Media Mutters monstrosities

Jonah Goldberg:

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Nearly every day, I get e-mail spam from this alleged “media watchdog" group. It's slightly less formal than the usual son of a Nigerian oil minister with erectile dysfunction and a great stock tip giving me a head's-up about a problem with my eBay account. This spam comes from some earnest p.r. flack letting me know that I might be interested in the latest Very Serious Finding by Media Matters for America. When you actually check out the item, it's usually very stupid or silly or, sometimes, slanderous.

For example, on Sept. 25, Media Matters sent out a note announcing “Fox News panelist Mort Kondracke recently made several racist comments regarding the Jena 6.

Here are some examples of racism on Fox News." What were the racist comments? Simply this: Kondracke said in reference to the racial turmoil then brewing in Louisiana, “It looks as though the people of Jena can solve this on their own." It's a wonder Kondracke even bothered to take his Klan hood off while on camera.

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They were the ones who made the initial stink about Don Imus' “nappy-headed hos" gaffe. Imus may have had that coming, but they also recently tried to paint Bill O'Reilly as a racist dunderhead by slanderously distorting his comments about having dinner in Harlem. O'Reilly's point was that the real middle-class black America is decent and normal, unlike the images found in gangsta rap and the like. Media Matters quoted him as saying he was shocked that none of the black people at a Harlem restaurant talked or acted like F-word-abusing thugs.

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And in 2004, Brock decided to start Media Matters for America ostensibly to keep an eye on the sort of “conservative misinformation" he used to peddle.

But, the truth is that Media Matters is a cog in the larger Vast LeftWing Conspiracy chronicled in the aptly titled book “The Vast LeftWing Conspiracy" by my National Review colleague Byron York. In the 1990s, long before Hillary Clinton railed against a shadowy, vast right-wing conspiracy, the Clintonites were obsessed with conservative success at getting their message out.

In 1995, Mark Fabiani, one of the Clintonites tasked with beating down Clinton scandals in the media, even penned a 331-page taxpayer-funded report ominously titled “The Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce," which worked from the presumption that negative stories about the president were illegitimate and foisted on the unwitting public by evildoers of the right.

Such paranoia has gone from being one of the more obscure jokes of the Clinton years to mainstream thought in Democratic circles. Driven mad by the Swift Boat Vets, Fox News, not to mention the humiliating failure of Air America and the continuing success of conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, liberals have convinced themselves they need a conspiracy machinery all of their own to do deliberately what they imagine conservatives have been doing all along.

And that's where Media Matters for America comes in. At a recent YearlyKos convention for left-wing bloggers, Hillary Clinton bragged about how she'd helped Brock create Media Matters - an inconvenient testimonial for a group that swears, unconvincingly, that it's not beholden to Clinton (nearly half the e-mails I get from them read like they were churned out by Clinton's rapid-response team).

Part of the complex of liberal activist groups linked to George Soros and dedicated to the success of Democratic candidates, Media Matters churns out polemic and spin gussied-up as media criticism. The strategy is an upgrade of the Clinton communication attack plan of the 1990s. First: Demonize critics as crazy people, ax-grinders, bigots and shills.

This was the tactic used by Clinton and Co. in the 1990s to try to marginalize critics like Limbaugh and whistleblowers like Travel Office director Billy Dale. Recall how Bill Clinton suggested Limbaugh incited the Oklahoma City bombing or how his cronies immediately claimed Dale was a criminal and Monica Lewinsky a stalker?

Second, use any weapon on hand. And that's where the figurative million interns come in. Like CIA drones listening to shortwave broadcasts in Irkusk, Media Matters monitors everything the right puts out, listening to hundreds of hours of programming and reading lord knows how many words every week.

And, then, working from the assumption that all's fair in war, they score whatever points they can and then browbeat mainstream journalists with their findings.

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There is more about this shameless organization.

This is a pretty comprehensive look at the Media Mutters group and some of the hits they have made. It is a blatant attempt to stifle any speech critical of the left and particularly the Clintons. They claim to be a "progressive" organization which is code for liberals who do not want to admit they are liberals. So starting with their own self description you can see an intent to deceive. When you are exposed to the phony soldier flap you see the intent to deceive in full flower where they think they can state Limbaugh's meaning better than Limbaugh, which is just ridiculous on it face, but that does not stop them. It will probably take an IRS investigation to stop them with a challenge to their tax exempt status. It better happen soon, because you know that a new Clinton administration would not pursue a case against one of their allies.

The Jawa Report has the exhibits that demonstrate the Media Mutters misrepresentations.