In a Sunday interview on the Joe Concha Tunnel to Towers Foundation radio show, Media Research Center (MRC) President David Bozell shared the MRC's "Worst Quote of the Year" for 2025: former MSNBC contributor Matthew Dowd's shocking remarks during breaking coverage of conservative activist Charlie Kirk's September 10 assassination at Utah Valley University. Before Kirk's death was confirmed, Dowd speculated the shooter might be a supporter "shooting their gun off in celebration," then labeled Kirk divisive for "hate speech," implying "hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions."
"Matthew Dowd suggested that Charlie could have been shot by one of his supporters waving a gun in the air in celebration," Bozell said. "As if that's what we all do in conservative conspiracy meetings, we get our guns and fire them in the air willy-nilly."
Bozell slammed the comments as reckless victim-blaming, stressing journalists should stick to facts in breaking news instead of mocking elitist journalists for their stereotypes of conservatives.
Bozell linked this to the broader issue of how Big Tech news aggregators push elitist media stories to our newsfeeds. Bozell revealed MRC's new "crawler" tool found in the month of November Apple News, which has 124 million monthly users, included only 1 neutral or right-leaning news source out of 560 top stories.
Listen to the full interview here.
