Posted by Warner Todd Huston Mar 28th 2011 at 9:00 am in Democrats, Editorialism, First Amendment, Fox News, Free Speech, GOP, Justice/Legal, Mainstream Media, Media Matters, New Media, Politico, journalism, media bias Politico has a story up about Media Matters that shows just how illegitimate, how low down, how filled with vitriol and hate its efforts to push George Sorros’ left-wing agenda is. Media Matters, you see, has quietly revamped its operations to go from mere media criticism to outright enemy and saboteur of Fox News. They are even going to far as to research the lives and financial holdings of even the lowliest Fox employees in order to “sabotage” Fox and to blackmail employees.
Ben Smith recalls that Media Matters, a left-wing blog funded to the tune of $10 million a year by folks like billionaire financier George Soros, originally started its life on the Internet as the sort of media opposition to right of center blogs, talk radio hosts, and TV newsers like Fox News. But Smith reports that Media Matters is now retrenching and starting a new direction: saboteur of Fox News.
I don’t say “saboteur” in hyperbole, either. Media Matters founder David Brock himself casts Media Matters’ new role as the official saboteur of Fox.
The liberal group Media Matters has quietly transformed itself in preparation for what its founder, David Brock, described in an interview as an all-out campaign of “guerrilla warfare and sabotage” aimed at the Fox News Channel.Brock calls his new direction a “war on Fox.”
Media Matters is even going so far as to get as much dirt as it can on individual Fox News employees (not just top execs, but everyone they can find information on).
“We made a list of every single person who works for Fox and tried to figure out who might be disgruntled and why, and we went out to try to meet them,” he said. “Clearly, somebody in that organization is giving us primary source documents.”Along with attacking individual employees, Media Matters is looking to enlist the aid of regulators and government both here and a broad to attack the network. “The group hired an executive from MoveOn.org,” Smith reports “to work on developing campaigns among News Corp. shareholders and also is looking for ways to turn regulators in the U.S., U.K., and elsewhere against the network.”
Media Matters also intends to go after Rupert Murdoch’s personal commercial interests outside of Fox News.
In other words, Media Matters is treating Fox as a political organization and not a media conglomerate. “Fox News is not a news organization. It is the de facto leader of the GOP,” MMfA’s Brock told Politico.
But this is obviously an illicit campaign. Fox is clearly not some sort of arm of the Republican Party. Does Fox have a leaning toward the GOP and/or the conservative side of the issue? Sure, without a doubt. But it is still a media organization separate and distinct from political organizations. Fox News is no adjunct of the GOP any more than NBC, CBS, ABC, or even MSNBC are somehow arms of the Democrat Party.
Media Matters is no longer even pretending to be interested in journalism. In fact, it is approaching illegal activities with this campaign. Certainly Media Matters is lapsing into immoral activities if nothing else.
But this is the left, folks. This is the hatred and the attack dog-style that the left specializes in.
Media Matters was once a perfectly legitimate, though left-wing media critic. Now it is a gutter sniping, mud slinging, dumpster diving, blackmailing, saboteur. I’d call it the National Enquirer of the Internet, but even that isn’t mean enough to describe MM.
More like Media Matters has become the KGB of the left.
Big Journalism
