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Brent H. Baker
 Brent H. Baker, Vice President for Research and Publications at the
Media
Research Center (MRC), has been the central figure in the MRC’s News
Division since the MRC's 1987 founding. In late 2001, Weekly Standard Executive Editor Fred Barnes dubbed Baker
"the scourge of liberal
bias."
He is the Editor of the MRC’s CyberAlert,
an often-cited, near-daily e-mail report on national media coverage of
politics he created in 1996. By the beginning of 2002 over 10,000 people, including some
very influential media and political figures, had joined Baker’s mailing
list of cyber-subscribers.
He also serves Editor of Notable
Quotables, a two-page newsletter which delivers a bi-weekly
compilation of quotes from the liberal media which reflect biased reporting.
From 1988 to 1999 he also oversaw MediaWatch, a monthly and later
bi-weekly newsletter which the MRC discontinued in order to concentrate
efforts on more timely analysis via the Internet.
At the end of each year, Baker coordinates production of the "Annual
Awards for the Year’s Worst Reporting," a collection of the best Notable
Quotables from the year. The most biased quotes in 16 award categories are
selected by a panel of 50 media observers. In 1999 he oversaw the judging
process for the "Dishonor
Awards: The Decade’s Most Outrageous Liberal Media Bias" and the
"Dishonor Awards:
Roasting the Most Outrageously Biased Liberal Reporters of 2001," which
were both picked by a distinguished panel of leading media observers and presented
at a dinner gala.
During the 2000 Democratic and Republican conventions, Baker edited daily
Campaign 2000 Media Reality Check reports distributed online, by fax and via e-mail. In 1996 and 1992 he oversaw
MediaWatch ConventionWatch, a daily newsletter analyzing network coverage of the two party conventions.
Baker’s articles and
op-eds analyzing
media coverage of current and political events have appeared in numerous
newspapers, including the New York Post, Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business
Daily, the Washington Times, the Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph, Union Leader
(Manchester, N.H.), The Orange County Register, and Human Events.
In addition, Baker has written pieces for National
Review and Journalism Quarterly.
Baker is the author of How to Identify,
Expose & Correct Liberal Media Bias, a 1994 book which offers
detailed explanations and suggestions for what the average citizen can do
about media bias. Baker was co-editor of And
That’s the Way It Isn’t: A
Reference Guide to Media Bias, a 1990 book containing excerpts,
reprints and summaries of 45 studies documenting the media's liberal bias
during the 1980s.
Baker moved to Washington, DC from his hometown of Wellesley, Massachusetts
in 1981 and graduated from George Washington University with special honors in
political science in 1985, where he edited the conservative student newspaper
The
Sequent. After a stint at Conservative Digest magazine, Baker
joined Brent Bozell at the National Conservative Foundation (as editor of the
newsletter Newswatch) before helping to create the MRC in 1987.
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