Bozell L. Brent - Collusion: how the media stole the 2012 election---and how to stop them from doing it in 2016

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To our anonymous benefactors we know who you are.

Finding and organizing the flood of examples of media distortion and omission in this book requires far more than two people. It takes the careful daily record keeping of a whole news-analysis division at the Media Research Center. Brent Baker has directed the MRCs media-monitoring team for more than twenty-five years. Research Director Rich Noyes offered his insights, especially on Benghazi coverage and the avoidance of Obamas economic record. Deputy Research Director Geoff Dickens patiently read through every page of this book to keep us on track.

Our news-monitoring team includes NewsBusters Managing Editor Ken Shepherd and Senior Analyst Scott Whitlock, as well as Matthew Balan, Kyle Drennen, Matt Hadro, and Brad Wilmouth. Clay Waters of the MRCs TimesWatch project helped us expose the New York Times. We relied on research from interns Paul Bremmer, Alex Fitzsimmons, Kelly McGarey, Jeffrey Meyer, Ryan Robertson, and Matt Vespa.

We always require extensive use of the MRC video archive for a big book project, so our thanks to Michelle Humphrey.

And then there is Brent Bozells assistant, the unflappable Melissa Lopez, who coordinates all things with the disposition of an angel.

We thank Adam Bellow and Eric Meyers at Broadside Books for their encouragement and guidance, as well as Jonathan Burnham, Kathy Schneider, Trina Hunn, Joanna Pinsker, Tom Hopke Jr., and Stephanie Selah.

Tim Graham thanks his wife, Laura, and his children, Ben and Abby, and always thanks God for his parents, Jim and Ann Graham.

L. Brent Bozell III thanks his wife, Norma, for raising five children with sterling values, meaning not a one of them wishes to be a reporter.

CONTENTS

Mitt Romney thought hed won. So did Paul Ryan. So did we.

With polls set to open in New Hampshire in mere hours, we were working the phones with John McLaughlin, of the McLaughlin Associates polling firm. Ive known him for over thirty years. We cut our teeth together at the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC) in 1980, I in the fundraising operation, John working for the legendary Arthur Finkelstein, who did NCPACs polling. McLaughlin has a reputation for being as good as anyone in the business. More importantly, hes impeccably honest.

We were on the phone putting finishing touches on some questions the Media Research Center was purchasing from his omnibus Election Night poll. Our desire was to determine the impact the media realized over the 2012 election process. More specifically: Did the public buy the medias news reporting during this cycle? Assuming Romney was the victor, would he have won the presidency had the public believed what it was receiving to be objective news reporting?

If the answer was in the negative, one had to ask the frightening question: Can free electionsdemocracy itselfsurvive a leftist political onslaught dishonestly packaged as objective news reporting?

I asked John to review with me the polling data for all battleground states. So he went to the RealClearPolitics.com website.

Virginia , I began. John walked me through the available media numbers for Northern Virginia v. the southern part of the state versus the mountain region versus the Norfolk/Tidewater area. Conclusion? I asked. Romney. We moved to the next state. Florida? Again the polling analysis, painstakingly. Panhandle, Palm Beach area. In between. Conclusion? Romney.

Ohio? Romney. Wisconsin? Romney. North Carolina? Romney. New Mexico? Romney. New Hampshire? Romney. Colorado? Romney. In state after state, after a discussion of polling data, voting trends, and other anecdotal information, the conclusion was unchanged: Romney. Only in Minnesota did McLaughlin hesitate. That state, he suggested, might be just too far out of reach. Give them all the red states and now add in all the battleground states and this was shaping up to be a certain Romney-Ryan victory and quite possibly, a landslide.

Virtually all the GOP-leaning pollsters and virtually all the GOP-leaning pundits (yes, including us) were in agreement. Even the ever-cautious Michael Barone, so learned about every voting backyard in America, was projecting a massive win for the Republicans. The problem was, all the Democratic-leaning pollsters, along with their Democratic-leaning pundits, were calling this one for Obama.

It wasnt unconvincing bravado coming from the Democratic pundits, unchallenged by media pollsters. Obama wasnt like a heavyweight champion who was pounded mercilessly but still smiles, shaking his head to deny the punch had hurt, but whose wobbled legs betray his battered condition. No, they were all confident in his corner. David Axelrod was laughing on national television, pledging to shave his trademark mustache if his boss lost, and his cohorts in the media were chuckling alongside him.

On Election Night the Axelrod lip hair was safe. Michigan. Pennsylvania. Wisconsin. New Hampshire. Minnesota. Florida. Virginia. Colorado. New Mexico. Iowa. One by one the battleground states reported, and one by one they lined up behind the incumbent. Only in North Carolina did the challenger persevere. By 11:30 P.M. there was Karl Rove, the personification of Republican Party politics, the man who raised hundreds of millions from GOP donors while pledging to deliver not just the White House but the Senate as well, desperately waving his hands on national television, the last man standing at the GOPs Little Bighorn, insisting Ohio was not lost.

What had (most) liberals known that (most) conservatives and Karl Rove had failed to grasp?

Yes, the Democrats turnout machine was as spectacularly successful as the Republicans was woefully nonexistent. It led the GOP to announce a post-election autopsy of their operations, which should have started with firing the idiot who further embarrassed the party by calling the exercise an autopsy.

That was not the concern for my colleague Tim Graham and me. Rather, it was the numbers themselves.

Throughout the campaign, particularly after Labor Day, when pollsters historically switch from the less-efficient registered voter to the more accurate likely voter formula, a debate raged between media pollsters who consistently found the incumbent enjoying a slight, but solid lead, and those mostly Republican leaners whose pollsters saw the opposite. Conservatives saw a liberal bias: the polling samples consistently were top-heavy with Democrats. Media pollsters defended the skewed samples as reflective of 2008 voting turnout. Republicans rejected this formulation, insisting the more recent 2010 results, which found significant GOP victories, triggered by superior GOP turnout was more accurate. In short, media pollsters saw Virginia as 2008 blue; GOP and conservative pollsters declared the commonwealth 2010 red.

Liberal media biasthat had to be the reason Obama was projected to prevail. But it wasnt. In the end, voter turnout did reflect the 2008 numbers. So the press pollsters were correct, objectively, impartially, truthfully correct.