L Brent Bozell III

Early career

After receiving his Bachelor of Arts in History from the University of Dallas, Bozell joined the National Conservative Political Action Committee, at which he worked with the group's founder, Terry Dolan, to help elect conservative politicians. Bozell headed NCPAC for a brief period after Dolan's death in 1986. He resigned in 1987 to start the Media Research Center.

Media Research Center

Before founding the MRC in 1987, Bozell ran the National Conservative Foundation project at the Conservative Political Action Conference, in which he moderated debates between Sam Donaldson and Bob Novak over media bias.

In 1998 Bozell founded the Conservative Communications Center. The MRC also established CNSNews.com, the site of the Conservative News Service later becoming known as Cybercast News Service, as well as numerous other MRC-affiliated web sites. On its website, MRC publishes Bozell's syndicated columns, the CyberAlert daily newsletter documenting perceived media bias, and research reports on the news media.

On his MSNBC news program Countdown With Keith Olbermann, Olbermann named Bozell the "Worst Person in the World" several times in 2006 and 2007. In response, Bozell posted a press release on the MRC site claiming that Countdown "Preaches Hate Speech." In October 2006, Bozell founded the Culture and Media Institute, an MRC branch whose mission is to reduce what he claims to be a negative liberal influence on American morality, culture, and religious liberty.

Parents Television Council

Bozell founded the Parents Television Council in 1995, initially as a branch of the Media Research Center focusing on entertainment television, after he felt that decency was declining on prime-time television programming. The PTC's stated mission is "to promote and restore responsibility and decency to the entertainment industry."

In 2001, the PTC also organized a mass advertiser boycott of the professional wrestling television program WWF SmackDown! over claims that the program caused the deaths of young children whom the PTC felt were influenced by watching the program; in particular, the PTC cited the case of Lionel Tate, a 12-year-old Ft. Lauderdale boy who was arrested after murdering a 6-year-old girl. Tate's attorney claimed that he had accidentally killed her when he botched a professional wrestling move. It was ultimately determined that the girl had been stomped to death and had not been the victim of any professional wrestling move, and that the children were watching cartoons at the time the murder occurred. The World Wrestling Federation (now World Wrestling Entertainment, or WWE) would ultimately sue Bozell and the PTC for libel. PTC's insurance carrier eventually chose to settle the case and pay $3.5 million to the WWE and PTC issued a public apology. The same year, Bozell and the PTC appeared as the subject of criticism in the book Foley Is Good: And The Real World Is Faker Than Wrestling, a memoir published by former WWF wrestler Mick Foley, who questioned the reasoning and research that the PTC used to associate SmackDown with violent acts performed by children watching the program.

During his tenure as PTC president, Bozell led many campaigns derived from the PTC's stated mission to restore its view of decency to the entertainment industry. Among the numerous campaigns Bozell has led with the PTC have included campaigning to bring back the "Family Viewing Hour," filing complaints with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over what he sees as indecent programs, and boycotting corporations that advertise on television programs that the organization believes to be offensive. Among the PTC's largest campaigns for FCC complaints was over the 2004 Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show in which co-performer Justin Timberlake caused the brief exposure of lead performer Janet Jackson's right breast, leading the CBS network that carried the halftime show to be fined $550,000 by the FCC. PTC filed about 65,000 complaints, and Bozell was concerned that many children were likely to have been watching the halftime show, as he told the Associated Press a few days after the show. In fact, excluding Super Bowl-related complaints, the vast majority of FCC complaints from 2003 to 2006 were found to have come from PTC.

Responding to two columns that Bozell wrote in early 2005, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Neva Chonin claimed that Bozell wanted to forbid offensive television programs not only from his views, but "from all our living rooms, choice and taste be damned." Television Watch, an organization promoting parental responsibility for children's television viewing over increased government regulation of television, used a short clip of Bozell saying that the V-Chip is ineffective at blocking inappropriate television programs in a promotional video released in July 2005 intended to claim that special-interest groups like Bozell's own Parents Television Council are using such propaganda to justify increased government control of the public airwaves.

ForAmerica

Bozell is the president and treasurer of a Virginia nonprofit corporation called America, Inc., operating as ForAmerica. As of Feb. 3, 2011, their official website said "ForAmerica is his latest venture. . . . "

Board membership

Bozell is currently on the board of advisers of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, a group against the defamation of Catholics in America. He has also served on the board of directors for the American Conservative Union. After resigning as president of the Parents Television Council, he remains an adviser to that organization.

Written works

His articles have appeared in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Washington Times, New York Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and National Review. He is a nationally syndicated columnist with the Creators Syndicate, and he is a regular on television, including the Fox News Channel program Hannity. He writes two weekly columns, one covering the news media published Tuesdays or Wednesdays, and one covering entertainment published Thursdays or Fridays on the sites for the Media Research Center and Cybercast News Service. Other web sites such as Townhall.com, Catholic Exchange, Yahoo! News, and others have published these columns. For some time, the Parents Television Council web site carried Bozell's entertainment column, but as of late January 2008, the PTC no longer hosts the columns, instead linking to the columns hosted on the MRC web site. In his columns, Bozell has written about such topics as media consolidation, indecency, media violence, and anti-Christian sentiment.

Ghostwriting

In February 2014, former employees of the Media Research Center alleged that Bozell does not write his own columns or books and instead has used a ghostwriter, Tim Graham, for years. One newspaper, the Quad-City Times (Iowa) dropped Bozell's column as a result, saying, "Bozell may have been comfortable representing others' work as his own. We're not. The latest disclosure convinces us Bozell has no place on our print or web pages."

Bibliography

To date, Bozell or Graham have written four books published under Bozell's name covering the news media:

Personal life

Bozell was among ten children of L. Brent Bozell Jr. and Patricia Buckley Bozell. He is a nephew of conservative writer and National Review founder, William F. Buckley and former United States Senator James L. Buckley, through Buckley's sister, Patricia, and is the grandson of William Frank Buckley Sr. He is of Irish, German, and English descent. Bozell's father was Buckley's debating partner at Yale University and a conservative activist; his grandfather Leo B. Bozell was a co-founder of Bozell Worldwide. L. Brent Bozell III is married with five children and ten grandchildren. Previously a resident of Alexandria, Virginia, Bozell moved to nearby Great Falls in 2012. Bozell has stated that contrary to speculation by some in the media, he is not officially a Republican.

Awards and recognition

Bozell was named the 1998 Alumnus of the Year at the University of Dallas. That same year, Grove City College named Bozell a Pew Memorial Lecturer.

Controversial statements

Bozell has been accused of making racially insensitive statements: on December 22, 2011, he appeared on Fox News and stated that President Barack Obama looks like a "skinny ghetto crackhead," reacting to MSNBC's Chris Matthews's assertions that Newt Gingrich "looks like a car bomber" with "no media backlash."

In February 2013, Bozell accused Karl Rove's American Crossroads group of waging "gang warfare" on the Tea Party movement. Rove's organization had launched a new SuperPAC called the Conservative Victory Fund, which aimed to help moderate Republicans survive primary challenges from candidates which Rove believed had narrower appeal in a general election. After Jonathan Collegio of American Crossroads responded to the charge by calling Bozell a "hater," some Tea Party leaders called for Collegio to be fired.