial. They were calling us nearly every day because they were running just different clips. Not Daily Wire, I'm sorry, The Daily Show. Oh, yeah, yeah. With Jon Stewart. So they would want, they needed clips. And they weren't taping like we were. And so, yeah, they would call us. It was not uncommon to get calls from those guys. So all the stuff that you saw on Comedy Central, more often than not, came from us. In terms of if John wanted to run a clip and goof on right left.

9:35Was that a weird feeling, though? Not really.

9:37Dan Bongino:Well, I mean, as a conservative, as you're feeding the Daily Show's engines and they're using it constantly to attack conservatives, there must have been some feeling of like, ah, crap, what are they doing? In some sense, I think we... one of the things that we wanted to do too was if you couldn't take the heat, you shouldn't be on the air. We wanted to, if, if, if, if a clip, you know, embarrassed a conservative, well then maybe you got to get better at your presentation. Right. Now if it was unfair, yeah, you'd feel a little bad, but again, by law, we had to, I, we could not discriminate who, you know, based on political affiliation of the caller who wanted the, who wanted the video.

10:19So by law, we had to do it. Got it. So you can sit around and feel bad about it, but you got to do it. Yeah, it's funny. I didn't know that.

10:26Dan Bongino:So through the years, I guess I want to get to kind of how the media are today because they seem as hysterical, over the top and powerless as I've ever seen them. Like I think in their powerlessness, they're becoming more crazy. How have you seen the legacy press change through these years that you've been doing this? Well, listen, their ratings on television are in the toilet, right? For sure. CNN lost 50 % of its election night audience. It's not just the networks changing or the cables changing. It's also audiences changing. Yeah. So I ask people all the time when I do speeches, raise your hand.

11:06If you watch the presidential election coverage of 2024, the election night returns on television. 80 % of the room, their hands go up. believe it or not only 23 percent of the country watched election night returns of the 20 of the

11:21Dan Bongino:2024 presidential on television 23 percent yeah um everybody's coming here everybody's coming to podcasting everybody's coming to youtubes and yes types of things rumble rumble um so yeah right um so everybody's going to these types of places yeah and uh and so the networks have had to adjust Now, I was looking at the top 100 news websites in America. All right, number one. Can you guess? Number one news website in America? Yeah. Is it the Daily Mail? No. New York Times. 435 million hits in the month of June. 435 million. Wow. Right? So a lot of that is the word old and the crossword puzzles and stuff like that.

12:06But to the extent that people, I mean, people, it's still the driver of the narrative. Yes. The left is the New York Times. CNN.com is in the top five. Now, where are these things? CBS, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, all of their ratings are gone down. All their site traffic has gone down. Yep. But they have embedded themselves in Apple News. They've embedded themselves in Google News. Yes. They've embedded themselves in Yahoo. They've embedded themselves in MSN, which is Microsoft. All those news pages are top 10 in the world monthly. Right. Okay, so they're still getting their message out through algorithmic aggregators.

12:46Dan Bongino:It's a force-feeding operation. It is. And so that's something that MRC 2.0 has to tackle in terms of our analysis. We've got to get comfortable analyzing the big social media slash aggregator platforms like Apple. And a lot of that comes down to exclusivity contracts with these guys. Usually, if you go on Google, Vince, it's New York Times, CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox. New York Times, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, Fox. And so the liberal media viewpoint is skewed heavily. Yes, that's for sure. And those guys have hundreds of millions of visitors. And you've had a great operation digging into all this tech corruption, too.

13:27Dan Bongino:I'll talk more about this in a moment with David Bazell. great to have you here with me today um before we get there i want to thank our sponsors jacked up fitness a great sponsor of this program more and more americans are prioritizing their wellness they're getting back in shape but studies prove that strength training does a lot more to help burn fat than cardio alone i've been working with don and his team over at jacked up fitness for a couple of months now let me tell you these guys really do know what they're doing they're all in one home gyms are already best in class trust me i have one but now they're all new x series takes home fitness to the next level.

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14:31Dan Bongino:Use the promo code Vince and save 10%. That's get jacked up.com. Thank you to jacked up fitness. All right. So we're talking about the media, David, and, and how they've been operating through the years. And as I pointed out a moment ago, you know, I do feel like they are hysterical about their lack of power over the conversation or at least their dwindling power over the conversation. You're right. They are algorithmically forced upon us in many ways. But it does seem that fewer and fewer Americans are even paying attention to those spaces. A lot of people are just turning to social media to get their news.

15:10Right.

15:10Dan Bongino:And going to these alternative news sources to get their news. what effect has that had on our press, on the legacy press? Well, the believability of the media is at an all-time low. I mean, Gallup checks this every single year. I think it's like neck and neck for Pelosi's approval rating and the liberal media's approval rating, right? There's a race to the bottom. So, look, do they get eyeballs? Sure. Does the conservative media ecosystem put a mirror up, much like Media Research Center does, and has to sort of show the differences how they present a story versus how we present a story or how the conservative media ecosystem presents a story?

15:53Absolutely. Yes. But the believability rate is more important than anything, and the believability rate is in the toilet. So they really are losing credibility by the day. I'll give you an example of why. This is a testament to the archive that we have. the broadcast news networks did not cover the Florida truck driver crash. Okay. Guy kills three people. Right. Allegedly. Okay. Allegedly. Guy kills three people. Allegedly. Trump 1.0 refused to give him a license. Okay. The Biden administration gives him a license. He gets one in California. He gets one in Washington. He somehow makes it down to Florida, makes an illegal U-turn, kills three people.

16:36Allegedly. not a single second of that was covered by the broadcast news networks not a single second now they are not immune to covering other car crashes they covered for other car all three networks covered for other car crashes right in the month of July so it's not like they're immune to covering car crashes but the one that does not fit their open border narrative you refuse to cover well that's really

17:02Dan Bongino:the whole thing, isn't it? Now the most prominent way that they use their power is to omit context from their presentation. So they don't tell you about the illegal alien who's killing people. They don't tell you about Kilmar Abrego Garcia's MS-13 connections. Today that's happening with Garcia. They don't tell you about the crime status in Washington, D.C. They don't tell you about the state of the homicides. They don't tell you that the president has stopped the homicides over the course of the last few weeks. They don't tell you anything. They basically pretend like anything that the left is involved with is running really, really well and that the president's efforts to confront their actual failures are just a fantasy operation in the service of tyranny.

17:45Yeah. Boca to Colombia has a 25. Colombia has a 25 times better murder rate than Washington, D.C. OK. Boca to Colombia.

17:57Dan Bongino:Yeah. The kind of thing that a fair and balanced news operation would present in terms of calculating why is President Trump sending an armed National Guard into the city. We've been here, we've been in Washington for most of our adult lives. It is not a safe place to walk around most of the time. There are good pockets, but there are pockets that have needed improvement for decades. for decades. And everyone who lives here understands this. Yes. But the media does not want to give Trump credit for anything. Not one thing. So so I have a theory about the effect this is having on the population.

18:43Dan Bongino:And I think you just kind of alluded to the reality of it. Conservatives are more media literate than their liberal counterparts. Yeah. Conservatives know a lot more by and large on average than the left does about what's actually going on in the world. And the reason for that is because we are aware of what the left claims the world is and we're aware of whether or not they're right. We're aware of the responses to that. So, for instance, during COVID, the left had a disproportionately high perception that they were going to die if they caught the virus. There was something like 40 % of all lefties thought that your chances of dying or ending up at the hospital were 50%.

19:24Dan Bongino:I believe that was the number at the time. It was a delusional, overwrought, hysterical interpretation of events that was only fed by the legacy media. That clearly there was there was a poll that was done that found that huge numbers, about half of all Democrats, believe that Russia had changed the vote totals in 2016, that they had manipulated the election. Normal people, conservatives were not under that impression. We knew better. We knew that that was stupid. That was a lie. and then the Media Research Center you did a survey about the awareness of the American people about the Hunter Biden laptop saga yeah and found that if more people were aware of what was going on that that would have potentially tilted the election for President Trump to win it in 2020 yeah and so with all of that in mind I can't help but walk away with this conclusion over and over conservatives know what's going on and the left has no idea yeah we we did a survey post 2020 to shine some light on that.

20:23We asked only Democrats, were you aware of the Hunter Biden laptop story? To those that answered no, we explained a little bit of the guts of the story. We said, and we followed up, we said, would you have changed your vote?

20:35Dan Bongino:Yeah. Right? And enough percentage would have changed their vote to have tilted all seven swing states into Trump's favor. Okay, all seven. So you're right. They don't pay attention to the other side, you know, the conservative media's ecosystem. A more recent example in April Trump's approval ratings were starting to swoon a little bit a lot of that was the on again off again tariff discussion Breitbart did a very cool analysis of they aggregated a bunch of a bunch of polls And they they looked at the the crosstabs of the polls in 10-year intervals 18 to 30 30 to 40 40 to 50 and so on in every single age demographic okay trump was either neutral or plus since the inauguration okay except for the plus 70 crowd or more seasoned audience he was negative 14 okay part of that was the liberal media day in and day out trying to scare that crowd into saying that the tariffs were going to steal take away their social security yeah right and it's if you look at the crosstabs even further they're doom watching cnn and msnbc every day and then come dinner time they're watching their favorite broadcast news network and it's just all anti-trump all day every day and so it's almost impossible not to come to the conclusion that trump is this evil evil person if that's all you're going to consume and that's what i'm seeing so this is i mean it's just amazing it wasn't that long ago that we said oh it's the it's the young people who are being misled they have no idea what's going on but there's some really interesting and radical demographic shifts going on that president Trump is definitely and hugely responsible for.