It was left to Craig Bannister — whose job these days is to run the gutted “news” operation turned lame right-wing blog CNSNews.com — to make the momentous announcement in a May 19 NewsBusters post:
On Monday, the Media Research Center (MRC) announced that President and Founder L. Brent Bozell III will step down after 38 years and David Bozell, MRC Vice President for Growth and Development, will take the helm.
David Bozell will assume the role of president effective May 27, 2025. Brent Bozell has been named President Emeritus by the MRC Board of Directors.
The leadership transition marks a new chapter for the organization as it continues its over three-decade long mission to expose left-wing media bias.
[…]Throughout his nearly four decades as president, Brent Bozell led the organization with a bold commitment to truth. His leadership laid the groundwork for MRC’s prominent role in national conversations regarding media bias and accountability.
This self-promotional blather leaves out a lot. There’s no mention of the fact that Bozell dishonestly issued syndicated columns under his own name for years that were actually written by subordinate Tim Graham, or his vicious smear of President Obama as a “skinny ghetto crackhead,” both of which undermine any claim to him having a “bold commitment to truth.”
Also note that the MRC went the nepo-baby route by appointing Bozell’s son to replace him. David Bozell is best known for running ForAmerica, a right-wing meme factory inside the MRC headquarters that was lavishly described by Bannister as “an organization dedicated to promoting American exceptionalism.” In playing the nepotism card, the MRC overlooked Graham, who has devoted nearly his entire career to the organization and presumably had an inside track on the job through serving as Bozell’s longtime ghostwriter.
Speaking of nepotism, there was no mention of another Bozell son, Brent Bozell IV, who was an active participant in the Capitol riot — earning a prison sentence until being pardoned by President Trump along with all other rioters — and whose criminal behavior his father whitewashed and defended.
Finally, there was no mention of the real reason Bozell is suddenly retiring: He’s trying to get a patronage job in the in the Trump administration. He was originally nominated to run the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which operates governmental media efforts such has Radio Free Europe and Voice of America. Given that Trump is in the midst of gutting those operations, the patronage focus has since shifted to being nominated to be U.S. ambassador to South Africa — a better fit given that Bozell was part of a right-wing coalition in the 1980s to support South Africa’s apartheid government and to oppose the African National Congress’ efforts to end the racist regime, as well as having denounced Nelson Mandela after his 2013 death.
All of this is yet another reminder that Bozell has always been a right-wing political hack with an egotistical streak and never actually cared about “media research.”