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.”
Soros is unable to travel to many European countries as they have standing warrants for his arrest ,, he needs that treatment here in the US.
On FOX News this morning Norman R. Augustine the retired chairman and chief executive officer of the Lockheed Martin Corporation, the nation’s largest defense contractor,told Neal Cavuto:
“Airpower alone will not be successful and boots on ground will be needed.”
Obama: No U.S. Forces on the Ground in Libya . . . Except for Those Guys.
By Jim Geraghty
Posted on March 23, 2011 3:46 PM
NPR: “President Obama said Wednesday it was ‘absolutely’ out of the question that U.S. ground forces would be used in Libya.”
How would the president describe the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit? There is no such thing as a purely air-based combat mission; planes have problems and pilots end up on the ground, and then U.S. forces have to end up on the ground, hopefully briefly, to rescue them and bring them home safely. Ask Scott O’Grady how much time you can spend on the ground while patrolling a no-fly zone.
Details on the recent rescue:
The Kearsarge then sent up two MV-22 Ospreys carrying Marine rescue teams. As they were en route, the Harriers dropped two laser-guided bombs near the crash site, apparently to keep Libyans on the ground from approaching the pilot.
With additional helicopters hovering overhead for security, one of the Ospreys landed and picked up the pilot. He was then taken aboard the Kearsarge.
The weapons systems officer was recovered by what U.S. officials described as Libyan opposition forces. He is safe, officials have said.
There are about 2,200 Marines off the shore of Libya right now. http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/262910
March 24, 2011
Are U.S. Troops Already on the Ground in Libya? | O’Reilly Factor
Special Guests | Col. David Hunt & Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer
RET. COL. DAVID HUNT, U.S. ARMY: Yes, absolutely. You’ve got British service been in there about three weeks ago and actually got captured and released. The French GIGN have been in there and our special forces and our U.S. intelligence operatives and their assets. We do not conduct operations like this, large scale air operations, without people on the ground. They have been very successful, very good, not a lot of contact with the rebels because you don’t know who to talk to. But, yes, we have got intel gathering and rescue guys and special operations guys on the ground, have had them for about 12 days.
O’REILLY: Now, do you agree with that, Col. Shaffer?
LT. COL. TONY SHAFFER, FORMER ARMY INTELLIGENCE OFFICER: Yes, I have heard from my sources — I got a call from one of my key sources on Monday and that’s exactly what’s going on. Let’s be really clear here. You have got to have these individuals doing what Dave just said, especially when you are talking about trying to protect, and the stated goal here, Bill, is humanitarian support. So you don’t want to have weapons hitting the wrong targets. So, Dave is very good on the fact that we have special operations guys sitting there with laser designators. Bill, you saw…
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/oreilly/transcript/are-us-troops-already-ground-libya#ixzz1HiPalxMr
media Matter is SOROS!!!!
Why someone doesn’t rid us of this stone in our shoe is beyond me.
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.
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That’s an interesting speculation. He seemed like a good guy but leaving his juicy position at Fox was a rather odd move. Could be that he was just quietly walked out the door.
Yet here dumbass Brock is providing on-the-record testimony to potentially hang himself. He goes as far as to brag about his intent to harm.
If FNC channel lawyers were smart, all they would have to do is wait for MM to circulate a demonstrable false report or two.
From the start MediaMatters has been nothing more than a bitchey blog run by a prissy prima dona.
Do they actually have a base that clicks in daily? I seem to know them only by press release and snarky quotes.
Sounds like an expensive enterprise. I wonder where he gets his money from.
Tear it down brick by brick. File lawsuit after lawsuit in friendly courts. Sue everyone from Brock to Olbermann to The View. Picket in front of Ezra Kleins house every weekend. Make it go viral.
Go after every whacko leftwing environmental group and name the EPA as co-defendents. Do the same with the FCC.
Don’t let up. Terrorize them and force them to spend their money. Hit the SEIU hard.
That’s what Reagan would do.
Media Matters may show us what the conservatives should have done to the MSM years ago. The “live and let live” approach of conservatives is because we are truly tolerant (you know, like the liberals claim to be), but it may ultimately be our undoing. On the other hand, I hope we never engage in the frothing, shrill, hatefulness that is the trademark of the radical left. It is a quandary.
You are correct, Sir (say it like Ed McMahon for the full effect).
Here is She Who Has Cloven Hooves in her own words.
You stopped short of dragging them out into the street with trudgeons.
It’s coming.
Sounds like a good case of Tortious interference.
Got to be some marine around who....
I just read Garrett’s most recent writing for National Journal. His story contains ‘Schumer responded’ and ‘Senior House GOP aides sniffed, Schumer’. Sounds like he does lean to the dark Side. Sad. I had thought he was pretty middle of the road.
Rupert ain’t gonna win on defense. News Corp better pick a target at MM and destroy it. Then go for another.
Hell hath no fury like a gay RINO being dragged out of the closet.
If I were going to launch a war against someone, Roger Ailes is about the last person I’d pick.
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