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Media Matters Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 01, 2018 75 Comments
There is an all out assault in progress trying to drive Laura Ingraham off television and radio, led by Parkland student and newly-minted media star David Hogg. Ingraham is a target, superficially, because she mocked Hogg as a whiner in a tweet after he publicly griped that several colleges had rejected him. On the scale of internet insults, saying that someone is "whining" doesn't even register it's so mild.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on March 29, 2018 149 Comments
Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg has spent the last month and a half criticizing 2nd Amendment supporters in the most grotesque terms. His latest tirade accused those who disagree with him as "sick f**kers":
"I’m beyond exhausted," Hogg said. "I get to a certain point where I just get so tired that I keep going. It creates a positive feedback loop in some ways — the more stress and work I put on me, the more stress and work I can deal with."

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 15, 2017 21 Comments
Don't think for a second that the attack on Sean Hannity's advertiser's led by Media Matters has anything to do with Hannity's coverage of or interview with Roy Moore. The Moore coverage is just a pretext to carry out a plan to attack conservative media, Fox News and Hannity that has been a Media Matters project for many years, led by Angelo Carusone. The plan was hatched years ago, as we wrote about in 2011, Media Matters Plans “Guerrilla Warfare and Sabotage” on Fox News And Conservative Websites.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 19, 2017 64 Comments
Bill O'Reilly's Fox News career now swims with the fishes. The conventional wisdom is that after the NY Times exposed a history of sexual harassment  settlements, and two new accusers came forward, advertisers "fled" the show, forcing the hand of News Corp and the Murdochs. That conventional wisdom is only partially correct -- advertisers didn't flee, they were chased away by the same organized effort as was used against Glenn Beck once upon a time, and Rush Limbaugh in 2012. Longtime readers will recall my extensive and groundbreaking research into the StopRush operation just after Limbaugh’s comments about Sandra Fluke in 2012, for which he apologized.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 17, 2016 40 Comments
Keith Ellison, Democratic Congressman from Minnesota, is the favorite to become Chair of the Democratic National Committee. He has the support of big names like Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Harry Reid, among others. Yet for years there have been questions about Ellison's past association with Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, as well as his association with anti-Israel groups. We touched upon Ellison's background in two recent posts: Scott Johnson of Power Line, who is based in Minnesota, has been following the career of Ellison for a decade. Scott talked about some of what he has learned about Ellison in a recent radio interview, Ten Years On The Ellison Case:

Posted by Mike LaChance on September 17, 2016 28 Comments
Hillary Clinton backer David Brock of Media Matters is desperate for a new line of attack on Donald Trump and is willing to pay cash to anyone who can help him find it. This doesn't look desperate at all, does it? The Washington Free Beacon reported:
David Brock Offers Money for New Dirt on Donald Trump Hillary Clinton ally David Brock is offering to pay for new information on Donald Trump, hoping that damaging audio or video on the Republican presidential candidate will be submitted to his super PAC.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on May 09, 2016 24 Comments
In keeping with the lumbering awkwardness of Hillary Clinton's presidential primary campaign that has included herding reporters like cattle and adopting a phony Southern accent, Team Hillary has concocted a new means of countering widespread unflattering comments about Hillary online.  Unlike Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, Hillary does not enjoy an enthusiastic following even among those who support her, so she does not have the army of online people voluntarily engaged in defending her against attacks from both the left and the right. The solution? A vast network of highly paid online pro-Hillary trolls funded by a David Brock super PAC, "Correct the Record," that will be coordinating with the Hillary campaign.  The plan, apparently, was to hire a bunch of people to do what other candidates' supporters do for free . . .  and to make it look grassroots and organic. The LA Times reports:
When the Internet’s legions of Hillary hecklers steal away to chat rooms and Facebook pages to vent grievances about Clinton, express revulsion toward Clinton and launch attacks on Clinton, they now may find themselves in a surprising place – confronted by a multimillion dollar super PAC working with Clinton.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 12, 2015 23 Comments
Hillary is supposed to announce her presidential run at 3 p.m. Eastern today. In the run up, the notorious Clinton smear machine already is lashing out at critics. NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, a progressive, made a reasonable statement that he wanted to hear more about her vision before he formally endorsed her: The response for Democratic operative Hillary Rosen (who famously disparaged Ann Romney), was a not too thinly veiled threat. Meanwhile, Hillary critics are being smeared as sexist by Democratic operatives at Think Progress and Media Matters:

Posted by Mike LaChance on March 10, 2015 12 Comments
Back in December of 2013, Media Matters for America declared victory in its war on FOX News. Unfortunately for MMFA, American news consumers disagree. According to a new Quinnipiac poll, FOX News is doing just fine:
Fox News Has Most Trusted Coverage, Or Not, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds; Tina Fey, Dennis Miller Top Choices To Replace Stewart FOX News offers the most trusted network and cable news coverage, 29 percent of American voters say, when asked to compare the major TV news outlets in a Quinnipiac University National poll released today. But when network news is examined on a case-by-case basis, FOX drops in the ratings. In the comparison rankings, CNN gets 22 percent, with NBC News and CBS News at 10 percent each, 8 percent for ABC News and 7 percent for MSNBC, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University Poll finds. When asked, "Do you trust the journalistic coverage provided by FOX News," 20 percent of U.S. voters say "a great deal" and 35 percent say "somewhat." Scores for other networks are:
NBC News - 14 percent "a great deal" and 46 percent "somewhat;" ABC News - 14 percent "a great deal" and 50 percent "somewhat;" CBS News - 14 percent "a great deal" and 50 percent "somewhat;" MSNBC - 11 percent "a great deal" and 41 percent "somewhat;" CNN - 18 percent "a great deal" and 43 percent "somewhat."
The big winner is local television news, trusted by 19 percent of voters "a great deal" and by 52 percent "somewhat." "FOX News may be the most trusted in the network and cable news race, but they all take a back seat to your local news," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.
Bill O'Reilly made this the focus of his opening monologue last night.

Posted by Mike LaChance on January 22, 2015 15 Comments
Did you think it was impossible for the Times to say something nice about anyone at FOX News? I did too, until I read this column by Jim Rutenberg:
The Megyn Kelly Moment Kelly, who is now 44, grew up in Ailes’s America, in a middle-class suburb of Albany called Delmar. She was the youngest of three children, worked as a fitness instructor and went to Mass most Sundays. Her father was an education professor at the State University of New York at Albany, and her mother ran the behavioral-health department at a Veterans Administration hospital. As a teenager in the late 1980s, she lived in a mall rat’s bubble of tall hair, leg warmers and Bon Jovi; one of the popular kids, she was the type who also had friends among the other groups at Bethlehem Central High School, with names like the Dirties (hackeysack-playing stoners) and the Creamies (choir geeks). Reality intruded early. Ten days before Christmas, when Kelly was 15, her father died of a heart attack. He had canceled some of his life-insurance coverage just two months earlier. Money had been tight, and Kelly’s mother had to worry about the mortgage and other expenses. In her senior yearbook, Megyn listed her future hopes in three words: “College, government, wealth.” Kelly took a high-school aptitude test that, in a perhaps rare moment of accuracy for such tests, suggested that her ideal career was news. She applied to Syracuse in hopes of attending its well-regarded communications program; she was accepted to the school but rejected from the program, so she majored in political science instead.
It's a very long piece but worth reading in full. Of course, not everyone on the left is happy about Kelly's success.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 24, 2014 7 Comments
David Brock is the founder of Media Matters for America, who's goal was to destroy Fox News and Rush Limbaugh by any means necessary. Brock also is the person behind American Bridge, the entity formed to hire trackers to follow Republicans. One tracker caught David Perdue, the Republican candidate for Senate in George, at a rally, and posted a video purporting to show Perdue signing his name on a woman's hip. The video was spread far and wide including at mainstream media publications such as The Washington Post as Perdue signing the woman's body. But, as Buzzfeed reports, which originally reported it as "David Perdue Signs Woman" (based on the url), the video was misleading, CORRECTED: Dems Miss Insulin Pump In Video Of Perdue Signing Young Woman (large print in original):
David Perdue, the Republican nominee for Senate in Georgia, appeared to sign a young woman’s torso at a campaign rally on Thursday in a video distributed by a Democratic opposition research group — but further video showed that the footage was misleading. “No pictures on this,” Perdue joked before autographing something on the hip of a young woman, while campaign staffers tried to block the scene from being filmed. The footage was captured by a Democratic tracker with the firm American Bridge at a Perdue campaign rally in Jonesboro, Georgia.

Correction: The American Bridge tracker footage did not capture the whole scene, according to the Perdue campaign.

“David was asked to sign an individual’s diabetic pump to help raise awareness for juvenile diabetes,” said Megan Whittemore, a Perdue spokesperson. “This was a Georgia family who shared their personal story of their struggle with ObamaCare and the rising health care costs associated with their daughter’s treatment which is not being covered by their insurance.”

Another angle on the video, not captured by Republicans or Perdue allies, appears to show the young woman is holding something on her body for Perdue to sign.

The pump is featured in the enhanced image from the Perdue campaign, via the Buzzfeed post. It appears the original video has been taken down, but here's the other angle referred to by Buzzfeed:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 07, 2014 28 Comments
Angelo Carusone is the Media Matters executive behind the effort to get Rush Limbaugh off the airwaves, as we documented in 2012: The attack on Limbaugh was not Carusone's first targeting of a major conservative personality.  Carusone, prior to joining Media Matters, was behind the Stop Beck effort. Angelo Carusone Twitter Profile As reported at The Daily Caller today, Carusone may have some problems with a prior blog he maintained in which he engaged in questionable conduct, Media Matters Executive Wrote Racist, Anti-Semitic, Anti-’Tranny’ Blog Posts:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 02, 2014 26 Comments
We know Media Matters hates Rush Limbaugh. It's an obsession second only to the fixation on Fox News. Media Matters was behind the astroturfed Stop Rush campaign targeting advertisers, which ended in a complete failure. Nonetheless, the Limbaugh obsession continues at Media Matters. The latest iteration is an article published yesterday claiming that Rush Limbaugh's ratings are so bad, Limbaugh's taken to claiming ratings don't matter, After Getting Bad Ratings News, Limbaugh Tries To Prove "Ratings Don't Matter" Media Matters After Getting Bad Rating
Rush Limbaugh used CBS' decision to hire comedian Stephen Colbert as the new host of The Late Show as evidence that ratings are irrelevant following reports that the talk radio firebrands' own ratings have collapsed. On the May 1 edition of his radio show, Limbaugh declared that CBS' decision to replace David Letterman with Colbert is proof that "ratings don't matter in a lot of television." Limbaugh latched onto recent comments by CBS president Les Moonves to repeatedly gloat that he was right when he claimed that "it's not about ratings anymore" but rather about coolness. In fact, during the entire first segment of his show, Limbaugh repeated the phrase "ratings don't matter" a total of nine times....
Media Matters provided a 7 minute audio, and a partial transcript, to back up its claim. I happened to listen to that segment live when I was in the car yesterday, so I knew what Media Matters readers were not informed: The audio and transcript were edited to end just before Limbaugh made clear that the type of approach the networks can take for late night TV does not apply to him. Here's the part of the transcript Media Matters did not include:

Posted by Bryan Jacoutot on April 22, 2014 22 Comments
On the most recent airing of the CNN Sunday talk show, Reliable Sources, former CBS reporter, Sharyl Attkinson, revealed a rather stunning accusation about the far left online news organization, Media Matters.
Media Matters, as my understanding, is a far left blog group that I think holds itself out to be sort of an independent watchdog group. And yes, they clearly targeted me at some point. They used to work with me on stories and tried to help me produce my stories… And I was certainly friendly with them as anybody, good information can come from any source. But when I persisted with Fast and Furious and some of the green energy stories I was doing, I clearly at some point became a target… [Emphasis Added]
Of course, anyone who has read Media Matters would scoff at the idea that it is a politically “independent” media watchdog group. Given the obvious leanings of the organization, the revelation that Media Matters is actually assisting, in some manner, in producing content for one of the “Big 3” (ABC, NBC, CBS) network news programs carries significant implications. Most notably, these three networks are still viewed by many in the public as the place to get your least politically slanted news. For many Americans, the brief 30-minute or hour long nightly news program from these networks is the only news they get all day. In the immediate wake of Attikson's Sunday appearance, Media Matters elected only to respond to the assertion by Attkinson that she had been targeted by the organization:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 13, 2013 55 Comments

The years' long Media Matters War on Fox News was intended to destroy Fox News, as expressed by David Brock in 2011: 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...

Posted by Laurel Conrad on October 30, 2013 12 Comments
Stephen Jimenez is the author of "The Book of Matt," a book that calls into question the deeply ingrained narrative that the murder of Matthew Shepard was an anti-gay hate crime. The extensively researched book reveals that the Shepard anti-gay hate crime narrative may be all wrong. Jimenez, who is gay himself, has been praised by prominent gay rights activists, including Andrew Sullivan.  In response to the new information, Sullivan has even called the narrative "a politically convenient myth" deployed to "raise gobs of money and pass unnecessary laws." Stephen Jimenez: Meth And The Murder Of Matthew Shepard from The Dish on Vimeo. On Monday, The New York Post's Andrea Peyser lauded Jimenez for shedding light on "an uncomfortable truth":
 Jimenez unearthed a story that few people wanted to hear. And it calls into question everything you think you know about the life and death of one of the leading icons of our age.
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