Where would the world be without an independent, citizen-run type of media? It would be in a dark place, according to Media Research Center President and Founder Brent Bozell.
Bozell addressed CPAC on Feb. 20 about the state of the media. He cited how bloggers played a role in unearthing the former White House "green jobs czar" Van Jones past for signing a statement about the September 11 truthers and for stating he was a communist.
"Van Jones was a story that was broken by a blogger," Bozell said. "Say that after me - God bless bloggers, God bless bloggers, God bless bloggers. Now this blogger writes a story about one of the Obama czars. Now these czars, these guys are dangerous for all sorts of reasons. They're not elected. They're not confirmed. And they're not even announced. You just hear about them. They're like maggots. You pick up a rock and you find a czar."
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Bozell detailed how the public was in the dark on the Van Jones story.
"And the worst thing about these czars is when you start asking them questions, you find out not even they know why they're there," Bozell said. "Van Jones was asked, ‘What's your job?' And his answer was, I'm paraphrasing, ‘I don't know,' except that he was in charge of green jobs. He was theoretically in charge of billions and he didn't even know what he was supposed to do with it."
As it turned out, Jones had somewhat of a prominent role within the Obama White House, but had a checkered past that deserved media scrutiny.
"Well, what's Van Jones' background?" Bozell said. "According to the blogger, he discovers this guy has signed this document that says among other things that the United States government under George Bush is responsible for 9/11. And he's done it not once, but several times. And I'm not going to call this man a communist. I don't have to. He calls himself a communist. And this man is appointed - this communist, this self-identified communist is in charge of redistributing America's green job wealth with all the stimulus money."
Almost seemingly begrudgingly, outlets of the mainstream media covered it, but if not for other outlets pushing it - the story would not have made into the mainstream.
"Is that a story?" Bozell asked. "I -- stupid me. CBS, NBC, ABC, The New York Times, The Washington [Post]-they didn't, nobody did a story. He was fired. And why was he fired on Sept. 6? Because Fox [News] was running story after story after story, and Drudge was doing stories and Rush was doing stories and Hannity was doing stories and Levin was doing stories. And everyone was talking about it and the guy was fired three days later on Sept. 6"
But even when these traditional outlets chose to include it, they did it very haphazardly - almost kicking and screaming according to Bozell.
"Well, when he was fired - that's when CBS did a story," Bozell explained. "And ABC did a story and NBC did a mention. And that was the end and we never heard of Van Jones again from the networks."
