Media Matters

The good folks at Media Matters for America are displeased with the New York Times having the nerve to point out the hypocrisy inherent in environmentalists destroying the environment.

For those that don't actually care about such things, the Sundance Film Festival began last Thursday, and as the video embedded right demonstrates, the organizers are supposedly going to great lengths to make this year greener than ever.

Unfortunately, such efforts seem to be failing according to an article published in the Times Arts section Saturday.

This didn't sit well with MMA's Eric Boehlert who in a posting at the group's County Fair blog Sunday seemed oblivious to his own hypocrisy:

On PBS's Web site today, ombudsman Michael Getler writes of complaints over an incident during last Sunday's pledge drive.  He describes the cheap shot taken by actor Mike Farrell against vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin:

According to Joseph Campbell, vice president of fundraising programs, here's what happened:

 On CNN's American Morning today, White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux reported on Barack Obama's campaigning in Virginia.  Afterwards, anchor Kiran Chetry had a question:

CHETRY: All right. And Suzanne, what's on tap for the campaign today? And please tell me it's not lipstick again.

MALVEAUX: Let's hope not. He's going to be in Norfolk, Virginia. That is in southeast Virginia, and it's home to the world's largest Naval base. It's one of the most competitive areas that the Democrats and Republicans are fighting over. It's a critical piece of property, piece of land there with folks in Virginia, and they want those voters.

Have you ever considered who's financing the various new media outlets spreading extreme-liberal viewpoints around the country?

Most people think the biggest source is George Soros. However, there are others that are not necessarily household names, but are having a huge influence on the state of journalism today and in the future.

More importantly, they're on a mission to redefine the political landscape in ways you might not have imagined. 

As reported by NewsBusters Matt Sheffield and Noel Sheppard in the September issue of the Capital Research Center's "Foundation Watch": 

From a non-Jew, it would smack of anti-Semitism.  From Eric Alterman? You be the judge.

The author of the Altercations column at Media Matters has a running complaint:  Rick Klein, editor of The Note at ABC News, pays too much respect to the work of other Jewish pundits. Jennifer Rubin, one of the chief bloggers at Commentary's "Contentions" blog, was Alterman's first target, in his August 1 column [emphasis added throughout]:

I realize I may be the only person in the world to care about this, and I only care a tiny bit, but what does Commentary's Jennifer Rubin have on The Note's Rick Klein?

I realize that Mr. Klein is, in many respects, a fully-worked ref, citing right-wing publications that have proven consistently wrong about everything throughout the past eight years -- following the requisite ABC advertising which justifies the expense of the effort to his corporate overlords -- while ignoring those on the center-left who have proven right. But even so, Commentary? Come now. The guy cites her every day. Are they dating? Did his mother lose a bet to her mother playing canasta in Boca?

David Brock, the president and CEO of the George Soros-funded character assassination factory, Media Matters for America (MM), which euphemistically describes its mission as “comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media,” isn’t even pretending to be nonpartisan or fair anymore. Brock has assumed the chairmanship of Progressive Media USA (PMUSA) and in that role will spearhead “a four-month, $40 million media campaign centered on attacks on Sen. John McCain,” the Politico reports. “We’re a little behind where we need to be,” Brock said last week of the fledgling group’s fundraising following a Manhattan meeting with Soros, the left-wing philanthropist, and Paul Begala, the ubiquitous TV talking head and longtime Democratic Party operative.

Paul Waldman at The American Prospect blames conservatives for all of Obama's race problems.

"For months, I've been predicting that conservatives would delicately prompt voters to see Barack Obama through the lens of race. They'd drop hints, they'd make roundabout arguments, they'd find a hundred subtle ways to encourage people to vote their prejudices, while denying vociferously that they were doing anything of the sort."

Oh, it gets better:

"...these kinds of attacks have their greatest power when they tap into pre-existing archetypes voters already carry with them, and the deeper they reside in our lizard brains the better. So they will make sure white Americans know that Obama is not Tiger Woods. He's not the unthreatening black man, he's the scary black man. He's Al Sharpton, he's Malcom X, he's Huey Newton. He'll throw grievance in your face, make you feel guilty, and who knows, maybe kill you and rape your wife."

What???!!

NewsBusters Associate Editor Noel Sheppard appeared on the March 10 "Glenn Beck" program on CNN Headline News to discuss the left-wing Web's recent smear of the radio host. Beck was taken out of context for comments he made about Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). [See Sheppard's related March 8 blog entry here.]

Video (4:18): Windows Media (15.7 MB), plus MP3 audio (1.94 MB).

Here's the transcript:

GLENN BECK, host: Noel Sheppard is the associate editor of newsbusters.org, a conservative watchdog of the liberal blogs. Noel, you apparently did a Google search on this story. How out there is my bigotry?

NOEL SHEPPARD, Associate Editor, NewsBusters.org: Well, I Googled "Glenn Beck," "Obama" and "Anti-Christ," and I got 744,000 hits. Now, that doesn't mean that there's been 744,000 articles already written about this. That`s a little bit nuts.

BECK: Yes.

In Sunday’s Washington Post Book World, senior editor Alan Cooperman reviewed four new political books in brief, including a new book from Media Matters for America titled Free Ride: John McCain and the Media by David Brock and Paul Waldman. Cooperman concluded that, oops, the title doesn’t match the rough reporting coming out from newspapers on McCain’s alleged hypocrisy (and adultery?) with lobbyists. We also appreciate the mention of our Hillary-bias book:

Late last year the folks who run the Media Research Center, an outfit dedicated to unmasking liberal bias, came out with Whitewash, a book about how the mainstream media have shamelessly "shilled" for Hillary Clinton.

Now the people who run Media Matters for America, which is dedicated to unmasking conservative misinformation, are offering Free Ride, a book about how the mainstream media give John McCain "a positive spin for nearly everything he does."

NewsBusters has frequently reported the deplorable connection between MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and the Clinton front-organizations Media Matters and Think Progress.

On Friday, conservative radio host Glenn Beck marvelously illustrated just how this liberal alliance works, and showed how a few sentences transcribed by Olbermann's minions and taken out of context can easily be used to completely misrepresent their meaning and what the speaker was actually saying.

After being named one of "Countdown's" Worst Persons in the World for comments he made on his CNN Headline News program Tuesday, Beck deliciously explained how Olbermann, Media Matters, and Think Progress worked together to intentionally distort his words (audio available here, liberal website alert!):

The "pimped out" controversy surrounding MSNBC's David Shuster - destined to be called "Pimp Gate" - took a turn for the bizarre when Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton sent a letter to Steve Capus, President of NBC News.

Published for all to see at the Washington Post's "The Trail" blog Saturday, the letter demonstrated a disturbing number of hypocrisies and double standards inherent in today's liberally biased media.

See if you can find them all (emphasis added to assist your search):

Last week ABC News broke the deafening silence on reporting Barack Obama's ties to indicted fixer and political influence peddler Antoin “Tony” Rezko. The rare coverage was reported here on Newsbusters and repeated across the blogosphere as people on both sides of the political spectrum reacted. (I put together a montage of the scant television coverage here).

But all is back to normal now that the dust has cleared. Not only did most of the media gloss over this ever evolving story but nearly all of them took a pass on the Sun Times latest revelation that Barack Obama has surfaced as an "unnamed political candidate" in a federal indictment against Rezko on corruption charges.

Chris Matthews was in full flight on today's Morning Joe, vividly expressing himself on everything from the historic shockwaves that an Obama Iowa victory would send, to Media Matters's role as a Hillary front, to the attitude of NewsBusters. But the Hardball host was especially animated in describing the way the Clintons use intimidation to keep people in line.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: In the world, in the universe, the biggest American political story of modern times if Obama wins the Iowa caucuses. It will be all over the world; it will sweep the headlines in every newspaper in the world: friend, foe or neutral. It will be the Third World story of the century, of the last century [Barack's Time Machine?], the biggest story of modern Third World history, really, if Obama wins the American presidential caucus in Iowa.

View video here.

First, the following article was written by my co-blogger, Jon Jay Ray.  He gets all credit, I just thought it fit in at Newsbusters.

The Leftist "Media Matters" is scandalized because Fox News reported an anti-Greenie story that was originally put on the net via a blog rather than by one of the mainstream news organizations. Fox was reporting — HORROR — that a group of 400 scientists have rejected the "consensus" view that the world is warming up. The scientific "consensus" on global warming has unravelled and we can't have that!

How pathetic they are. They couldn't question the truth of the story — because it is true. The only thing to criticize that they could find was who reported the event. We must bow down to the Leftist media and let them tell us what to think, apparently. We are naughty children from whom some information must be kept hidden. They are in for a lot of disappointment from now on, I would say.

Not that this will come as any great surprise, but the folks at the Hillary Clinton front organization Think Progress are at it again bashing conservatives by employing the disgraceful art of cherry-picking.

For those unfamiliar with the term, this is when you take a sentence or two out of a report or article divining a meaning or intent clearly different than that the author or speaker was quite obviously conveying.

In this case, the target of TP's disaffection was me. More deliciously, research associate Matt Corley chose not only to cite just fifteen words out of a 41-word sentence inside of a 2500-word article of mine, but also totally ignored the relevant subsequent question posed in the piece in order to present to his readers a completely different conclusion than that offered by moi.

Of course, this is what TP and the other Clinton front organization Media Matters for America do all the time. This is just today's example of deceit and chicanery the couple from Arkansas and all associated with them are infamous for:

Joy Behar took up Media Matters talking points on her "View" forum and Whoopi Goldberg and Sherri Shepherd, whom Barbara Walters calls "very conservative," backed Behar up. On discussing Barack Obama and whether his African American race helps or hurts him, Joy Behar brought up the far left Media Matters smear of Bill O’Reilly.

JOY BEHAR: Well, remember the Bill O’Reilly thing when they went up to Sylvia’s and he was so astounded-

WHOOPI GOLDBERG: Yes he was astounded.

BEHAR: -that black people use forks or something when they eat?

GOLDBERG: Yeah, I mean, you know, what kind-

BEHAR: It’s Bill O’Reilly.

In reality, Bill O’Reilly was using his experience to note that African-American culture is not as profane and coarse as stereotyped by many white Americans. Barbara Walters very timidly defended O’Reilly before Sherri Shepherd and Whoopi Goldberg continued.

The TNR saga is slowly seeping into the media, with posts this morning at the Washington Post and the New York Times, in addition to last night's mention in the New York Observer.

Not a single one of these outlets discusses the fact that Franklin Foer spent the better part of 13 pages alleging a military conspiracy spanning four bases in three countries involving dozens of soldiers, from privates to colonels.

I guess they didn't want to discuss how nutty that explanation sounds.

Nor did they mention that Foer and The New Republic refused to apologize to those soldiers in Iraq and Kuwait they accused of atrocities.

Not a single one them acknowledges that Foer was being deceptive when he claimed back in July "the article was rigorously edited and fact-checked before it was published."

It's certainly safe to say that conservatives rarely agree with anything written by liberal bloggers.

However, on Saturday, not only was there a prominent posting at Daily Kos entitled "Clinton News Network = CNN," which received 631 comments in only seven hours, but the website's proprietor, the esteemed Markos Moulitsas, wrote an article of his own that was highly critical of Clintonista James Carville's role at the cable network.

In the end, the hypocrisy was so thick you could cut it with a knife.

But before we get there, the first piece voiced displeasure with the recent shenanigans by CNN during Thursday's Democrat Presidential debate:

The Clinton machine has spoken. Wolf Blitzer in moderating tonight's Democrat debate (NB chat) must follow the Media Matters approved script.

Greg Pollowitz at NRO Media has the full list. The arrogance of these folks still continues to surprise. The funny thing is now that the group's strong ties to Hillary Clinton have become common knowledge, the list leads off with requirements related to her rival Barack Obama:

• Don't contradict your own reporting and suggest that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) "cash[ed] in" on a stock deal in which he lost $13,000.

• Don't say that Obama's position on Pakistan is "very much in line with what" President Bush says regarding Pakistan.

• Don't contradict your own reporting — again — and say that Obama, in following legal requirements to count purchasers of his campaign merchandise as campaign contributors, is "apparently using some creative math" and "overselling his grassroots support."

MSNBC's Keith "Chicken & Waffles" Olbermann attacked conservative blogger Michelle Malkin for "ethnic profiling" of Chinese restaurant dishwashers in New York City who donated to the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. Of course, running off of the liberal Media Matters script, Olbermann failed to note that Malkin's problem is not with the donors' ethnicity per se, but that it's highly suspicious when low-wage earners pony up a few thousand to give a political candidate. Especially when that candidate, Hillary Clinton, like her husband, has had a spotty history at best when it comes to suspicious or untoward campaign contributions.

After all, these aren't $50-checks or anything, it's big money, reported the not-so-right-wing Los Angeles Times on October 19:

The October 16 edition of "Fox and Friends" featured conservative talk trailblazer Rush Limbaugh to discuss Harry Reid’s and 40 other Senate Democrats’ smear of Limbaugh. The radio talk show host called the letter "the smear of a private citizen...based on a total lie."

Video (4:21): Real (3.19) and Windows (2.66 MB), or MP3 audio (1.98).

In response, Rush is now auctioning the letter on E-Bay to raise money for the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation, which provides scholarships for children of Marines and federal law enforcement officials killed in the line of duty. Rush noted he will match the final bid to go to the same charity. He asked Reid and the other 40 Democrats to do the same. As of this morning, he has "not heard from them."

Stand aside, Sherlock Holmes: the inquisitive Conservative Belle is at it again. After catching David Shuster out over his inquisition of Rep. Marsha Blackburn, the blogging belle trained her sights on Media Matters's fundraising practices. And now, a response she has received from an investigator at the Maryland Secretary of State's office, and reproduced in her blog of today, strongly suggests that Media Matters is in violation of the state's laws on soliciting contributions.

CB, as we like to call her, had initially raised the question in this post of October 6th. Media Matters has been sending out emails containing links to its fundaising page. This would clearly seem to constitute a solicitation. Yet as per CB's digging, Media Matters had not complied with all the registration requirements in Maryland, and under the state's law, would be prohibited from soliciting in the state.

To test her theory, she sent an email to the Maryland Secretary of State's Office, and today received this reply:

If Matt Drudge is correct, the briefly excommunicated Don Imus will not only be back on the radio in December, but has also been hired by the leading talk radio station in the nation.

Deliciously, Imus is "particularly incensed by Senator Hillary Clinton's ‘shameless exploitation' of the Rutgers situation."

Of course, it is safe to assume Imus is fully aware the group that disseminated transcripts of his broadcast concerning the Rutgers women's basketball team, Media Matters for America, is an organization that Clinton admitted in August she "helped start and support."

The exclusive posted at the Drudge Report early Monday morning explained the details (emphasis added):

Well, sports fans, the conservative hit parade continued last week, for having first accused Fox News's Bill O'Reilly of being a racist, and Rush Limbaugh of being anti-military, the whackos on the left have now branded Ann Coulter an anti-Semite.

Expectedly, Hillary Clinton's Media Matters for America was once again right in the middle of the controversy.

Fortunately, much like Limbaugh and O'Reilly before her, Coulter wasn't taking the attacks lying down, and, instead, explained what was meant by her statements - which was clearly lost on the secular media - to Steve Malzberg of WOR Radio Thursday (audio available here):

Teasing yet another (manufactured) Ann Coulter controversy, ABCNews.com practically suggested that Coulter is an anti-Semite, and when you follow the bread crumbs, you'll find Media Matters the culprit behind the half-baked cake. "The columnist suggested that the U.S. would be a better place without Jews," teased a headline in the rotating news summary on ABC's Web site (see screencap at right).

Yet in context, it's quite logical to conclude Coulter means that, as a Christian, she would like everyone to embrace Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, hence securing them eternal life in Heaven. Grounded in historical Christian teaching, her desire for all to believe in Jesus (and hence be Christians) is not a racist or genocidal point-of-view, but a loving, religious one, however awkwardly stated it may have been in her recent interview.

The front page tease takes readers to a blog entry at Political Punch by ABC reporter Jake Tapper. The Tapper item in turn links to an article and transcript at Editor & Publisher, furnished by, surprise surprise, Media Matters.

To his credit, at no point in his blog did Tapper himself characterize Coulter as a closet anti-Semite or anything of that nature, although he does take a swipe at Coulter as a hypocrite:

In a Fox & Friends segment on Hillary Clinton and her founding of the left-wing group Media Matters, substitute co-host Greg Kelly brought the fair-and-balanced mantra to bear by questioning guest Byron York of National Review about the Media Research Center, suggesting (to gasps at MRC employee breakfast nooks) that these groups are "arguably...the same thing." Luckily, York quickly made one important distinction: MRC mostly monitors "objective" media, while MMFA mostly badgers [and ahem, calls for the firing/censorship of] conservative talk show hosts and other opinion journalists. Here's the exchange:

GREG KELLY: I want to ask you about the Media Research Center. They, arguably, are the same thing as Media Matters, except on the other side. I mean, they tend to go after liberal targets whereas Media Matters tend to go offer conservative targets. Aren’t both sides? – both sides have a media watchdog group.

Last Sunday, NewsBusters introduced readers to Media Matters for America, the left-wing organization behind the recent smear campaigns against conservative personalities Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly.

In the days that followed, although news outlets and leading Democrats continued to reference articles written by this shadowy group, few details were offered about the organization behind them, and virtually nothing was shared concerning its founder, David Brock, who in a short period of time a decade ago remarkably went from a staunch enemy of the Clintons to one of their strongest supporters.

As National Review's Jonah Goldberg wrote in Sunday's New York Post, "Brock was once a right-wing hatchet man, penning a book, ‘The Real Anita Hill,' and some articles in the American Spectator on the Clintons that for a time earned him considerable notoriety on the right and hatred on the left."

Despite the influence Media Matters currently has with the mainstream media, Brock's extraordinary political metamorphosis ten years ago, though obviously a journalist's dream, has received little recent attention from press representatives typically clamoring for such juicy dish (emphasis added throughout):

Blogger "Conservative Belle" has a penchant for getting to the bottom of stories. You'll remember that a couple weeks ago, she discovered that the fallen soldier whose name David Shuster blamed Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) for not knowing had his official residence in another district. It was a Dem congressman, not Blackburn, whom the Department of the Army had notified of the soldier's death.

Conservative Belle [or "CB," as we like to call her] has gone Sherlock Holmes again today. And this time, she's discovered that "Media Matters," the outfit that denies that Hillary Clinton [contrary to her assertion as pictured here] helped start it, just happens to use as official agents a firm whose head honchos include . . . two senior political operatives from the Clinton adminstration.

While MSNBC's Keith Olbermann can hardly contain his glee at smacking around Rush Limbaugh over the taken-out-of-context "phony soldier" remark, it's notable that Olbermann himself essentially smeared Gen. David Petreaus as a phony at best and a traitor at the worst well before the Iraq war commander ever gave his assessment before Congress.

Indeed, before MoveOn.org issued the infamously juvenile "Betray Us" ad, Olbermann's minions plastered "Will Petreaus Betray Us?" in on-screen graphics during his August 16 program. [See also YouTube video appended at bottom of post]

Chatting with guest and liberal journalist Jonathan Alter on that program, Olbermann trashed the Petreaus report as a "ghost-written" concoction of the Bush White House, bound to be replete with partisan spin. Alter agreed, saying Petreaus has always been a "political" general, although he backtracked a bit to also say Petreaus was a "straight-shooter."

In an uncommon bout of journalistic self-control, the New York Times had thus far ignored the phony controversy over Rush Limbaugh's "phony soldiers" comment on his radio show last Wednesday, remarks wrenched out of context by the far-left Media Matters.

But on Wednesday, congressional reporter Carl Hulse used an action by some liberals in Congress yesterday as an excuse to bring it into the Times news pages in his "Congressional Memo," "Limbaugh Latest Target In War of Condemnation."

"Having abandoned for now their effort to force President Bush to withdraw troops from Iraq, Democrats are not giving ground against a lesser nemesis: Rush Limbaugh.

"With the help of liberal advocacy groups, the Democrats in Congress are turning Mr. Limbaugh's insinuation that members of the military who question the Iraq war are 'phony soldiers' into the latest war of words over the war."