Media Matters MMA

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TARGET PAXTON 4 24

SEE TWO CARUSONE

MERRI OK

html categorically 

CAPT 7 25

vic of bubble gertz

9 24

MATT GERTZ (MEDIA MATTERS SENIOR FELLOW): If you go through the fact-checking in the debate, it's like four things. One of them is, "Actually, there were no pets being eaten in Ohio." One of them is, "You didn't actually win the 2020 election."

JOHN FUGELSANG (HOST): Small detail.

GERTZ: You know, it's just that we're talking about, like, basic stuff. You know, "Actually, violent crime is down, not up, according to the FBI." And I think the fourth one is --

FUGELSANG: And then "Women aren't murdering their newborn babies. Women aren't committing infanticide with the help of doctors and hospitals."

GERTZ: And, so, that's the whole list. Like, if you can't get through that level of fact-checking in your debate and you're also getting dramatically more time than Kamala Harris did -- I think he had, like, eight more minutes total, something like that. He can't actually drive a message. And the reason he can't drive a message, as I've written, is because he is so deeply entrapped in this right-wing media bubble. He just is focused on the bizarre fixations of the weirdos who love him and have their own TV shows.

FUGELSANG: That's it.

GERTZ: And, you know, at that point, you end up saying you you end up talking about how dogs and cats are being eaten in Ohio and saying things that are not just wrong, but if someone came up to you at a bar and started talking to you about that, you would move to the other end of the bar. Like, you would not want to be near someone who is randomly screaming about how the pets are being eaten. It's just, it is totally incomprehensible.

...

But if you're a normal person, like, if you're just going about your daily life, and all of a sudden -- and you say, "Huh. I think I want to find out some information about the presidential election. I'm gonna watch the debate tonight." And all of a sudden, one of the candidates is screaming about cats being eaten. You just -- that is not an appealing situation for you. And that, I think -- it's a huge problem for Donald Trump. It's a huge problem for the Republican Party as a whole that all of these crazy weirdos have such a huge impact on the party's message.

...

FUGELSANG: I mean, Donald Trump completely failed to bring anybody new to his ticket. But, Matthew, this has got to be because he's listening to these right-wing influencers. He doesn't seem to be -- listening to the people he pays to give him advice.

GERTZ: Yeah. I mean, I think that's a huge part of it and also that he is personally addicted, to getting his news from these crazy people. Like, on the one hand, they're speaking to him directly, like Laura Loomer apparently is now traveling with him to campaign events. But also, I mean, he gets his news from watching Fox News and seeing what people are Truth Social-ing at him and, you know, basically immersing himself in these crazy places.

This was the largest audience that either candidate is likely to see for the entire election cycle. Right? This was, it was 57 million people tuned into this debate. Dramatically more than either of them got for their convention speech, way more than, obviously, either of them will get for any other speech or television appearance or anything else. A huge opportunity to speak to people who might not be inclined to vote for you and make your case. And he just couldn't do it. He couldn't come close to doing it. He ended up babbling and ranting about all manner of nonsense partly because Kamala Harris was incredibly effective at baiting him, but partly because he is psychologically incapable of not taking that bait under any circumstance.

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OMFG

mma 4 24

media Matters President and CEO Angelo Carusone issued the following statement after Judge Amit Mehta of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia granted Media Matters a preliminary injunction against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Elon Musk encouraged Republican state attorneys general to use their power to harass their critics and stifle reporting about X. Ken Paxton was one of those AGs that took up the call and he was defeated. Today's decision is a victory for free speech.

Key takeaways from the order:

• As Judge Mehta noted, Media Matters’ investigative journalism and reporting “are core First Amendment activities,” and any “loss of First Amendment freedoms, for even minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury.”
• Judge Mehta prohibited Paxton from taking any steps to enforce his unlawful demand to rifle through Media Matters’ confidential documents.

The same day that X Corp. filed a meritless lawsuit against Media Matters for America for an accurate report on the platform’s extremism, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton opened a similarly specious investigation into MMFA under Texas’ deceptive trade practices act. Paxton subsequently issued an overbroad and invasive civil investigative demand – despite the fact that Media Matters has no relevant connection to Texas. The nonpartisan U.S. Press Freedom Tracker which catalogs press freedom violations in the United States recently recorded an incident report related to the Texas attorney general's investigation in their database.

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defamation?

musk slapp suit legal suppression; macho libtard requires retaliation, punish - money [ sorta explains musk FU to corps that pulled ads after anti sem and now pizzagate reboot?

Media Matters for America names counsel in X Corp. v. Media Matters for America

:{WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Media Matters for America named Elias Law Group as counsel in the case of *X Corp. v. Media Matters for America

On Monday, November 20, X Corp. sued Media Matters for America following publication of a report which revealed that ads for major brands appeared on X next to content that touts Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party, despite CEO Linda Yaccarino’s claims that brands are “protected from the risk of being next to” toxic posts on the platform.

Media Matters President Angelo Carusone said, “Media Matters stands by its reporting. This case is not only significant for us, but has major First Amendment implications for all. With Elias Law Group, we look forward to continuing our work unabated and ultimately winning in court."

Abha Khanna, Partner, Elias Law Group, added, “Elias Law Group is proud to represent Media Matters for America in this case. X Corp.’s lawsuit against MMFA is a clear attempt to bully and silence anyone who dares to hold them accountable. X Corp. has fallen far short of its commitment to protect its users and advertisers from hateful, extremist content. We look forward to ensuring that MMFA is able to continue its important work."

Media Matters for America is a nonprofit media watchdog dedicated to monitoring and exposing conservative misinformation. Through real-time monitoring, comprehensive research and analysis, and rapid response work, Media Matters combats lies, propaganda, and extremism to ensure that all Americans have access to truthful information.

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scalp /win?

no lnx

DirecTV just dealt a major blow to right-wing viewers

Meaghan Ellis January 15, 2022

DirecTV has announced its decision not to renew its contract with the right-wing media operation, One American News Network (OANN). On Friday, January 14, the cable service provider released a statement to Bloomberg with details about the decision.

“We informed Herring Networks that, following a routine internal review, we do not plan to enter into a new contract when our current agreement expires,” DirecTV said in a statement to Bloomberg.

Angelo Carusone, president of the left-leaning non-profit Media Matters, also released a statement on Friday commending the cable provider's decision as she acknowledged how influential OAN has been for the spread of misinformation “DirecTV made the responsible decision to drop OAN. OAN is a cauldron of misinformation and extremism,” Carusone said in a statement.

The decision comes after Media Matters' relentless campaigning in hopes of getting cable television providers to drop the right-wing operation. Although they acknowledged DirecTV's effort to make better decisions for the new year, Carusone went on to explain how the damage has already been done.

Media Matters highlighted how miscommunication continued to run rampant for the last 12 months due to the cable provider's renewal of the contract last year. In short, the organization described the 2021 contract renewal as "a negligent mistake."

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“DirecTV made a negligent mistake in 2021 when it renewed its contract with OAN even after OAN spent weeks attacking the election and stoking the embers that helped fuel the Jan. 6 insurrection. They gave OAN a full year to undermine our democracy — and our country suffered for it.”

She added, DirecTV has been “functionally propping up OAN for years. Without DirecTV, OAN would certainly not exist in its current form, and possibly not at all."

Following the heightened controversy surrounding the politicization of the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 presidential election, OAN emerged as an epicenter for misinformation often echoing election falsehoods and conspiracy theories promoted by former President Donald Trump and his allies.

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

Mystery Surrounds Decision By DirecTV to Drop One America News ... ›

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DirecTV says it will not enter a new contract with OANN - CBS News ›

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/foxs-news-team-essential-cog-corrupt-propaganda-machine

2019

there will be no Fox News debate for this year’s Democratic presidential primary contest. Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez closed the door to the right-wing network on Wednesday, telling The Washington Post that the party had rejected the network’s bid in light of the “inappropriate relationship” between Fox News and President Donald Trump that The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer documented in her damning new story. Perez’s statement brought a quick response from Bill Sammon, Fox News’ senior vice president and Washington managing editor, who urged the DNC to “reconsider its decision to bar Chris Wallace, Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, all of whom embody the ultimate journalistic integrity and professionalism,” from moderating a debate.

Sammon’s comment is a well-worn talking point familiar to anyone who has followed the network’s public relations campaigns over the years. Fox executives and flaks are constantly telling reporters and advertisers alike that the network simply has separate “news” and “opinion” sides like any other news outlet. In their telling, it is unfair to hold the conspiracy theories and naked bigotry of Fox’s right-wing prime-time hosts against Wallace, Baier, MacCallum, Shep Smith, and the rest of the purportedly objective news team.

But Mayer’s piece is more than a dissection of Fox’s merger with the Trump White House and emergence as a propaganda tool for his administration. It also helps underscore the farcical nature of the narrative that Sammon and his fellow Fox executives use in pushing back against the network’s detractors.

“Fox’s defenders view such criticism as unfounded and politically biased,” Mayer writes, noting that in response to her inquiries, “Fox’s public-relations department offers numerous examples of its reporters and talk-show hosts challenging the Administration.”

This argument was never credible, but the network’s reinvention as state TV has rendered it utterly appalling. Everyone at Fox is complicit in what the network has become.

[twt]

the Fox-Trump fusion that Mayer reveals -- the total breakdown of basic journalistic standards, the endless propagation of paranoid conspiracy theories bolstering Trump, the revolving door between network and White House, the Fox hosts advising the president by day and shilling for him on air by night -- came about while Wallace and company were collecting paychecks from the network. To the extent they may have wished to halt that slide, they were obviously unable to do so.

That's because Fox is -- by design, and to its core -- a right-wing propaganda apparatus that relies on misinformation, disinformation, and outright bigotry to promote the conservative movement and Republican Party. That is its business model and its political project. It also employs some reporters, who have little influence over the bulk of the network’s operations. The reporters may at times criticize the unwillingness of other Fox employees to follow basic media ethics, but to no avail; as Mayer points out, “many Fox News reporters were angry, and provided critical anonymous quotes to the media” after Sean Hannity appeared on stage at a Trump political rally, but Fox supported Hannity nonetheless. The network’s pro-Trump talkers provide Fox with an audience, ratings, and political heft, and so its executives will choose the Hannitys over the Wallaces every time.

The Wallaces nonetheless play important roles -- ones that are unique in the media.

At a normal outlet, journalists report out stories and try to break news. At Fox, on-air talent who roughly adhere to journalistic standards serve a very different purpose: They provide Fox’s PR team a fig leaf to point to when critics decry the network’s vile programming. When Hannity, Tucker Carlson, or Laura Ingraham get in trouble, Fox corporate can point to the likes of Wallace or Smith “challenging the Administration” as evidence that the network is more than a right-wing fever swamp.

Mayer highlights two examples of this phenomenon: Smith giving a monologue in which he “contradicted Trump’s scaremongering about immigrants,” and Wallace debunking one of the White House’s “wildly inaccurate” talking points during an interview with press secretary Sarah Sanders. Both instances garnered media attention precisely because they cut against the right-wing lies and smears typically seen on Fox programs with much bigger audiences.

That attention benefits Fox’s PR offensive: When clips like these go viral, they become examples the network’s team can highlight when they want to argue that Fox is not a monolithic pro-Trump apparatus. Fox keeps people like Wallace and Smith on the payroll not in spite of these types of segments, but because these segments burnish the Fox brand for journalists, advertisers, politicians, and other elites who don’t watch the network’s programming on a regular basis, more than making up for the hosts’ hefty salaries.

But these deviations from Fox’s norms are ultimately hollow. In effect, they are the new versions of former Fox host Megyn Kelly’s “Megyn moments,” bolstering the credibility of the hosts and their network, but without any broader impact on the trajectory of Fox’s programming. Smith may tell his audience that there is no immigrant “invasion,” but that doesn’t stop the network’s prime-time lineup from assuring its much larger audiences that there is one. Wallace can give Trump aides a hard time in his interviews, but those exchanges end up going viral everywhere except at Fox itself, which apparently prefers not to inform too many viewers about the administration’s false talking points.

As The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple put it: “Nothing that Smith says during his Fox News program -- no matter how sick his burns on Trump might be -- neutralizes the impact of Dobbs or Sean Hannity or Tucker Carlson or dozens of other Fox talking heads. Nothing. Episodic truth-telling about Trump doesn’t excuse fulsome conspiracy-theorizing about Trump.”

Baier and, of late, MacCallum, are often included in these discussions, but they largely went unmentioned by Mayer. I find their typical inclusion in these discussions suspect. Both tend to avoid publicly criticizing their colleagues, unlike Smith and Wallace, and produce far fewer of these viral moments. Baier’s biggest story in recent years was his quickly debunked and largely retracted report, days before the 2016 election, that the FBI was conducting a “very high priority” investigation of “possible pay-for-play interaction” between Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation that would “likely” result in an indictment; more recently, he’s breached ethical norms by golfing with Trump. Meanwhile, MacCallum is every bit as pure an ideologue as anyone else on the network, using her show to claim that a border wall is “needed” to stop the immigrant “invasion” and declare that “both sides” were at fault during the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, VA, among other misdeeds.

It’s also telling that the network’s PR effort consistently focuses on these sorts of moments from Fox’s journalistically inclined anchors rather than major news stories that its reporters break. That’s because the dirty secret of Fox News’ “news” team is that the “news” team doesn’t break much news.

The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and a host of other news outlets have spent the last few years producing scoops at a furious, exhausting rate. What Fox scoops can you remember? Despite unparalleled access to the Trump administration and other Republican officials, the network has little to show for itself.

Instead, the Fox “news” team provides daily fodder for the network’s right-wing stars to opine about. Their role is to fill the network’s “news” hours with reports on whatever stories conservatives are panicking over that day -- Uranium One, Benghazi, migrant caravans, and the purported Justice Department conspiracy against Trump among them. They provide incremental stories, often sourced to Republican legislators, that advance the narratives with fresh details for the “opinion”-side hosts to freak out about[vid?]

sammon himself is a key party to this dynamic. In 2010 and 2011, this top “news”-side figure became the subject of widespread criticism after Media Matters produced a series of reports showing how he had used his position to slant the network’s news coverage to the right -- including by claiming on air during the 2008 election that Barack Obama was advocating socialism, a charge he admitted he did not believe. Rather than firing Sammon for lying to its audience, Fox curtailed his on-air appearances but let him keep his senior job overseeing the network’s news coverage.Most recently, he was the point man in Fox’s effort to get the Democratic National Committee to let the network host a presidential primary debate, an attempt that ended Wednesday when the DNC announced that it would not partner with Fox in light of Mayer’s story.

Mayer points to two cases in which Fox considered taking a big swing at a major scoop. It’s instructive to consider them as a pair. First, during the 2016 presidential campaign, a FoxNews.com reporter put together the story that Trump had had a sexual relationship with the adult film actress known as Stormy Daniels and that a payoff and nondisclosure agreement had been arranged to prevent her from detailing the affair. Second, in 2017, a second FoxNews.com reporter developed a story suggesting that the murdered Democratic staffer Seth Rich, rather than Russian intelligence operatives, had stolen the DNC emails that were leaked during the campaign.

The former story, which would have been damaging to Trump, never ran. The latter, which benefited his claims that he had not been helped by Russia, did. The Rich story quickly unraveled, eventually forcing Fox to issue a retraction. The network also claimed it was conducting an internal investigation, but to this date no results have materialized and no employee held accountable.

That’s how things work at Fox. It’s long been a propaganda outlet, and now it’s merged with the White House. It is toxic, and no number of tough Wallace interviews or Smith viral monologues can redeem it.

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2 23 random mma

• david Siders @ Politico Magazine: What It Looks Like When the Far Right Takes Control of Local Government.
• Jack Jenkins @ Religion News Service: How big Christian nationalism has come courting in North Idaho.
• Chuck Tanner @ IREHR: Far-right “Constitutional Sheriffs” Group Launches Effort to Infiltrate Illinois Law Enforcement.
• Jake Lahut @ The Daily Beast: The Real Reason Nick Fuentes Was Put on the No Fly List.
• Sam Van Pykeren @ Mother Jones: The Missionary Positions of Nikki Haley’s Idol: Pastor John Hagee.
• Andrew Kaczynski @ CNN: Nikki Haley defended right to secession, Confederate History Month and the Confederate flag in 2010 talk.
• Claire Goforth @ The Daily Dot: Dalton Clodfelter’s ‘Ye is Right’ college tour is the latest outgrowth of Zoomer antisemitism.

Tags: Dalton Clodfelter Nick Fuentes Nikki Haley Christian Nationalism Round-Up CSPOA

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from bigthinker

Clio Chang, Alex Shephard/December 19, 2016

What Happens to Media Matters in a Post-Hillary World?

The media watchdog was Clinton's biggest defender this election season. Now it's seeking a new identity.

STEPHEN B THORNTON/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX

On December 6, exactly four weeks after Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election, Media Matters for America, a nonprofit organization dedicated to combating conservative misinformation in media, announced it would be undergoing a makeover. In its twelve-year history, Media Matters’s main antagonist had been Fox News—a worthy, if unsurprising target for an organization devoted to conservative bias. But after surveying the media landscape in the aftermath of Clinton’s surprising defeat, Media Matters decided that it would focus on exposing falsehoods circulated online. “It used to be simple, Fox News was the gatekeeper ... but now there are so many potential bad actors,” Angelo Carusone, who was made president of Media Matters at the time of the announcement, told Politico. “Now there are places like Facebook who aren’t bad actors but can be enablers of misinformation.”

It would seem to be a logical next step for the media watchdog. In an interview, Carusone told the New Republic that Media Matters was already pivoting in this direction. But in a subtle way, the shift was actually a significant reinvention. The organization had long ceased to be a mere watchdog, having positioned itself at the center of a group of public relations and advocacy outfits whose mission was to help put Clinton in the White House. Seen in this light, the shift to focusing on the country’s much-discussed fake news problem, which allegedly facilitated Donald Trump’s victory, is a way of keeping in business after Media Matters and its founder David Brock had little to show for years of being Clinton’s first line of defense. In fact, this wasn’t even the first time Media Matters had declared it was going to stop focusing on Fox News.

The allegiance to the Clintons has always sat uncomfortably beside Media Matters’s ostensible goal of holding media accountable. Any journalist on Twitter knows that even mild criticisms of Clinton would almost instantaneously raise the hackles of some Media Matters staffer, giving the distinct impression that the whole project was about protecting Clinton from unflattering press rather than ensuring journalistic integrity. But Media Matters depended heavily on its association with the Clintons. Brock, a formerly conservative journalist who wrote a biography of Clinton that portrayed her as a hardcore leftist Lady Macbeth, has always been an object of suspicion among liberals, his conversion reeking of snake oil. His elevated stature in the world of Democratic politics comes not from any deep roots in liberalism, but the fact that the Clintons blessed his enterprise. That Media Matters both checks conservative media and protects the Clintons has been instrumental in Brock’s ability to raise money for his network of organizations, which also includes the website Shareblue (formerly Blue Nation Review) and the super PACs Correct the Record and American Bridge. (Brock did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.)

That tension, according to more than half a dozen former staffers of Media Matters, comes from Brock, despite the fact that he was rarely involved in day-to-day operations. (Most staffers agreed to talk about Media Matters and Brock only on condition of anonymity, due to the fact that they were required to sign a non-disclosure agreement.) Media Matters faces a series of questions going forward. What is its identity now that Hillary Clinton’s political career is effectively over? Will liberal donors buy into this new identity, fashioned by a group whose leaders have shown no real investment in liberalism as a governing project? And can it fulfill its core mission—which nearly every former staffer we spoke to believes is important—with Brock at the helm?

In our numerous conversations with past Media Matters staff, there was a consensus that in the lead-up to Clinton’s announcement of her candidacy in 2015, the organization’s priority shifted away from the mission stated on its website—“comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation”—and towards running defense for Clinton. The former staffers we spoke to largely felt that this damaged Media Matters’s credibility and hurt the work it did in other areas. “The closer we got to the 2016 election the less it became about actually debunking conservative misinformation and more it became about just defending Hillary Clinton from every blogger in their mother’s basement,” one former staffer told us. This was, moreover, a repeat of what Media Matters did in 2008, when there was a rift between staffers and management over the favoring of Clinton in her race against then-Senator Barack Obama.

“There was actually like a really big fight in our research room that day because nobody wanted to go after Terry Gross.”

The former staffers pointed to Media Matters’s attack on NPR’s Terry Gross as a clear example of editorial standards being ignored to protect Clinton from criticism. All the way back in June 2014, in an interview with Clinton that occurred months before her formal announcement of a presidential run, Gross brought up the fact Clinton opposed same-sex marriage as a senator, before supporting it in 2013 when she was secretary of state. Gross asked, “Would you say your view evolved since the ‘90s or that the American public evolved allowing you to state your real view?” Gross’s question seemed like an alley-oop—it’s hard to imagine a friendlier way of framing a change in position. But Clinton was caught off-guard. After Gross tried to clarify Clinton’s responses multiple times, the interview became tense, with Clinton finally snapping, “I don’t think you are trying to clarify. I think you are trying to say that I used to be opposed and now I am in favor and I did it for political reasons. And that’s just flat wrong.”

In response, Media Matters published a piece titled “How NPR’s Terry Gross Created A False Impression That Hillary Clinton Stonewalled On Marriage Equality.” The article pointed out that Clinton supported civil unions for same-sex couples as a senator and claimed that Gross was being unfair in repeating the same question, since Clinton “consistently and repeatedly answered Gross’s question.” She didn’t, as you can see for yourself.

“There was actually like a really big fight in our research room that day because nobody wanted to go after Terry Gross,” one former staffer told us. “She had a total right to ask Hillary Clinton about this. … Our researcher director ended up having to be the one to write it because no one else wanted their name on it.” Another said, “It was a situation where the researcher assigned to it was like, ‘I’m not writing this. I’m not going to attack Terry Gross for asking Hillary Clinton questions.’”

The former staffers said the reluctance of researchers to byline pieces was not unique to this instance. While it didn’t happen daily, it happened enough that “there was just a sense of ‘I really don’t want to be associated with this,’” one said. Media Matters in effect criticized Gross for doing her job—and nearly everyone we spoke to who worked there at the time felt that a similar article would not have been written about a different politician.

In March of 2015, The New York Times broke the news about Clinton’s use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state, which in retrospect turned out to be the most damaging story of the entire campaign. In response, Media Matters flooded its site with posts attempting to counter the narrative that was quickly forming—that Clinton had broken the rules and had something to hide. “It was all hands on deck,” one former staffer said. “Everyone was just supposed to be looking out for Clinton stuff all the time.” Left unaddressed was whether the story itself was guilty of conservative misinformation.

Employees were asked to stay late or work on the weekends specifically to cover Clinton, which many felt came at the expense of other stories and the organization’s mission. Nearly every former staffer we spoke to felt that researchers, in particular, were underpaid and overworked, and that these problems often surfaced when they were forced to work on stories they felt were dubious. As one former staffer described it, “They were paying me $35,000 a year to watch Fox all the time and to do rotating shifts where I’d have to change from a day shift to a night shift every two weeks. It was just a miserable job.”

When it came to the organization’s research standards, most former staffers we talked to agreed that they were lowered when it came to Clinton-related content. One former staffer told us that, compared to “the amount of evidence we would have to collect to go after another story,” Clinton pieces had a “much lower bar. It literally just had to involve Hillary Clinton and that was it.” Another said that they often weren’t allowed to publish Clinton-related pieces “until they had been read by someone in leadership.”

Then there was James Carville’s guest column for the site. In his inaugural post, the longtime Clinton ally stated his intention was to use the space to defend the Clintons: “That’s what happens when you have one standard for the Clintons, and a different one for everybody else, which is why I’ll be writing regularly in this space.” (Bradley Beychok, who was president of Media Matters from 2013 until early December, and who was thought responsible for enforcing the site’s pro-Clinton bent, is close to Carville.) Media Matters derives its credibility from its objectivity—its posts are dry, often consisting almost entirely of transcripts that aim to show how conservative media is misleading the public. Media Matters is also classified as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit group in the tax code, which means that it cannot explicitly advocate for a political candidate. The organization is careful not to step over that line, always framing pieces with a media angle—for example, “New York Times’s Maureen Dowd Writes Yet Another Anti-Clinton Column.” But with Carville’s column, that veneer of objectivity was tossed aside. Media Matters also had one standard for the Clintons, and a different one for everybody else.

Carusone rejected the idea that Media Matters focused too much on Clinton, telling us, “It’s a perspective that people have and it’s convenient, but I don’t really think it’s backed up by the data.” He pointed to the broad array of issues that Media Matters covers—LGBT rights, the NRA, climate change, and right-wing extremism. “I’m really comfortable standing on the totality of the content,” he said. Carusone noted that Media Matters published 7,000 pieces in the last year—hundreds were about coverage of Clinton (who, in fairness, was a major party nominee for president), but many more were about other topics.

One former staffer said that they often weren’t allowed to publish Clinton-related pieces “until they had been read by someone in leadership.”

However, when asked if Media Matters had different editorial standards for Clinton, Carusone hedged. “There’s not a shift in editorial standards. The editing process is the editing process,” he said. “The strategies are different. ... I’m comfortable that the standards are the same and uniform but certainly the strategies are different. It has to be. The audiences are different.”

One former staffer, Carlos Maza, who worked at Media Matters from 2011 until last week, told us that, in his experience, “there was never a directive from on high to write about the Clinton campaign or be tied with it.” Maza also disagreed that research standards were lowered for Clinton—the opposite, in fact. He said, “I think because we had a fear that we were being seen as Clinton shills, there was an extra emphasis on every Clinton thing we were writing being super, super tight and making sure the evidence is really solid for it.”

Contra Maza, the other former staffers pointed out several stories that fell within Media Matters’s ambit that should have been better covered, including the rise of Breitbart, Roger Ailes’s sexual harassment scandal, and Facebook’s fake news problem. Another example of its tilt: On the site, there are 1,468 posts tagged with “Hillary Clinton” as opposed to just 26 tagged “Bernie Sanders.”

With the proliferation of conservative misinformation and the rise in popularity of far-right websites like Breitbart, there is a need for organizations like Media Matters now more than ever. However, having a partisan like Brock behind the curtain has only damaged the organization’s credibility. The former staffers we spoke to believe that the only way for Media Matters to fulfill its original mission is if Brock takes a step back. “Media Matters could be really good and there is good work that goes up on that website,” one former staffer told us. “But when you go so far off on a tangent about Terry Gross, then when you have a legitimate complaint, nobody listens to you because you wasted all your good will.”

Brock’s recent assertion that he wants to make his social media platform, Shareblue, a “Breitbart of the left” reveals a man who sees himself more as a propaganda minister than someone who takes journalism seriously. Asked if Media Matters should continue with Brock at the helm, one former staffer said, “Based on everything that I’ve seen from him since the election, I would say it can’t happen with him because there seems to be a lack of understanding of where the problem actually was. I guess he’s angry; he didn’t get his ambassadorship that he’s been working for 12 years now. I just don’t see how throwing money at him can be a viable strategy for anyone, in terms of advancing the Democratic Party.”

In a 2011 interview with Jason Zengerle in New York magazine, Brock said, “I’m still more pitched at fighting the right than I am about building a progressive platform for the future. It’s fair to say that that conversation doesn’t interest me as much.” But is it possible to combat the right without having something to proactively fight for, other than money and influence? As one former staffer noted, the path for Media Matters going forward is simple: “You need to put somebody in charge who actually does have a guiding progressive compass.” Throughout his career, as a conservative journalist and a Democratic-aligned impresario, Brock has been guided almost entirely by his disdain for his opponents. Twelve years after Media Matters was founded, that may not be enough.

Editor’s note: A previous version of this article inaccurately stated that Bradley Beychok, the former president of Media Matters, was James Carville’s godson. It also mistakenly said Brock’s website Shareblue was a nonprofit venture. We regret the errors.

Clio Chang @cliomiso

Clio Chang is a freelance writer in New York City.

Alex Shephard @alex_shephard

Alex Shephard is a staff writer at The New Republic.

Read More: Politics, Media Matters, David Brock, Hillary Clinton, American Bridge, Fundraising, Democratic Party, Democrats, Angelo Carusone, Bradley Beychok

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http://mythopedia.mediamatters.org/tags/Environment%20&%20Scienc

eg

:{November was the second straight month that Sunday morning political shows did not air a single, substantive climate segment:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:

:{:(style="box-sizing:border-box;display:flex;height:1.5em;margin-right:1em;width:1.5em"):}:12/11/19 10:27 AM EST

== ==

mma

R:{ight-wing media outlets The Daily Caller and the Washington Free Beacon have often acted as de facto press offices for Scott Pruitt's Environmental Protection Agency.:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{ }:*Media Matters*:{ }::{has}::{ }:documented how the two publications have defended Pruitt in the face of his many scandals and tried to discredit sources of information about his misdeeds. Now we learn from Washington Examiner reporter John Siciliano, who covers energy and environment for the conservative-leaning newspaper, that the EPA's press office tried to strong-arm him into writing flattering pieces about the agency and complained to his editors when he refused.

Speaking on June 11 on a panel about media coverage at a conference organized by Citizens' Climate Lobby, a nonpartisan climate activist group, Siciliano recounted the EPA’s attempts to coerce him and his paper to print favorable stories, which he described as “a really bizarre pressure play on their part that I’ve never experienced from an agency, a cabinet-level agency, to enforce an agenda on a journalist.” Siciliano also discussed how the agency referred to him in pejorative terms and pitted him against other journalists -- practices the agency has used against other environmental journalists.

From the June 11 panel titled “Covering Climate Change in the Current Political Landscape”:

....

===

Media Matters for America

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Fox News Vaccine Hesitancy Fox News’ relentless and outlandish attacks on every vaccine mandate except for its own

Sean Hannity calls for “means testing” immigrants to make sure they won't be “a burden on the American people”

Sean Hannity calls for “means testing” immigrants to make sure they won't be “a burden on the American people”

10/21/21 10:10 PM EDT

Fox news logo with a syringe

Fox personalities are trying to distance themselves from Fox's vaccine mandate

10/25/21 8:30 AM EDT

Bongino Boothe 10/23/21

Fox News contributor says she is not getting vaccinated “as a giant middle finger to Joe Biden's tyranny”

10/25/21 9:17 AM EDT

Featured:

Tucker Carlson on Kamala Harris as Vice President: “What does it tell you about how they feel about African American women that that's the one they picked?”

10/21/21 8:57 PM EDT

In an attempt to undermine the Build Back Better plan, Fox has mocked and misrepresented its climate and environmental justice provisions

10/21/21 12:08 PM EDT

similar accounts -- instagram

Instagram’s suggestion algorithm is promoting accounts that share misinformation

10/20/21 3:21 PM EDT

Tucker Carlson: "The vaccinated spread COVID just like the unvaccinated. There's no difference, actually"

Tucker Carlson: “The vaccinated spread COVID just like the unvaccinated. There's no difference, actually”

10/20/21 9:09 PM EDT

NewsCorp-climate

The fantastic hypocrisy behind Murdoch’s net-zero editorial campaign

10/20/21 10:37 AM EDT

Facebook has been working hard to spin recent press around the company in its favor

10/20/21 12:55 PM EDT

January 6 attack on Capitol building

Fox News contributor Lisa Boothe and guest claim that January 6 prosecutions are an effort to silence “dissent” over the 2020 election

10/20/21 2:11 PM EDT

Steven Crowder mocks a local reporter for having an “aggressively Asian face”

10/20/21 11:57 AM EDT

Alex Jones claims his conversations with Tucker Carlson are monitored by the government

Tucker Carlson has been defending Alex Jones for years

10/14/21 10:49 AM EDT

Terry McCauliffe and Glenn Youngkin

The right’s cynical “critical race theory” obsession breaks through in the VA gov race

10/12/21 1:39 PM EDT

Image of the Supreme Court with a "Keep Abortion Legal Sign" next to it

The media’s blatant failure in warning about the threat to Roe v. Wade

09/01/21 4:44 PM EDT

THE LATEST

OAN directs viewers to push for election audits

10/25/21 11:11 AM EDT

Fox News host praises organizer of anti-vaccine protest that stormed Barclays Center — despite the network’s own COVID-19 policies

10/25/21 10:52 AM EDT

Fox host calls vaccine mandates “government-sponsored suicide”

10/25/21 10:29 AM EDT

The Federalist’s suggestion that dying from COVID “is a good thing” is the latest example of the outlet's reckless pandemic coverage

10/25/21 9:25 AM EDT

Fox News contributor says she is not getting vaccinated “as a giant middle finger to Joe Biden's tyranny”

10/25/21 9:17 AM EDT

The website of far-right broadcaster Real America's Voice is full of QAnon content

10/25/21 8:56 AM EDT

Fox personalities are trying to distance themselves from Fox's vaccine mandate

10/25/21 8:30 AM EDT

Rep. Eric Swalwell details death threats from Tucker Carlson fan who “threatened to kill my entire family”

10/22/21 5:28 PM EDT

Media headlines dangerously sensationalize Parkland gunman's guilty plea

10/22/21 5:23 PM EDT

Tucker Carlson's latest Fox Nation documentary on wind energy rehashes the same debunked talking points

10/22/21 4:53 PM EDT

OAN guest Jeffrey Lord likens the January 6 committee to a “lynch mob”

10/22/21 4:38 PM EDT

Cumulus Media gives a platform to some of radio’s biggest anti-vaccine peddlers despite its own vaccine mandate

10/22/21 3:10 PM EDT

On YouTube, Dennis Prager says “there might be secession” in the United States

10/22/21 2:41 PM EDT

Steve Bannon says Democrats are trying to “steal” the Virginia governor's race

10/22/21 1:28 PM EDT

On Steve Bannon's podcast, Mike Lindell says he is “canvassing” for voter fraud in 20 states

10/22/21 1:07 PM EDT

Newsmax host defends “patriot” Steve Bannon: “Reject squish establishment Republicans”

10/22/21 10:34 AM EDT

Fox News’ relentless and outlandish attacks on every vaccine mandate except for its own

10/22/21 9:19 AM EDT

Sean Hannity calls for “means testing” immigrants to make sure they won't be “a burden on the American people”

10/21/21 10:10 PM EDT

Tucker Carlson on Kamala Harris as Vice President: “What does it tell you about how they feel about African American women that that's the one they picked?”

10/21/21 8:57 PM EDT

While defending Steve Bannon, Fox host Mark Levin announces he’s holding the House of Representatives in contempt

10/21/21 6:48 PM EDT

Fox News:

Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch with Tucker Carlson

The Murdochs want Tucker Carlson’s blood-soaked conspiracy theories

09/23/21 11:48 AM EDT

Fox News Vaccines

Fox has undermined vaccines nearly every day in the last six months

10/05/21 8:19 PM EDT

Fox host blames Native American struggles on “alcoholism” and “government dependency”

Native American group calls for firing of Fox News hosts after derogatory statements

10/18/21 9:34 AM EDT

One America News:

Logos for DirecTV and One America News grouped together against a red background

OAN personality Christina Bobb fundraised for her “audit” nonprofit on air 22 times in a single month. Those 22 separate appeals aired over 140 times combined.

10/06/21 12:05 PM EDT

Screenshot from OAN's live coverage of Mike Lindell's cyber symposium

OAN aired more than 30 hours of Mike Lindell’s election fraud scam symposium

08/12/21 11:28 AM EDT

A stylized graphic of two hypodermic needles breaking apart, flanked by partially translucent OAN logos on either side, all against an orange background.

OAN’s months-long campaign against COVID-19 vaccines

08/02/21 12:44 PM EDT

Facebook:

Facebook_Right-leaning_content

Facebook tweaked its News Feed algorithm, and right-leaning pages are reaping the benefits

10/08/21 12:00 PM EDT

All the misinformation Facebook's Nick Clegg spouted on CNN’s Reliable Sources

10/04/21 6:23 PM EDT

Months after Facebook promised to keep election misinformation off its platform, it continues to thrive

Months after Facebook promised to keep election misinformation off its platform, it continues to thrive

10/08/21 10:43 AM EDT

COVID-19 vaccines:

Fox vaccines

Fox News keeps turning vaccine resisters into culture war heroes

10/08/21 8:31 AM EDT

fox vax 2

Swiss study finds connection between watching Fox News and vaccination rates going down

09/01/21 9:52 AM EDT

Fox News COVID-19 vaccine misinformation

Fox's effort to undermine vaccines has only worsened

08/19/21 10:00 AM EDT

Fox memo details mask requirements and vaccine passport system — while the network keeps railing against them for everyone else

08/18/21 12:13 PM EDT

Fox News has spent the last 8 months mocking and downplaying the threat of COVID-19 variants

08/10/21 11:08 AM EDT

Fox covid vaccine

The right-wing sabotage behind the anti-vax persuasion problem

07/19/21 2:43 PM EDT

Mike Lindell:

An OAN screenshot of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell doing a remote interview on screen left, with screen right showing larger file footage of Lindell in a different OAN interview. Chyron reads "Mike Lindell reflects on 3-day Cyber Symposium"

On OAN, Mike Lindell promised a second “cyber symposium” spreading his election lies

08/16/21 2:27 PM EDT

Lindell 8/10

Here are the places airing Mike Lindell's elections lies at his “cyber symposium”

08/11/21 10:44 AM EDT

An OAN screenshot of Eduardo Bolsonaro, third son of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, at Mike Lindell's election fraud cyber symposium, holding his thumb and index finger in an L-shape on his forehead, for "loser." Chyron reads "Mike Lindell's cyber symposium underway"

Mike Lindell's “cyber symposium” hosts Jair Bolsonaro's son to predict widespread fraud in Brazilian elections

08/10/21 5:16 PM EDT

A grayed image of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell with a backdrop of predominantly blue OAN logos, and, to the right, a ballot being inserted into a drop box.

OAN ran ads for Mike Lindell’s nonsense “cyber symposium” more than 150 times in just one week

08/06/21 10:44 AM EDT

Mike Lindell Newsmax

Newsmax airs Mike Lindell's “cyber symposium” ad over 170 times in a single week

08/09/21 2:22 PM EDT

Tucker Carlson Mike Lindell

Mike Lindell says he’s pulling MyPillow ads from Fox News. Here’s what that means.

07/30/21 11:33 AM EDT

Sinclair Broadcasting:

Sinclair Broadcast Group's coverage of COVID-19

Sinclair anchor calls out COVID-19 vaccine misinformation that Sinclair's featured national host has shared

08/13/21 8:29 AM EDT

Sinclair Broadcast Group's July 26, 2021, Question of the Day: "Is the January 6th committee about partisan politics?"

Sinclair pushed a GOP talking point about the January 6 committee in its misleading “Question of the Day” aired on local TV stations

08/04/21 12:46 PM EDT

Sinclair's Jan Jeffcoat and Heritage Foundation's Cully Stimson

Sinclair Broadcast Group guest uses antisemitic language to attack progressive prosecutors

04/28/21 4:40 PM EDT

Critical Race Theory:

Fox News

A guide to right-wing media’s “critical race theory” strategy

08/03/21 10:20 AM EDT

Fighting back against critical race theory

Fox News' obsession with critical race theory, by the numbers

06/15/21 9:02 AM EDT

Fox chyrons

Fox’s anti-“critical race theory” parents are also GOP activists

06/17/21 9:07 AM EDT

Special

PROGRAMS

Dedicated teams focusing on core progressive issues.

ABORTION RIGHTS & REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH

Newsweek opinion editor Josh Hammer spreads extreme anti-abortion rhetoric and calls Biden a “purported Catholic”

10/08/21 3:22 PM EDT

Right-wing figures co-opted “my body, my choice” to attack vaccine mandates

09/22/21 3:22 PM EDT

The media’s blatant failure in warning about the threat to Roe v. Wade

09/01/21 4:44 PM EDT

CLIMATE & ENERGY

Steve Milloy

Ahead of Big Oil's congressional hearings, longtime industry shill Steve Milloy is keeping their legacy of climate denial alive

10/13/21 4:04 PM EDT

National TV news coverage of the California oil spill exposes the hidden costs of relying on fossil fuels

10/08/21 11:16 AM EDT

The infrastructure and reconciliation bills are an important climate story. Cable news refused to cover it this way

09/30/21 1:35 PM EDT

GUNS & PUBLIC SAFETY

Right-wing media erroneously use FBI crime report to blame murder spike on police reforms

Right-wing media erroneously use FBI crime report to blame murder spike on police reforms

10/04/21 2:59 PM EDT

Cable news fails to cover gun violence like the public health crisis it is

04/20/21 1:06 PM EDT

NRATV is now finished -- but here are the bigotry, lies, and hatred that the NRA tolerated for years

06/26/19 1:36 PM EDT

LGBTQ

Virginia

Right-wing media blame trans-inclusive policy for a sexual assault in VA. It wasn’t even in place at the time.

10/19/21 12:57 PM EDT

TikTok's algorithm leads users from transphobic videos to far-right rabbit holes

10/05/21 9:03 AM EDT

YouTube fails to protect trans people from misgendering or deadnaming

08/12/21 10:01 AM EDT

These are Fox News' leading advertisers

07/26/19 1:37 PM EDT

These are Tucker Carlson’s leading advertisers

12/19/18 12:00 PM EST

These are Laura Ingraham's leading advertisers

10/29/19 12:15 PM EDT

These are Sean Hannity's leading advertisers

07/26/19 1:43 PM EDT

These are Jeanine Pirro's leading advertisers

07/23/19 2:28 PM EDT

Fox News is still having major advertiser problems

08/19/19 5:07 PM EDT

===

6/8/20

https://www.alternet.org/right-wing/why-media-reluctant-cover-neo-nazi-violence

s been just a little over two months since a white supremacist rammed his car into a crowd of anti-fascist protesters and killed a woman in Charlottesville, Virginia. It seems as if the mainstream media has already gotten bored with the story of neo-Nazi violence and domestic terrorism. Leading white nationalist Richard Spencer snagged a huge amount of coverage for scheduling a speech at the University of Florida,which provoked stories about how much the school was spending on security, the potential for protests and the fact that the state's Republican governor felt compelled to declare a state of emergency. But when three of Spencer's biggest fans and core followers — their names are Tyler Tenbrink, William Fears and Colton Fears (the latter two are brothers) — were arrested for attempting to murder protesters, coverage of the event was relatively sparse.

Media Matters analyzed the news coverage of the incident, in which one neo-Nazi allegedly fired a gun while the other two egged him on to shoot protesters. The watchdog group found that cable news networks almost completely ignored it. CNN and Fox News didn't mention the alleged attack at all, and MSNBC devoted a two-minute segment to it on one show.

Angelo Carusone, the president of Media Matters, told Salon he didn't believe the incident necessarily deserved "hours of coverage over a few days." But the paltry coverage the alleged attack got, he worries, may contribute to the public's failure to understand how serious the threat of neo-Nazi violence really is.

Vicious attacks on anti-fascist protesters have happened on at least two occasions since the events in Charlottesville. In an early September rally in Vancouver, Washington, there were reports of threatening behavior from motorists, with one man driving into a crowd (fortunately injuring no one), and a group of men in another car throwing things and driving menacingly around the protesters. Then there was this latest shooting associated with the Spencer event in Florida.

Just because no one has gotten hurt doesn't mean this isn't news. It's sheer luck that separates a bullet that hits someone in the head from one that doesn't. More importantly, Americans need to see the pattern of violent behavior coming from the white supremacist subculture, to understand the threat it actually poses.

Incidents like these “really underscore the risk a lot of people talked about when it comes to these rallies, and about what these groups actually bring when they hold these events," Keegan Hankes, a researcher for the Southern Poverty Law Center, told Salon.

Hankes emphasized that white supremacy is an inherently violent ideology, noting that "you don't have the 'ethno-state,' you don't have this kind of world that they're dreaming up without extreme violence.”

As far-right fringe groups, emboldened by the election of Donald Trump, plan more rallies and public speeches, there's a real risk that the centrality of violence to white supremacist ideology gets lost in the public discourse. Part of the problem is that right-wing pundits have been working to frame the challenge posed by these groups strictly in terms of "free speech" while minimizing the problem of actual or potential violence.

“The security concerns are justified, as we see, because violence follows" where neo-Nazis and white supremacists go, Hankes said. "It's more than just that people don't want to hear their ideas or don't agree with them, and don't think they should be on campus."

Carusone characterized himself as a "free-speech purist," but felt that the public's understanding of the debate over speech on campus is incomplete if they don't understand the enhanced possibility of violence that white supremacists bring.

"Alt-right" groups, he explained, "do these sort of trolling events at campuses, not trying to make a point, but just to elicit a backlash, so that they can have these kinds of skirmishes. The net effect of the skirmishes is to create conditions such that they can not just engage in violence but also bully, intimidate and suppress their opponents.”

That too, he noted, is a free speech issue: The free speech rights of anti-fascists and leftists are endangered if they are being intimidated with violence.

White supremacists and other "alt-right" types have deliberately downplayed their own acts of violence in an effort to confuse the issue, Hankes said. Instead, they focus on a narrative claiming that they "just want a fair hearing for [their] ideas" and that it's "the anti-fascists who are committing violence," permitting them to play the victim and drum up sympathy for their extremist views.

He then began to make excuses, calling Fields a "scapegoat" and saying that Heyer's death was an "ambiguous situation." He also claimed that Fields' "vehicle was attacked," and suggested that ramming a car into a crowd of protesters was Fields "attempting to escape."Spencer himself did this during his speech at the University of Florida. When an audience member asked Spencer about the killing of leftist protester Heather Heyer, for which a white supremacist named James Fields has been charged with second-degree murder, Spencer deflected and downplayed the situation. He claimed he is opposed to all forms of violence and has "explicitly called for peace."

Shortly after Spencer tried to spin his movement as nonviolent, three of his most prominent followers — men who have repeatedly attended Spencer's appearances and events, including the Charlottesville rally — reportedly fired a gun at protesters while shouting "Heil Hitler" and urging each other on.

The media has an important role to play here. It's not just about reporting on events like this, but also putting them into context. The shooting was part of a growing white supremacist movement that is growing ever more ambitious and more violent, and feels emboldened by a sympathetic leader in the White House. This shooting happened during a constant churn of stories about Trump's racially provocative attacks on NFL players, Rep. Frederica Wilson, Myeshia Johnson (the widow of slain soldier La David Johnson) and ESPN sports analyst Jemele Hill. It's no mystery why white supremacists might feel it's a good time to ramp up their activities. This shooting cannot be viewed as a random crime, but as the inescapable result of electing President Donald Trump.

==

==

http://www.alternet.org/media/new-york-times-russian-hacking

fail?

Talk about strange bedfellows joining forces to produce an unlikely media alliance.

That’s what happened when The New York Times reported on October 31, 2016, that FBI officials had not been able to uncover any evidence that Russian operatives, through allegedly hacking Democratic emails, were trying to help elect Donald Trump.

“Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia,” read the October 31 Times headline which relied on unnamed “law enforcement officials.”

Acting as an almost unofficial time-out, and one that came with the Times’ seal of approval, the article helped put the media brakes on the unfolding Russian hacking story; the same Russian hacking story that has now morphed into a full-scale Trump scandal.

The message on October 31 from the Times’ sources was unmistakable: There’s no conclusive connection between Trump and the Russians, and the Russians’ efforts were “aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump.” (Question: How do you not pick sides in a two-person election if you only undermine one of the candidates, the way Russian hackers only undermined the Democrat?)

The Times piece set off audible cheers within the conservative media, which usually holds the Times in contempt for its supposed “liberal media bias.”

In fact, pointing to the newspaper’s alleged Democratic leanings, conservative claimed that if even the liberal New York Times determined there was no Trump-Russia story, then it definitely must be true.

“And as far as liberals are concerned, the Democrats are concerned, when the New York Times clears you, you are cleared,” Rush Limbaugh told his listeners on November 1. “The New York Times carries as much weight as the FBI, and if the New York Times says there’s nothing to see between Trump and Russia and Putin, then there’s nothing to see.”

All across the conservative media landscape, the Times report was held up as putting the Trump-Russia story to bed.

However, to suggest the Times’ influential October 31 report “hasn’t aged well,” as MSNBC’s Chris Hayes recently put it, may be an understatement, as the unfolding hacking scandal continues to gain momentum and more evidence tumbles out regarding claims that Russians were trying to help Trump. (Hayes also correctly recalled that "At the same time the FBI was leaking like a sieve about Clinton, people around it went out of their way to dampen the Putin talk.")

The problems with the Times article are many. First off, Sen. Harry Reid’s spokesman claimed that Reid had been interviewed for the Times’ article, pushed back against its timid premise about there being no connection, and that Reid’s comments were omitted from the story.

More recently, we’ve seen all kinds of information revealed that contradicts the Times’ often-quoted October 31 report. For instance, FBI Director James Comey testified in December that Russia had “hacked into Republican state political campaigns and old email domains of the Republican National Committee,” but did not release information from those hacks. As Reuters pointed out, that allegation “may buttress the U.S. intelligence view that Moscow tried to help Trump against Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign.”

More recently, the BBC reported that “a joint taskforce, which includes the CIA and the FBI, has been investigating allegations that the Russians may have sent money to Mr Trump's organisation or his election campaign.” Also last week, the Guardian reported that FBI investigators were so concerned with a possible Trump-Russia connection that they asked for a foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) warrant to monitor Trump aides during the campaign. (The warrant request was reportedly denied.)

Meanwhile, Britain’s The Independentreported that the former intelligence officer who wrote the recently revealed Trump dossier was frustrated that the FBI had “for months” ignored the information he passed along to the bureau about a possible Trump-Russian connection.

Note that just four weeks after the election, the Times itself reported, “Both intelligence and law enforcement officials agree that there is a mountain of circumstantial evidence suggesting that the Russian hacking was primarily aimed at helping Mr. Trump and damaging his opponent.” (Emphasis added.)

And from NPR: “FBI, CIA Agree That Russia Was Trying To Help Trump Win The Election.”

Here’s the larger context for the Times report and why it was seen as such a game-changer at the time.

On October 31, the FBI was dealing with two breaking news stories that were spinning out of its control and reflecting poorly on Comey.

The bureau was under withering criticism from legal experts, journalists, Democrats, and even some Republicans after Comey inserted insert himself into the final days of the campaign by informing Congress that the FBI was reigniting its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of private email while secretary of state. That last weekend in October the bureau was also battling damaging news stories that suggested its leadership had been slow to respond to the Russian hacking controversy as it pertained to Donald Trump.

Comey’s letter to Congress about the emails was dispatched October 28. In the days that followed, a steady stream of revelations undercut his actions. On October 30, CNN reported that the FBI had known about the new emails for “weeks” before Comey decided to go public with the information just days before the election.

The following day, news outlets reported that Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) had sent Comey a blistering letter , insisting the FBI director was sitting on “‘explosive’ information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisers, and the Russian government.”

That same day, Mother Jones, foreshadowing the news last week about a dossier collected on Trump, reported that, “a former senior intelligence officer for a Western country” had provided to the FBI with “memos, based on his recent interactions with Russian sources, contending the Russian government has for years tried to co-opt and assist Trump—and that the FBI requested more information from him.”

And that same day, CNBC reported, “FBI Director James Comey argued privately that it was too close to Election Day for the United States government to name Russia as meddling in the U.S. election.”

The contrast was startling: Comey had publicly reinvigorated the Clinton email investigation based on emails the FBI hadn’t even read (the emails turned out to be irrelevant), yet at the same time Comey allegedly sat on new information regarding claims that Trump had ongoing ties with Russia because Comey thought the optics would look bad.

Given all this, the FBI needed a way to stop the public relations bleeding. And late in the day on October 31, the Times provided the respite.

Specifically, the article helped push back on reports Comey didn’t want to go public with any Russian information close to Election Day.

“The reason Comey didn’t announce the existence of this investigation wasn’t because it was it was ‘explosive’ and could impact the election,” announced the conservative site, Hot Air, pointing to the Times article. “It was because the FBI had already figured out it was a dud.”

In other words, FBI PR problem solved. The problems with the Times report, however, were just beginning.

Eric Boehlert is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America and the author of Lapdogs: How The Press Rolled Over for Bush.

==

For this reason, Media Matters recognizes George Will as the 2014 Misinformer of the Year.

Past recipients include CBS News (2013), Rush Limbaugh (2012), Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. (2011), Sarah Palin (2010), Glenn Beck (2009), Sean Hannity (2008), ABC (2006), Chris Matthews (2005), and Bill O'Reilly (2004).

==

Media Matters for America (MMFA), a "Web-based, not-for-profit progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media,"[1] was founded by David Brock in mid-April 2004.

Along with former MoveOn consultant Tom Matzzie and John Podesta's Center for American Progress, it is behind Progressive Media, a liberal messaging campaign launched in 2008 and expanded in 2009 to become a 'war room' for promoting the foreign and domestic policies of Barack Obama.

Media Matters for America's partner organization, Media Matters Action Network launched Conservative Transparency in November, 2009.

Background

"Because a healthy democracy depends on public access to accurate and reliable information, Media Matters for America is dedicated to alerting news outlets and consumers to conservative misinformation -- wherever we find it, in every news cycle -- and to spurring progressive activism based on standards and accountability in media," explains their website [2] "For the first time, Media Matters for America has put in place a system to monitor the media for conservative misinformation - every day, in real time -- in 2004 and beyond." [3]

The site "was devised as part of a larger media apparatus being built by liberals to combat what they say is the overwhelming influence of conservative commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly." The "project was developed with help from the newly formed Center for American Progress, the policy group headed by John D. Podesta," Bill Clinton's former chief of staff. "Brock said he hoped it could help provide fodder for fledgling liberal radio talk shows being started across the country, including those of the comedians Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo." ^[1]

"Mr. Brock, who has also spoken with Senator Clinton, Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota and former Vice President Al Gore about his project, said he was ready to face skepticism. 'I think all ideological converts face a reality on that question,' he said. But, he added, 'I've found people very open to the idea that people can change.'"

MMFA has apparently retained Aman & Associates to promote their first book.

Funding

Funded with "more than $2 million in donations from wealthy liberals." "Among Mr. Brock's donors is Leo Hindery, Jr., the former cable magnate; Susie Tompkins Buell, who is co-founder of the fashion company Esprit and is close to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, and Ms. Buell's husband Mark; and James C. Hormel, a San Francisco philanthropist whose appointment as ambassador to Luxembourg was delayed for a year and a half in the late 1990's by conservative lawmakers protesting what they called his promotion of a 'gay lifestyle.' ^[2]

Media Matters for America is funded in part by the Democracy Alliance.

Media Matters Action Network

The Media Matters Action Network is a 501(c)4 organization that is a partner organization to MMFA. In December 2008, the Media Matters Action Network acquired the Media Transparency website from Cursor Inc.^[3]

Books

• MediaMatters.org, Misstating the State of the Union: Right-wing media distortions about the Clinton and Bush presidencies, Akashic Books, October 2004, ISBN 1888451807

Related:

• David Brock, The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy, Crown, 2004, ISBN 1400048753
• David Brock and Paul Waldman, Free Ride: John McCain and the Media, Anchor, March 2008. ISBN 0307279405

People

Key personnel:[4]

• David Brock - CEO
• Eric Burns - President
• Marcia Kuntz - Editor-in-Chief
• Jeremy Schulman - Research Director
• Jamison Foser - Senior Fellow
• Eric Boehlert - Senior Fellow
• Duncan Black - Senior Fellow
• Karl Frisch - Senior Fellow
• Jessica Levin - Press Secretary

Contact Details

Media Matters for America

455 Massachusetts Ave. NW

Suite 600

Washington DC 20001

Telephone: 202-756-4100

Fax: 202-318-0836

Website: http://mediamatters.org/

RSS Feed: http://mediamatters.org/tools/syndication/latest.rss

SourceWatch Resources

• Democracy Alliance
• Niki Jagpal
• Ilyse Hogue

References

1. ↑ Jim Rutenberg, "New Internet Site Turns Critical Eyes and Ears to the Right," New York Times, May 3, 2004.
2. ↑ Jim Rutenberg, "New Internet Site Turns Critical Eyes and Ears to the Right," New York Times, May 3, 2004.
3. ↑ "Media Matters Action Network acquires MediaTransparency.org from Cursor, Inc.," MediaTransparency.org, December 12, 2008. (No longer available online).

External links

• Schema-root.org: Media Matters for America  - current and archive news feeds
• Jim Rutenberg, "New Internet Site Turns Critical Eyes and Ears to the Right", New York Times, May 3, 2004.
• Jim Boyd, "Editorial Pages: Why Courage is Hard to Find," Nieman Reports, Spring 2006.
• "Behind the Fall of Imus, A Digital Brush Fire", The Wall Street Journal, April 13, 2007.
• Jeremy Scahill, Rahm Emanuel's Think Tankers Enforce 'Message Discipline' Among 'Liberals', RebelReports.com, April 9, 2009.

Categories:

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• Liberal Advocacy Organizations
• Obama PR

http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/amateur-hour-did-james-okeefe-target-media-

That video is James O'Keefe describing his journalist "sting" project. In this specific case, he describes his "sting" investigating journalists for misinformation, bias and coverups, especially with respect to Huffington Post reporter Sam Stein.

It makes one wonder whether Media Matters' Eric Boehlert was a target of O'Keefe's grand plan.

Via Ryan Grim at the Huffington Post, a story of a bogus Verizon representative asking some very weird questions. Evidently this "Verizon employee" stopped by Boehlert's house to take a customer satisfaction survey. Verizon confirms they do not send people door to door for customer satisfaction surveys, however. After asking some fairly routine questions, it started to get weird.

"So he gets to the last questions, and he's really reading intently off of his clipboard, and he says something about making the kind of salary I do, working from home, something something about the 99 percenters," Boehlert said.

The man claiming to be a Verizon representative finally asked his question. "After he mentioned my salary and that I work from home, all the bells went off, and this is not who this guy says he is.Therefore, I kind of lost track of the exact wording of the question, but it definitely was like very accusatory of me and I'm a hypocrite and how do I have this supposedly cushy job while I'm writing about real workers and the people of the 99 percent," said Boehlert.

"So there was this pause, and I said, 'You work for Verizon?' And he just sort of looks back at me and [says], 'Will you answer the question? Will you answer the question?' And I said, 'Can I see your Verizon ID?' And he wouldn't produce any Verizon ID, and I think he asked me another time to answer the question. And basically I just said, 'I'm done so you can leave now.'"

My interaction with Eric Boehlert has been limited to Twitter, but my take on him is that he is not easily fooled, intimidated, or otherwise pushed around. And he wasn't here, either.

Boehlert decided to follow him to obtain his license plate number. By now he had realized that the man was likely pulling a political stunt, and James O'Keefe's notorious "To Catch a Journalist" project came to mind as a possibility.

"The only sort of comical part was he forget which way he was supposed to run in case I started following. He ended up sort of in the road, and he sort of turned left and then right," said Boehlert. "The last I saw him he was in a full sprint down my street running away from my house."

The police and Verizon were called. The only thing missing from this story is James O'Keefe's emphatic denial. There doesn't appear to be anything like that on the record, though Andrew Breitbart has categorically denied any involvement in this particular stunt.

In response to an instant message asking if he was responsible for the fake Verizon representative, Breitbart said no.

So what gives, James O'Keefe? Don't you think that as the director of an organization subsidized with taxpayer funds, you should step up and tell us whether you targeted Boehlert or not? A simple yes or no will do.