Shockingly, the Media Research Center still wasn’t done beating up on Scott Pelley getting fired from “60 Minutes.” Jeffrey Lord complained about it in a June 6 column:
We are a long way from 1964. The technology of the modern media has changed for sure. From talk radio to Fox and Newsmax TV to the rise of You Tube and conservative magazines like the late Bill Buckley’s National Review or Bob Tyrrell’s American Spectator, media in the 21st century is in a very different place.
But the left-leaning tilt of the “mainstream” American media some 62 years later has not changed one bit.
Nor is change in sight.
The Scott Pelley-CBS kerfuffle will eventually come- and go. But the Left wing presumption of media ownership as the future arrives is going nowhere.
The next day, Curtis Houck served up more of his trademark whining:
Apparently, the bravest, most important man in America, fired CBS journalist Scott Pelley, sat down for an interview with New York Times podcast host Lulu Garcia-Navarro that aired Sunday (and taped Friday). It was a tour de force in rancorous arrogance and legendary levels of main character syndrome as he denied believing his semi-public berating of 60 Minutes boss Nick Bilton and CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss would cause him to lose his job.
A job, we would learn, is on par with American soldiers and perhaps even more important. And, as we also saw, a profession that is inconceivable to him, no one would have grounds to distrust.
The interview began on an insensitive and jarring note as Pelley said the upheaval at CBS News was “like your spouse was murdered” and, through misty eyes, asserted this isn’t “about me” and “I’m fine,” but “these people that I left behind…who are still trapped.” This, he insisted, was “the depth of my devotion.”
[…]Zooming past his initial recollections of David Ellison’s Skydance purchasing CBS’s parent company Paramount, and the end of the Redstone family’s ownership, Pelley again showed his thick walls of bias by conceding he had never heard of Bari Weiss prior to her hiring:
[…]Pelley quickly came to loathe Weiss. Why? Because she stated something Pelley found meritless, which was that increasing numbers of Americans distrust the media due to their bias:
Given that Weiss had never worked in TV before taking the CBS job, there was little reason for Pelley to know who she was beforehand, or for him to see her as nothing more than a diversity hire.
Houck whined some more about Pelley’s interview with the Times in another post:
While ABC has been surprisingly silent, NBC’s lead newscasts of Today and NBC Nightly News haven’t been able to get enough of the CBS News drama, so it was natural that, on Monday’s Today, the show had a full story boasting of his “emotional” interview to The New York Times this past weekend showing much he’s “ticked off” about his ouster and leveling “concerning new allegations.”
“Ticked off. Scott Pelley speaking out in his first televised interview about his 60 Minutes firing…What he’s now saying about his dismissal. The new allegations he’s making against the network and how he feels about the other correspondents’ decision to stay,”co-host Savannah Guthrie boomed in the first of two teases.
[…]She huffed Pelley said “CBS News, in my view, is on fire” in “an emotional interview with The New York Times, his first since being fired from the storied broadcast.”
As an example, she played one of the more infamous clips — which we highlighted in full below — when Pelley broke down crying over how Nick Bilton and Bari Weiss supposedly have “never felt” the same level of danger that “people in that room who” have gone “to war zones when they are pregnant”:
[…]Pregnant people!
McLaughlin camped out on the part when “Pelley alleged editorial interference” in “his February coverage of the killing of ICE protester Renee Good” and that “Weiss directed his team to make the protesters look more violent, and to describe Good as driving toward the officer who shot her.”
While she did include a single sentence from a statement CBS News had sent denying this was political inference to help President Trump, she gushed the liberal reporter was “visibly shaken when asked about…scathing comments” Trump made, in which he said Pelley was “a stiff” and “part of this, you know, gang of crooked, stupid people that don’t care about our country.
Then, it was time for the MRC’s nepo-baby leader to weigh in:
Media Research Center President David Bozell joined Larry O’Connor on O’Connor & Company Monday morning to take aim at a total collapse in journalistic standards at NBC and CBS. Focusing on NBC’s Kristen Welker and former CBS anchor Scott Pelley, Bozell argued that the modern press corps is increasingly defined by double standards and open hostility toward the public.
During an interview with Donald Trump that aired on June 7, Kristen Welker repeatedly cut off the president, drawing sharp criticism for her combative tone. As Bozell pointed out, while Welker’s performance will likely earn her accolades from her peers, it highlighted a profound double standard in newsroom accountability. He pointed to Pelley, who was recently ousted by CBS News following reported confrontations with CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and 60 Minutes executive producer Nick Bilton, as proof of how unevenly corporate media doles out discipline.
Bozell also criticized Pelley for recent comments in which the veteran journalist expressed a deep concern for the American public to the point of tears, suggesting that Pelley’s actions do not match his rhetoric. If his claim were true, pompous Pelley would actually care about Americans’ lack of trust in the media; yet he refused to acknowledge the results of the annual Gallup poll, which proved that only 8% of Americans believe in the media “at all” while 28% of them believe it “somewhat.”
Bozell also whined about Pelley’s Times interview:
President of the Media Research Center David Bozell joined American Agenda on Newsmax Monday afternoon to react to Scott Pelley’s recent interview with the New York Times. Pelley is on a press tour over his firing at CBS, dressing himself up as a martyr for journalism and the First Amendment. In reality, it was his repeated clashes with CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and 60 Minutes executive producer Nick Bilton, culminating in a professional temper tantrum fueled by anger toward Trump, that eventually cost him his position.
Pelley accused Weiss and the CBS leadership team of “murdering” 60 Minutes due to the show’s new direction. Woke journalism now exists as an outlet to relieve many with Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), giving them a chance to vent their frustrations on elitist media networks such as CBS. Feeling threatened, Pelley demanded that Weiss provide proof of 60 Minutes’ bias, even though he knows it exists. As Bozell put it, “If you attempt balance in any way, shape, or form, you get accused of wanting to murder the show.”
[…]Bozell highlighted the American people’s frustration with the rampant bias in legacy media, noting how many individuals have stopped consuming this type of reporting. Ultimately, the industry is overshadowed by ego-inflated, TDS-stained journalists who are focused on making a dollar rather than educating the public.
It wasn’t mentioned that Bozell’s literal job is to incite frustration with supposedly “rampant bias” in “legacy media” — but, strangely, not the rampant bias found in right-wing media like Newsmax, where he made this claim.
Bozell went to yet another right-wing podcast to grouse about Pelley:
The segment also addressed the recent departure of veteran journalist Scott Pelley from CBS’s 60 Minutes. Pelley’s exit followed internal friction with the network’s new leadership, including chief editor Bari Weiss. In an appearance on a New York Times podcast, Pelley expressed disbelief over accusations of network bias and compared his journalistic career to military combat. Bozell dismissed Pelley’s remarks as performative, citing recent Gallup polling data showing that public trust in the media has hit a 72-year low.
Again, no mention that Bozell’s job is to inculcate public mistrust in media.,