Writing about Katie Couric’s imminent departure as CBS Evening News anchor in his April 6 column, Brent Bozell asserts that “Couric didn’t fail at this job or lack authority because she was the first female nightly news anchor. She lacked authority because she was such a blatant feminist and liberal activist.”
And what is Bozell’s prime example of this alleged bias? “Attacking Rush Limbaugh as ‘certainly heartless’ in mocking Michael J. Fox’s ads for Democrats.” No, really.
Of course, as we’ve detailed, Limbaugh never gets criticized by Bozell and his Media Research Center minions no matter how offensive he is, and the Fox incident was yet another example.
An October 2006 MRC CyberAlert set the tone by trying to change the subject, unwilling to acknowlege that Limbaugh did anything wrong but attacking critics because they “ignored how Fox was injecting politics into medical research funding policy, how Fox has admitted going off his meds in order to look worse and that Limbaugh was also criticizing Fox’s anti-Talent ad in Missouri in which Fox made the distorted claim that ‘Senator Talent even wanted to criminalize the science that gives us the chance for hope.’ Plus, it’s worth noting that Fox was a lot more steady in a clip of him responding to Limbaugh.”
Bozell’s other major example of Couric’s alleged bias is her alleged “her pounding on Sarah Palin in 2008.” Yeah, Couric asking Palin what newspapers she read was a real”pounding” — one Palin could have easily avoided by giving Couric a straight answer to her very simple question.
Meanwhile, Bozell’s minions are still desperate to come up with any significant number of examples of her alleged “liberal bias.” An April 4 NewsBusters item by Rich Noyes could only come up with a dozen examples of her “worst bias.” That’s not very many for nearly five years of newscasts.
As we pointed out a few years back, Media Matters found more examples of “conservative misinformation” on Couric’s newscast in her first year as anchor than the MRC found examples of “liberal bias.”