Posted on 03/02/2005 10:37:24 AM PST by AZ_Cowboy
In response to what some consider conservative dominance in the arena of media watchdogs, a new organization was launched Tuesday in an effort to keep an eye on the other side.
Progressive luminaries praised the debut of Media Justice, launched by author Damian Brach, as, "a quantum leap toward eradicating the pernicious Right Wing bias that permeates television, radio, newspaper, magazine, wire service and Internet news today."
Filmmaker Michael Moore, actor Alec Baldwin and singer Linda Ronstadt were among hundreds of guests attending a gala unveiling of the new enterprise in Washington, D.C. Tuesday night, ushering in Brach's efforts to, "bring civility back to political discourse by being as brilliant as Bush is moronic."
Media Justice's opening salvo was aimed at Fox News anchor, managing editor and chief Washington correspondent Brit Hume, demanding his immediate resignation for what Brach called, "Hume's deliberate and hatefully inconsistent use of past and present participles, which clearly demonstrate an ideologically-driven Right-Wing political agenda."
According to Media Justice's detailed critique of more than five days of Fox News programming between Feb. 22 and Feb. 28, 2005, Brach and his research team catalogued more than 30 uses of the words 'had,' 'has', and 'have' by Hume, breaking down his usage of the words based on the political leanings of the subjects in his reports.
"The data prove an absolute bias against progressives," concluded Brach. "Our research clearly shows that Hume was 15% more likely to use a past participle when referencing progressives, while present participles were applied 9% more often in reference to extreme Right-Wing ideologues. This is outrageous and in the name of professional journalism, Brit Hume should resign immediately."
Joining Brach in his call for Hume's resignation was broadcaster Ed Schultz, the newly minted Fargo, North Dakota-based progressive phoneme whose syndicated radio program draws tens of hundreds of listeners each week.
"Brit Hume is the Machiavelli of extremist politics, and good old-fashioned Midwest common horse sense says it's time for this Rasputin of the Right Wing to step down from his Svengali perch in the news media," said Schultz. "It's only a small step from this sort of Rasputin-esque Svengalian Machiavellism to dog shooting, wife beating and cussing out your kids in church parking lots."
Brach, heir to the Brach Candy fortune, first gained notoriety in 1997 with his best-selling book 'Parsing Principles: How the Clinton Campaign Hoodwinked America.' He went on to join President Bush's 2000 campaign as Delaware Field Director, but denounced Bush and then-senior advisor Karl Rove in 2001 after being passed over for a senior-level appointment in the administration.
The subsequent publication of Brach's second novel, entitled, 'Bushwacked: How the Bush Campaign Hoodwinked America,' went on to sell twice as many copies as his first, and spent seven weeks atop the New York Times best seller list.
In his second book, Brach detailed how Bush, Rove, advisor Ed Gillespie and other top campaign operatives, "deliberately deceived Americans on the gravity of transposed consonants in the debate on national security."
"It was common knowledge that Bush made creamed corn out of the word 'nuclear,'" wrote Brach. "But Rove and Gillespie not only wished the problem away, they did so with the full knowledge that this butchery would continue without the disinfecting sunshine that would definitively tag Bush and sink his chances for winning the White House."
As for his future plans, Brach said he'll work to keep the feet of other conservative media figures to the fire. Foremost among his targets is broadcaster Sean Hannity, who hosts a radio program based out of New York.
"Sean Hannity deliberately distorted Howard Dean's position when he trotted out that discredited non-quote from the Kansas fundraiser," said Brach, a reference to Dean's Feb. 26 appearance at a private event in Lawrence, Kan.
During the event, which was closed to the media but could be overheard by reporters because it was held outdoors, Dean told the gathering that Democrats have a chance to attract moderate Republicans to the party. "This is a struggle of good and evil, and we're the good," said Dean, according to the Lawrence Journal-World .
Some, including Hannity, felt Dean's remark implied that Republicans were evil because Dean called Democrats, "the good." But Brach said Hannity's conclusion, "shows staggering intellectual bankruptcy unparalleled in contemporary media."
"For Sean Hannity to somehow connect the dots and claim that Howard Dean thinks Republicans are evil is nothing short of slander," said Brach. "Everyone with a room temperature IQ or better knows the difference between Howard Dean's words and Howard Dean's heart. Hannity should resign immediately and stop misinforming Americans."
Interesting Take on MediaMatters, oops, I mean Media Justice.
Yup, real media watchdog all right...only with a mission and names associated I humbly submit that the euphanism ought to be known as "watchwolf"!
Anybody else see any parallels between this two-and-a-half year old spoof and MM now making a ginormous deal out of 110 seconds of airtime between Rush’s ‘phony soldiers’ comment and then referencing a phony soldier? If this is best they can come up with, they must be really hurtin’.
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