Fox News takes on Media Matters
For seven years, Fox News has pushed back against the daily scrutiny and criticism leveled at it by Media Matters, the liberal watchdog group. But after founder David Brock said in March that his group’s new strategy amounted to a “war on Fox,” the network ratcheted up its response.
In the past 10 days, Fox has run more than 30 segments calling for the nonprofit group to be stripped of its tax-exempt status. Its Fox Nation website has even provided a link to pre-completed complaint forms against Media Matters to send to the Internal Revenue Service. (See also: Can Fox quash its fiercest critic? in The Arena)
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While Fox News personalities like Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly have long grumbled about Media Matters, this attack on the group has been carried out across the channel’s news and opinion programs. It has included shows like “The O’Reilly Factor,” news coverage of the complaints to the IRS and even a psychological profile of Brock, a former conservative journalist who went over to the liberal side, on “Fox & Friends” that suggested he might be “full of self-hatred” because he was adopted.
“Media Matters is not a media investigative organization,” Fox News contributor and Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer said on “Special Report With Bret Baier” last week. “It’s a war on Fox. And you’re allowed to do that in a democracy. You can be as nasty as you want. The only thing is, don’t ask for a government subsidy.”
To get tax-free status, educational nonprofits have to support their claims with facts and refrain from directly engaging in politics — though they can be as ideological as they like. Fox argues that Media Matters has veered from that educational mission and should be stripped of its special status.
Its argument was first laid out in a June 22 column in the Washington Times by C. Boyden Gray, former President George H.W. Bush’s White House counsel, who cited two actions by Media Matters: its “unsupported” claims about Fox News being the voice of the Republican Party and a “sophisticated, Democratic-leaning media training boot camp” sponsored by the group that, Gray said, in essence, provided support to the Democratic Party.
“The declaration of war itself is a rhetorical device,” said Gray, a former Fox News consultant. “But when you go further and make allegations that are not substantiated, then it slips into, ‘Wow, this looks like it’s for and in support of the Democratic Party. … It’s absurd to say that Fox is the Republican Party. There’s no factual basis for that.’”
Ari Rabin-Havt, executive vice president of Media Matters, denies both allegations, pointing to the organization’s research on how Fox News, its employees and its parent companies “engaged in an unprecedented campaign in support of the Republican Party” during the 2010 election cycle.
“Our contentions about Fox News’s political operations are supported by the facts and their own actions, especially during the previous few years,” he said.
Regarding questions about the media training boot camp, profiled in a March 22 Washington Post story, Rabin-Havt said the training institute explicitly asks potential students whether they plan to run for office or work for a political campaign and declines to train them if they do.
“Our training institute trains progressive voices but not political ones,” he said. “We are not training candidates. We are not training political campaign employees.”
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Readers' Comments (1247)
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Read all 1247 comments in our forumMedia Matters should be paying their fair share.
Fox 's fear about MM is incredibly transparent and this Bozell guy from MRC just comes across as laughably jealous. "Media Matters stands accused....speaks for itself". Actually, no. Being accused does not speak for itself. You present evidence to back up an accusation and the accused has an opportunity to defend themselves in return. However I'd be surprised if these politically motivated complaints are judged by any reasonable person to be worth serious inquiry at taxpayers' expense. And if they are, there are a lot of conservative organizations like American Crossroads that will be losing out as well.
I would like to see the state-approved media and the White House press office made into legitimate media organizations.
Hey Media doesn't Matter, nobody forces anybody to watch Fox, or for that matter, PMSNBC. Get a life, go pick on another tax exempt organization.
....oh no!.....phones will be tapped....
Hey iledechien...and noboday forces anyone to read Media Matters...so what's your point??
...much to do about nothing. A simple dust up as both Fox and Media Matters are on opposite sides of the spectrum. Its kind of like light vs. dark you need both to appreciate their value. The only winner in this argument is as usual the audience. I received value from both Fox and Media matters. What ever happened to " Fair and Balanced " Have you decided.? Maybe this will help.
------------------------------------------------Breaking News-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday, in response to the new hacking allegations, Ford Motor suspended all advertising with News of the World, and several other companies -- including T-Mobile -- are reportedly considering following suit.
A July 5 Financial Times editorial noted the hacking scandal "has inflicted great reputational damage on News Corp. This should be of concern not just to Mr Murdoch but also to the company's wider shareholder base. After all, the group is seeking to expand its UK interests massively with the acquisition of the broadcaster, BSkyB."
UPDATE: The AP reports today that investors "dumped shares in News Corp., causing them to slump 4.2 percent on the Nasdaq index in New York."
Reuters reports that in addition to Ford, car makers "Vauxhall and Mitsubishi Motors, along with Britain's biggest high street lender Lloyds and billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Holidays, have dropped advertising in the News of the World due to allegations of hacking by the newspaper."
Reuters also reported the following comments "from major advertisers, many of them responding to a barrage of messages on Twitter from consumers calling for boycotts of News of the World and other UK titles belonging to Rupert Murdoch including The Sun and The Times":
Media Matters is making Foxxy News sweat....way to go MM!!!!
lol Somebody call a waambulance!
If Fox has such a problem with having its hosts quoted verbatim, then maybe the real problem lies with what the hosts are saying, and not Media Matters.
RightWingWatch is a great Media Matters-type blog that tracks the Religious Right.
www.rightwingwatch.org
lol Somebody call a waambulance!
If Fox has such a problem with having its hosts quoted verbatim, then maybe the real problem lies with what the hosts are saying, and not Media Matters.
RightWingWatch is a great Media Matters-type blog that tracks the Religious Right.
www.rightwingwatch.org
We have seen this soooo many times from the Left and their goon squads. Progressives just don't want to hear white people.
Well over 90% of the stories that Media Matters have done have been attacks on Fox News. The remaining less than 10% of the stories they have ever done in their existance have been about all the rest of the news media. Anybody see any bias here?
Actually, the attacks on Fox News are par for the course for the partisan, left-wing mainstream news media.
The hatred for Fox News and those who watch it are par for the course for the partisan, left-wing mainstream news media.
The thing that differentiates Media Matters is that they are using our tax dollars to carry out their jihad against the closest thing to an unbiased news network that we've got.
HA!! Rupert had better save that powder for dealing with more significant issues across the pond. NewsCorp stock took a 4% dive yesterday... http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WO...
(CNN) -- Britain's News of the World newspaper and its parent company News International will likely be seriously damaged by the phone-hacking scandal, analysts say.
Experts are divided, though, on how the paper's owner, media magnate Rupert Murdoch, will weather the storm.
News International also owns the Sun, the Times and the Sunday Times in Britain. Murdoch's media empire also encompasses Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and Harper Collins publishers in the United States.
Journalists at News of the World, a tabloid that is the world's top-selling English-language newspaper, have been accused of hacking into the mobile phone account of missing British teenager Milly Dowler, intercepting messages in search of news.
They then allegedly deleted messages to keep her mailbox from filling up, giving her family and friends false hope that the schoolgirl -- later found murdered -- was still alive.
Police also are investigating suggestions the paper -- known for its exposes of celebrities and politicians -- may have targeted the relatives of other high profile crime victims, including at least one of those killed in the 2005 London bombings.
Fox News must be silenced, and Progressives everywhere support Media Matters and anyone else who is working to shut them down.
Once the sloping-forehead sheeple in flyover country are no longer fed a diet of Fox News lies they will stop voting against their own interests and begin to elect the Progressive politicians who will usher in an era of social justice and equality for all.
There is no room in this country for a media empire built on fear and lies. Free speech is OK up to a point, but dangerous fascists like Fox News should not be allowed to spew their garbage. They must be shut down, hopefully jailed.
Then we will have the Progressive future we all deserve.
MM can do as the please but they should not get money from the government. This is straight forward.
Clearly, MM is having an effect on Faux. Otherwise, Faux would not be acting like a wounded animal in a cage. Poor Faux, poor GOP/TP. Apparently they know their *** is up and the USA is on to them. Not to mention the beating they are taking in the UK.
Murdoch’s U.K. news operation admits to phone hacking.
No help from POLITICO or Drudge on this story but a nice story on Media Matters.
Good thing Murdoch's operations are not hacking any phones in America.
I was wrong.
DRUDGE HAS THIS...
MEDIA WAR OF THE CENTURY!
Nothing from Politico ON THE MEDIA WAR OF THE CENTURY.
WHY????????
FOX "NEWS" IS A POLITICAL OPERATION--CERTAINLY
Fox News run by Roger Ailes and modeled after Ailes's work for Nixon is nothing but simply a political Republican organization masquerading as a "news" organization! If you still doubt this assertion, take a little time to read RollingStone's June expose' of Roger Ailes. You will be amazed.
There is no problem with Media Matters having their continuing war against Fox News. The problem is that they are doing this while claiming a non-profit status. Claiming this status while clearly being a political entity is in violation of the law.
Based on past practices this administration will not pursue Media Matters and enforce the law. We have seen the Justice Department declare that civil rights statutes will not be enforced to protect non-minorities. We have seen ongoing trials of foreign terrorists in military courts stopped in attempts to bring the trials into civilian courts which would preclude much of the evidence allowed in a military trial. We have seen leather-jacketed, club wielding thugs intimidating voters have their sentences dropped, we have seen non-enforcement of immigration laws and a determination to stop states from enforcing immigration laws.
The prejudice is bad enough, but, the most damning example is when members of this administration conspire to send thousands of assault weapons to narco-terrorists in Mexico in an insane plan to expect that they could be traced.
No matter what your political persuasion, this inconsistent, erratic and incompetent enforcement of the law should be troubling.
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