IRS Targets Tea Party

MRC president Brent Bozell appeared on Fox's The Kelly File on Friday night to discuss the ongoing network blackout of the IRS-targeting scandal, despite the explosive new revelations about Sen. Carl Levin ordering the IRS exempt-organizations branch to explore his suspicions about right-wing groups. Appearing with guest host Martha MacCallum, Bozell made the point that the networks could…

Editor's Note: The following is a statement released by Media Research Center president Brent Bozell earlier this afternoon regarding the latest revelations in the IRS Tea Party targeting scandal, a development which have been utterly ignored by the Big Three broadcast networks. The full press release is published below the page break and available at MRC.org. What will it take for ABC, CBS,…

On Wednesday Judicial Watch released a new batch of IRS documents that showed “extensive pressure on the IRS by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) to shut down conservative leaning organizations.” The documents also revealed the IRS’s handling of the Tea Party applications was directed out of the agency’s DC headquarters, contrary to initial claims that blamed low-level officials in Cincinnati.…

On Friday night’s The Kelly File, Megyn Kelly explained there were important new developments in the IRS-targeting scandal, from Lois Lerner being cited by the House for contempt of Congress to demands for a special prosecutor. Kelly brought on MRC president Brent Bozell to ask: How much time has it received from the networks? Fifteen seconds,” Brent reported in an interview taped Thursday…

On Thursday’s edition of The Kelly File, host Megyn Kelly invited on attorney Cleta Mitchell, who represents groups targeted by the IRS, to talk about a new House Republican report that found 10 percent of tea party donors were audited by the IRS. So far ABC, CBS and NBC have failed to cover the new report. After Kelly played a clip of Republican Congressman Charles Boutsany revealing the…

The New York Times is desperately trying to reduce Republican complaints of the IRS persecution of Tea Party groups and the White House cover-up of the massacre of Americans in Benghazi to cynical GOP campaign ploys trotted out in an election year. The paper's strategy is exemplified in Thursday's story by Jeremy Peters, "House Vote on Former I.R.S. Official Signals Element of G.O.P. Election…

Once again, as it did a month ago in two separate stories, the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, left the name of Lois Lerner, the former IRS official who ran its section on tax-exempt organizations, out of its headline and opening paragraph. This time, for good measure, AP reporter Stephen Ohlemacher didn't reveal Lerner's name until Paragraph 3. Before getting to Ohlemacher'…

Not even a full vote by the House of Representatives to hold Lois Lerner in contempt can shake the networks out of their slumber in covering the IRS scandal. On Wednesday the House voted 231-178 (all Republicans voted yes with six Democrats) to hold Lerner in contempt for refusing to testify about the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups. Total coverage by ABC, CBS and NBC? Just a 15-second…

On the Friday, April 25, PoliticsNation on MSNBC, during a discussion of FNC host Sean Hannity's reaction to racist comments by Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, MSNBC host Al Sharpton went after Hannity's decision to reiterate some of his complaints about the Obama administration on his Hannity show after condemning Bundy's racism. Guest Joan Walsh of Salon magazine ended up comparing Hannity's anti…

On Wednesday Darrell Issa demanded Attorney General Eric Holder answer new questions about the Justice Department’s role in the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups. In a letter sent to Holder, Issa sought answers about a newly released email between former IRS official Lois Lerner and DOJ official Richard Pilger in which Pilger asks Lerner “When you have a moment, will you call me? I’ve been…

Tuesday's World News on ABC stood out as the only Big Three network evening newscast to cover a new "watchdog report" that found that the IRS "handed out more than $1 million in bonuses to employees who were delinquent on their federal taxes." Jeff Zeleny also pointed out how "more than 1,000 IRS workers, who didn't pay their taxes, received not only cash bonuses, but extra time off." [MP3…

On Thursday morning's New Day, CNN reported the newest development in the IRS scandal that the broadcast networks ignored: the former IRS chief contacting the Justice Department about criminal investigations of tax-exempt groups. "The activist group Judicial Watch has released e-mails that show the agency in talks with the Justice Department to investigate some tax exempt organizations for…

On Tuesday the Republican National Committee (RNC) filed a lawsuit against the IRS for that agency’s “illegal stonewalling” of the RNC’s request of documents related to the targeting of conservative groups. So far there hasn’t been one second of airtime on ABC, CBS, NBC’s Tuesday evening shows or Wednesday morning shows. The New York Times and Washington Post also have yet to devote even a…

At this point it might take a dead body to get the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks to give the IRS-Tea Party scandal any sort of real coverage. Huge developments in the last week – like IRS official Lois Lerner receiving a criminal referral from the House Ways and Means Committee and e-mails proving she fed tax information on a targeted group to the staff of Rep. Elijah Cummings (D) – were…