Leo Brent Bozell III (; born July 14, 1955) is an American conservative activist and writer. Bozell is the founder of the Media Research Center, an organization whose stated purpose is to identify alleged liberal media bias.
Early life, family, and education
Bozell is one of ten children of L. Brent Bozell Jr. and Patricia Buckley Bozell. He is a nephew of the late conservative writer and National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr. and the late United States Senator James L. Buckley through Buckley's sister, Patricia, and is a grandson of William Frank Buckley Sr. He is of Irish, German, and English descent. Bozell's father was William Buckley Jr.'s debating partner at Yale University and a conservative activist; his grandfather Leo B. Bozell was a co-founder of Bozell Worldwide.
Bozell received a Bachelor of Arts in history from the University of Dallas in 1977.
Career
Bozell joined a since-disbanded organization called the National Conservative Political Action Committee, where he worked for the group's founder, Terry Dolan, to help elect conservative politicians.
Bozell ran the National Conservative Foundation project at the Conservative Political Action Conference, in which he moderated debates between Sam Donaldson and Robert Novak over media bias.
Media Research Center
In 1987, Bozell formed the Media Research Center, an organization whose stated purpose is to identify alleged liberal media bias.
In 1998, Bozell founded an organization called the Conservative Communications Center. The MRC also established CNSNews, 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.
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.
Ghostwriting scandal
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."
"Employees at the MRC were never under any illusion that Bozell had been writing his own copy. 'It’s an open secret at the office that Graham writes Bozell’s columns, and has done so for years,' said one former employee. In fact, a former MRC employee went so far as to tell The Daily Beast: 'I know for a fact that Bozell didn’t even read any of the drafts of his latest book until after it had been sent to the publishers'," a Daily Beast article on Bozell's ghostwriting scandal reported.
Parents Television Council
Bozell founded the Parents Television and Media Council in 1995, initially as a branch of the Media Research Center focusing on entertainment television, after saying that he felt that decency was declining on prime-time television programming. The PTC's stated mission was "to promote and restore responsibility and decency to the entertainment industry."
During his tenure as PTC president, Bozell filed complaints with the FCC over what he alleged were indecent programs and attempted boycotts against advertisers on television programs the organization alleged were offensive. PTC was one of many organizations that filed complaints over the 2004 Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show in which co-performer Justin Timberlake caused a brief exposure of Janet Jackson's right breast for which the FCC ultimately fined CBS. Excluding Super Bowl-related complaints, the vast majority of FCC complaints from 2003 to 2006 were found to have come from PTC.