In 1992, Andrew Rosenthal of the New York Times wrote a story about President George H. W. Bush expressing surprise at a common supermarket checkout scanner. The story was picked up by major publications and editorialists across the country as a common narrative that George H. W. Bush, a World War II veteran, Ambassador to China, CIA Chief, Vice President, and President had grown out of touch with America during his time in Washington.

The story about George H. W. Bush and the supermarket scanner is still picked up and recycled as a cautionary tale in growing out of touch in Washington.

There’s just one problem — the story was a complete and utter fabrication. Andrew Rosenthal was not there, did not see it, and based it off a pool report that never actually claimed what Andrew Rosenthal claimed. Don’t believe me? See this entry at Snopes.com for yourself.

Andrew Rosenthal is now the editor of the New York Times editorial page.

One of the only major organizations in America to raise a caution flag in 1992 about the story was Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center.

For twenty-five years, the MRC has been doing the Lord’s work exposing what is now generally accepted by Americans everywhere — the media has a liberal bias and a liberal world view.

Howard Kurtz recently wrote a review of Douglas Brinkley’s biography on Walter Cronkite, titled Cronkite. He notes,

Barry Goldwater distrusted [Cronkite] from the start, and with good reason. On the day of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Cronkite nodded his head in thinly veiled contempt when handed a note on air that the Arizona senator had said “no comment.” Goldwater was attending his mother-in-law’s funeral that day.

“Whether or not Senator Goldwater wins the nomination,” Cronkite told viewers another day, “he is going places, the first place being Germany.” Although Goldwater had merely accepted an invitation to visit a U.S. Army facility there, correspondent Daniel Schorr said he was launching his campaign in “the center of Germany’s right wing.” During Goldwater’s speech at the 1964 convention, some conservatives fed up with the networks gave Cronkite the finger.

Four years later, after Cronkite had belatedly turned against LBJ’s Vietnam War, he met privately with Robert Kennedy. “You must announce your intention to run against Johnson, to show people there will be a way out of this terrible war,” he said in Kennedy’s Senate office. Soon afterward, Cronkite got an exclusive interview in which Kennedy left the door open for a possible run—the very candidacy that the anchor had urged him to undertake. (Kennedy announced three days later.) I am shaking my head at the spectacle of a network anchor secretly urging a politician to mount a White House campaign—and then interviewing him about that very question. This was duplicitous, a major breach of trust.

In fact, Cronkite even bugged a committee room at the 1952 Republican National Covention.

But Americans had no idea. Cronkite was the news. What he said was so was, in fact, so — whether or not it truly was. Americans trusted their anchormen who led them down paths they wanted the people to go. They, being liberal even back then, tried their best to steer the American people left.

Through it all, more and more Americans realized they were being had. Their anchormen and many reporters were not only liberals, but in some cases were damn liars too.

25 years ago, the Media Research Center started shedding the spotlight on the media’s bias. Today, the overwhelming majority of Americans agree with them. But the work is not over. The media continues to prop itself and its so called fact checkers up as objective arbiters of truth when they often rarely relate to the truth, let alone Americans.

The Media Research Center does great work. I rely on them often on my radio show and here at RedState. Brent Bozell is a true friend who I enjoy immensely. I unfortunately will not be able to be at this year’s DisHonor Awards, the MRC”s big gala each year, but I do want to say to my friend Brent and all his crew at the Media Research Center — keep exposing the liberals in the media and God bless you for what you do.

Happy Birthday MRC. America agrees with you, even if Walter Cronkite and his successors would want you shut up and shut down.