Posted on 03/26/2011 7:04:52 AM PDT by kristinn
The liberal group Media Matters has quietly transformed itself in preparation for what its founder, David Brock, described in an interview as an all-out campaign of “guerrilla warfare and sabotage” aimed at the Fox News Channel.
The group, launched as a more traditional media critic, has all but abandoned its monitoring of newspapers and other television networks and is narrowing its focus to Fox and a handful of conservative websites, which its leaders view as a political organizations and the “nerve center” of the conservative movement. The shift reflects the centrality of the cable channel to the contemporary conservative movement, as well as the loathing it inspires among liberals — not least among the donors who fund Media Matters’ staff of about 90, who are arrayed in neat rows in a giant war room above Massachusetts Avenue.
“The strategy that we had had toward Fox was basically a strategy of containment,” said Brock, Media Matters’ chairman and founder and a former conservative journalist, adding that the group’s main aim had been to challenge the factual claims of the channel and to attempt to prevent them from reaching the mainstream media.
The new strategy, he said, is a “war on Fox.”
In an interview and a 2010 planning memo shared with POLITICO, Brock listed the fronts on which Media Matters – which he said is operating on a $10 million-plus annual budget — is working to chip away at Fox and its parent company, News Corp. They include its bread-and-butter distribution of embarrassing clips and attempts to rebut Fox points but also a series of under-the-radar tactics.
Media Matters, Brock said, is assembling opposition research files not only on Fox’s top executives but on a series of midlevel officials. It has hired an activist who has led a successful campaign to press advertisers to avoid Glenn Beck’s show. The group is assembling a legal team to help people who have clashed with Fox file lawsuits for defamation, invasion of privacy or other causes. And it has hired two experienced reporters, Joe Strupp and Alexander Zaitchik, to dig into Fox’s operation and to help assemble a book on the network, due out in 2012 from Vintage/Anchor. (In the interest of full disclosure, Media Matters last month also issued a report criticizing “Fox and Friends” co-host Steve Doocy’s criticism of this reporter’s blog.)
Brock said Media Matters also plans to run a broad campaign against Fox’s parent company, News Corp., an effort which will most likely involve opening a United Kingdom arm in London to attack the company’s interests there. The group hired an executive from MoveOn.org to work on developing campaigns among News Corp. shareholders and is also looking for ways to turn regulators in the U.S., U.K., and elsewhere against the network.
The group will “focus on [News Corp. CEO Rupert] Murdoch and trying to disrupt his commercial interests — whether that be here or looking at what’s going on in London right now,” Brock said, referring to News Corp.’s — apparently successful — move to take a majority stake in the satellite broadcaster BSkyB.
SNIP
But Media Matters says its digging has begun to pay off. The group has trickled out a series of emails from Washington Bureau Chief Bill Sammon, leaks from inside the network, which show him, for instance, circulating a memo on “Obama’s references to socialism, liberalism, Marxism and Marxists.”
The leaks are part of a broader project to take advantage of internal dissent, Media Matters Executive Vice President Ari Rabin-Havt said.
“We made a list of every single person who works for Fox and tried to figure out who might be disgruntled and why, and we went out to try to meet them,” he said. “Clearly, somebody in that organization is giving us primary source documents.”
Media Matters, he said, is also conducting “opposition research” on a dozen or so “mid- and senior-level execs and producers,” a campaign style move that he and Brock said would simply involve recording their public appearances and digging into public records associated with them.
And Brock’s 2010 planning memo offers a glimpse at Media Matters’ shift from media critic to a new species of political animal.
“Criticizing Fox News has nothing to do with criticizing the press,” its memo says. “Fox News is not a news organization. It is the de facto leader of the GOP, and it is long past time that it is treated as such by the media, elected officials and the public.”
The commie-nazi left is alive and well and in power in Washington, D.C.
‘But Media Matters says its digging has begun to pay off. The group has trickled out a series of emails from Washington Bureau Chief Bill Sammon, leaks from inside the network, which show him, for instance, circulating a memo on “Obama’s references to socialism, liberalism, Marxism and Marxists.” ‘
There ARE references to all the above. Why doesn’t Media Matters want that discussed? Oh wait, they’re an arm of the DNC and don’t want the TRUTH told to the public.
Excuse me Mr. Brock, but is this what a purist journalist would call investigative reporting?
As I recall, Hillary bragged once upon a time that she helped create Media Matters.
Yea, and those e-mails were most likely given up by Major Garrett. Consider his appearance on the Morning Joe a few days ago with the comments he made.
Sounds like a declaration of war.
Anyone who does not believe that we are in a war, an honest-to-God bloodletting, is not really following events closely. This government has moved so sharply to the left the possibility that the Democrat Party will ever again return to sanity is minuscule.
Soros must be hurting from Becks outting of all his little minions working to destroy America.
I think it may be time for Fox legal eagle to start preparing massive lawsuits against the Soros Cabal.
Beck etc could be called whistle blowers. Soros is interested in retailiating against the truth seekers.
Mania Matters is just another communist front.
It is total communist at this point.
So David Brock has started his own Reichsministry of Information?
EGGActly!
I think Bill OReilly is auditioning for the Obama Administration’s spokesperson.
not one damned complaint from any talking head about obama surrendering our sovereignty to the un.
So how is that “civility” working out for Leftists? This War against Fox just demonstrates how the Left fears opposing perspectives and don’t want to live with any opposition at all.
Soros must be hurting from Becks outting of all his little minions working to destroy America.
Bingo.
In response, FOX ought to make sure every American knows who George Soros is, who he’s funding, all of his radical connections, and how it all links back to the Democrats.
They are going to try and blame the Libyans and claim the right wing hate speech hate radio encouraged the terrorist, and anyone that doesn't support Zippo supports the terrorist.
It's basically a repeat of what the Clinton's did with the OKC bombing in 95.
We need a Truth Matters to return the favor on Media Matters. David Brock has more skeletons in his closet than the killing fields of Cambodia.
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