MoveOn.org Targets AP's Fournier for Alleged Pro-McCain Bias

The popular, if controvesial, liberal activist group MoveOn.org today targeted an email campaign at Associated Press executives and the AP Washington bureau chief Ron Fournier after what it termed yet another Fournier attack on Barack Obama.

Fournier's article on Obama's selection of Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate gained wide linkage at the Drudge Report, Hot Air and numerous other conservative sites, while it was panned on liberal blogs such as DailyKos and Talking Points Memo.

The MoveOn rallying cry to its members included the following. The full Fournier article follows after that.

"Today, the Associated Press (whose articles are published in thousands of newspapers nationwide) wrote a story about Barack Obama's vice presidential pick that sounded more like right-wing FOX than an unbiased news organization. Under the headline "Biden pick shows lack of confidence," the AP wrote: 'The candidate of change went with the status quo. In picking Sen. Joe Biden to be his running mate, Barack Obama sought to shore up his weakness--inexperience in office and on foreign policy...He picked a 35-year veteran of the Senate--the ultimate insider...The Biden selection is the next logistical step in an Obama campaign that has become more negative...'

"This isn't an isolated incident for the AP reporter who wrote this story, Ron Fournier--who was recently appointed as the AP's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief. Media watchdog group Media Matters wrote a report showing that Fournier's presidential coverage has consistently smeared Democrats and favored John McCain....

"A congressional investigation recently uncovered an email Fournier sent to Karl Rove in 2004, telling him to 'Keep up the fight.' Plus, it was recently revealed that Fournier talked to top McCain campaign operatives in 2007 about being a senior McCain political adviser! Given all this, Fournier has an obligation to the public to show that he's not a partisan McCain supporter.

"But during the 2008 primary, Fournier wrote what amounted to a bunch of smear jobs on Barack Obama and the Clintons....Meanwhile, Media Matters could only find one negative piece Fournier wrote about Republicans during the entire primary--and that was trashing Mitt Romney for beating John McCain in Michigan! (Fournier called McCain's loss 'a defeat for authenticity in politics' and glowingly called McCain 'the man who spoke hard truths.' Seriously! That's unbiased journalism?)"

Soros/Media Matters Want To Control Airwaves

Have no fear fellow citizens, Media Matters For America is going to protect you from hearing “hate speech” on your radio.

As many here know, Media Matters is run by the professional propaganda hack David Brock.

Mr. Brock jumps on any chance to try to control free speech in this country. And the “nappy-headed” Imus incident is proving to be no exception.

But as Media Matters for America has extensively documented, bigotry and hate speech targeting, among other characteristics, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and ethnicity continue to permeate the airwaves through personalities such as Glenn Beck, Neal Boortz, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage, Michael Smerconish, and John Gibson…

In wake of CBS Decision David Brock Calls for ‘Broader Conversation’ on bigotry and sexism in the media

In other words, Media Matters For America is just another front for the Democrat Party.

And since Media Matters is a 501c3 taxpayer supported “charity” we even have the privilege of paying for their attempts at censorship.

http://tinyurl.com/6mrhw6

Sweetness & Light
sweetness-light.com

On April 24, O’Reilly told viewers of “The O’Reilly Factor” that Soros and several other wealthy radicals were helping to fund Media Matters — which says it is dedicated to “correcting conservative misinformation” in the U.S. media — by donating money to a foundation that in turn contributed to the Web site.

Media Matters countered that while Soros’ Open Society Institute (OSI) did contribute to the foundation, the Tides foundation, and Tides gave Media Matters more than $1 million in 2005, the OSI funds were specifically earmarked for two other beneficiaries. “Soros has never given money to Media Matters, either directly or through another organization,” the Web site stated.

On April 26, O’Reilly responded.

“The vile Media Matters outfit is denying receiving funding from any of George Soros’ outfits,” he told viewers.

“Well, that is a total lie. As we laid out for you, the smear Web site received more than a million dollars from the Tides Foundation alone in 2005, and just by coincidence, Soros’ Open Society Institute donated more than a million dollars to Tides in 2005. Figure it out.”

CNN Connection:

http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2001/04/02/daily30.html?jst=s_cn_hl

>>> The Washington Post reported Turner and an investor group that includes international financier George Soros signed a $225 million deal on Tuesday to buy out Gusinsky.<<<<

April 4, 2001
Ted Turner confirms Russian television network buy

Turner Ventures International, an investment vehicle formed by CNN Founder Ted Turner, confirmed it has reached an agreement with Vladimir Guzinsky, the owner of Russia’s only independent television network, to buy a share of NTV.

Pending the successful negotiation of a similar contract with Gazprom and Gazprom-Media, which took over NTV on April 2, the agreement would ensure the future of the Russian television networks NTV, TNT and NTV+ as free and independent media companies, Turner Ventures said.

“While we are disappointed with the recent disruptive developments regarding NTV, we look forward with enthusiasm to finalizing an agreement with Gazprom and Gazprom-Media that will ensure the ongoing independence of NTV,” Turner said in a written statement. “In earlier negotiations with Gazprom, we both agreed that no one party should have control of NTV and we are pursuing that course. Our goal is to secure the financial underpinnings of the company and establish a mechanism for growing the business in order to strengthen NTV’s prominence and scope throughout Russia.”

The Washington Post reported Turner and an investor group that includes international financier George Soros signed a $225 million deal on Tuesday to buy out Gusinsky.

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http://www.indymedia.org/en/2004/03/110687.shtml

Indymedia.org team in merger talks with CBS/Viacom
George Soros, CEO of Indymedia.org ltd has begun merger talks with the CBS/Viacom News Network to help bring together the Vibrant Staff of the Independant News Network with the resources and Global Consumer Reach of the CBS news network. This follows a meeting of the IMC Board of Directors and key Indymedia shareholders where it was decided that Indymedia needed to branch out from its traditional Liberal readership demographic to encompass more mainstream news interests and readerships....

http://sf.indymedia.org/uploads/cbs60minskullandbones.wmv

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Buffett, Soros Increase Their Comcast, Time Warner Cable Stakes

Feb. 15 (Bloomberg) — Billionaire investors Warren Buffett and George Soros increased their holdings of U.S. cable television companies, taking advantage of declines in stock prices to buy shares of the industry’s top two operators.

Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. doubled its stake in Comcast Corp., the world’s largest cable-television operator, to 10 million shares in the fourth quarter, the investment holding company said in a filing yesterday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The stake was valued at $328.4 million as of Dec. 31, the filing said.

Soros Fund Management LLC purchased 2.6 million shares of Time Warner Inc., operator of the No. 2 U.S. cable business, according to a filing with the SEC. Those shares were valued at $50.5 million as of Dec. 31, according to the filing. New York- based Soros Fund Management reported no holdings of Time Warner during the third quarter.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1320747/posts#27

Dems plan $40M hit on McCain

Wealthy Democrats are preparing a four-month, $40 million media campaign centered on attacks on Sen. John McCain. And it will be led by David Brock, the former investigative reporter who first gained fame in the 1990s as a right-wing, anti-Clinton journalist.

The planned campaign is the product of a shakeup in the top ranks of the struggling independent Democratic groups. Brock, now best known as the ex-conservative founder of the liberal group Media Matters, last month quietly assumed the chairmanship of what’s expected to be the main vehicle for independent Democratic attacks on McCain, now called Progressive Media USA.

The move comes after the groups that had been expected to spearhead attacks on McCain — the Fund for America and Progressive Media USA’s previous incarnation, the Campaign to Defend America — failed to raise the money needed to dent McCain’s armor.

“We’re a little behind where we need to be,” he said.

But after a dinner Tuesday night at the Manhattan apartment of liberal megadonor George Soros, at which Brock and consultant Paul Begala laid out the group’s plans, Brock said his group now has commitments worth $7.5 million — almost twice what the Fund for America is expected to report raising in the first quarter of this year. He said the group would begin running ads before it meets its $40 million goal.

Brock suggested that the group could do the work of a press corps that, he says, has “fallen down on the job” when it comes to McCain.

Brock’s most recent book is called “Free Ride: John McCain and the Media.”

Brock wouldn’t detail Progressive Media USA’s strategy, and stressed that — as required by his group’s nonprofit status — the spending would be on a mix of direct electoral politics and issue ads with no direct connection to the race.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0408/9514.html

Horowitz’s new book, The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Have Seized Control of the Democratic Party (Nelson Current, 2006)

HOROWITZ: Media Matters is run by David Brock, who made a career, by his own account, out of lying and smearing people.

I have never encountered a group with lower ethical standards than Media Matters. Soros and John Podesta, who was [former President Bill] Clinton’s chief of staff and runs the Center for American Progress, set this group up and funded it. It is now — they’ve opened a new office in Colorado. This is part of a Soros plan to take over the political structure of the United States, to end the war on terror as we know it, and to, as he puts it, burst the bubble of American supremacy. These are people — this is really the left-wing agenda, that America is the problem, that America has to be defeated. But now, it has behind it — it’s not just the [filmmaker] Michael Moores and [anti-war activist] Cindy Sheehans. It has behind it a billionaire who has put together the most powerful juggernaut in the history of American politics.

He’s (Soros) also said that the capitalist system is the number one problem. Soros, when he was young, the family name was Schwartz. It was changed to Soros in 1936. And when he was a young man in fascist Hungary, he came under the protection of one of the fascist leaders of Hungary, and they went around — he was a young man, to be said in his defense, there — but he went around confiscating Jewish property prior to sending the Jews who owned it to the gas chambers. Now, he was asked on 60 Minutes by [co-host] Steve Kroft if he felt any guilt over that, and he said none whatsoever.

This is a man who is used to power and is a megalomaniac. I mean he said his ambition is to be the conscience of the world. How mania — megano — megalomaniacal is that? He wants to be the conscience of the world, that means he wants — that is the socialist idea, that they are going to reorder all of us, and make us, you know, create God’s kingdom on earth by political means. That’s why they’re dangerous.

Online Slime Machine Media Matters Co-Founded by Hillary Clinton
Tuesday, October 02, 2007

By John Gibson

At the Daily Kos convention — a gathering of the far, far left — Hillary Clinton said the following:

“We are certainly better prepared and more focused on, you know, taking our arguments, and making them effective, and disseminating them widely... in a lot of the new progressive infrastructure, institutions that I helped to start and support like Media Matters and Center for American Progress.”

She went on to explain that when she famously claimed there was a “vast right-wing conspiracy,” she didn’t realize it wasn’t a conspiracy but just people on the Internet making political arguments out in the open. And she decided she could do the same thing.

I have a pile of letters from Media Matters and representatives of George Soros demanding I stop telling lies about them. The truth is: It was always the truth and the lies are in the denials.

http://tinyurl.com/5cqcqt

Soros-Funded Media Matters Attacks Conservatives

Take a Close Look at the Liberal Watchdog That Recently Smeared Limbaugh

Media Matters for America (MMFA) was created in spring 2004 in time for the presidential election campaign. Funded by an estimated $2 million in contributions, the group promotes itself as an online watchdog protecting the public from the deceptions and errors of the mass media that has been bullied or blinded by conservatives.

In fact, MMFA is a cog in the growing machine of “progressive” activist and advocacy non-profits, including the online radical agitators at MoveOn.org, the liberal policy wonks at the Center for American Progress and the Democratic get-out-the-vote forces at America Coming Together. These groups were obsessed with defeating President George W. Bush in the 2004 election. Having failed, they have grown increasingly angry and determined.

MMFA has a staff of 59 and is headquartered at 1625 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W. in Washington, D.C. MMFA employees have at various times worked for Al Gore, John Edwards, Barney Frank, Wesley Clark, the National Organization for Women (NOW), the Center for American Progress, Greenpeace, the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (recently rechristened the American Association for Justice) and the Alliance for Justice.

Led by a Confessed Liar

MMFA is the creation of David Brock, a self-described “hit man” and self-confessed liar and gossip peddler. Brock’s own past casts a shadow over his current self-proclaimed dedication to truth-telling. At one time or another. Brock has viciously attacked the Clintons and the Bushes, Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas, Rush Limbaugh and National Public Radio, the New York Times and the Walt Street Journal. Each time he recants a prior assault, he lunges out at a new political enemy.

Brock puts himself in the position of someone who says, “I’m a liar. Believe what I tell you.” Reviewing Brock’s 2002 memoir, Blinded by the. Right, journalist Christopher Hitchens wrote, “I would say without any hesitation that he [Brock] is incapable of recognizing the truth, let alone of telling it. The whole book is an exercise in self-love, disguised as an exercise in self-abnegation.” Cultural critic Camille Paglia, a left-leaning Democrat, ridiculed Brock’s confession: “Behold, the writhing snake pit of amoral media ambition!”

http://tinyurl.com/6pl33k

October 4, 2007 12:00 AM

The Real Media Matters
David Brock’s political operation.

By Byron York

Editor’s note: The controversy over Rush Limbaugh’s “phony soldiers” remark has brought new prominence to Media Matters for America, the left-wing media watchdog founded by former right-wing media star David Brock. Media Matters is an avowedly political institution, part of a group of institutions the Center for American Progress, MoveOn.org, and others that have become increasingly important in Democratic politics. In 2004, Byron York revealed the origins of Media Matters and the big Democratic party donors who helped Brock bring it to life.

Susie Tompkins Buell was very, very impressed with David Brock. A California businesswoman who co-founded the fashion giant Esprit and went on to become a major donor to Democratic causes, Buell was in Washington last fall attending a meeting of friends and supporters of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton when she met Brock, the self-described former “right-wing hit man.” Buell listened as Brock, now a defector to “progressive” causes, presented plans for Media Matters for America, his new Internet-based project to monitor and criticize conservative media. In a short time, she was sold.

“It just made so much sense to me,” Buell recalls. “All this garbage that’s coming out of the Right is like the worst contamination of this country. . . . He brought so much understanding of what goes on over there. He’s very articulate, and very, very bright.”

After Brock’s presentation, Buell introduced herself and offered to hold a fundraiser for him at her home in San Francisco. Brock accepted, and at that gathering Buell introduced him to other potential contributors, whose donations would become part of the more than $2 million Brock has so far raised for Media Matters.

Launched in early May, the organization says its purpose is to keep an eye on “conservative misinformation” in the American media. “Conservative misinformation,” according to the group’s mission statement, is defined as “news or commentary presented in the media that is not accurate, reliable, or credible, and that forwards the conservative agenda.” While in its first few weeks of operation Media Matters published attacks on the usual targets — Fox News, for example — Brock seems to be devoting particular energy to what he calls an “aggressive ad campaign” against radio host Rush Limbaugh.

In addition to a series of critiques on the group’s website, Brock has produced a television commercial attacking Limbaugh for comments he made about the Abu Ghraib prison-abuse scandal. Media Matters spent $100,000 to air the spot on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and a few other television outlets. Brock also commissioned Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin to conduct a survey on a variety of media issues, including perceptions of Limbaugh. Among other things, Garin found that a majority of those surveyed believe Limbaugh often presents views that are biased, “rather than impartial and balanced.” Garin also found that a large part of Limbaugh’s audience is politically conservative.

Conservatives — anyone, actually — might question whether such insights are worth whatever Brock paid for them, but the poll, together with Brock’s anti-Limbaugh television ad campaign, suggests that Media Matters is much more than a traditional media watchdog group. Indeed, it is probably more accurate to view Media Matters as part of the constellation of groups — the so-called “527” organizations, the voter-turnout group America Coming Together, John Podesta’s liberal think tank the Center for American Progress, MoveOn.org, liberal talk radio, and others — that have come together on the left in the last year or so, all aimed at electing a Democratic president this November.

Certainly some of Brock’s donors see it that way. Leo Hindery Jr., a cable-television executive who contributes to Democratic causes, says he sees Media Matters as part of a coordinated action on the left. “I thought this was a piece of the puzzle,” Hindery says. “There are people like Mike Lux [a Democratic consultant who runs an important ad agency], who are into the strategy point of view, there’s Podesta, who’s into the think tank/intellectual side, and I think the third part of the triangle is David’s initiative.”

Brock’s donors read like a Who’s Who of those who have financed the new, activist Left. Besides Buell and Hindery, donors to Media Matters include Peter Lewis, chairman of Progressive Corp., who has contributed more than $7 million to the 527s in partnership with his friend, the financier George Soros. There is Democratic activist Bren Simon, wife of shopping-mall tycoon Mel Simon, New York psychologist and donor Gail Furman, California philanthropist James Hormel, and others. Two anti-Bush organizations, the New Democratic Network and MoveOn.org, have also contributed to Brock’s project.

In addition to his donor list, Brock’s staff at times resembles that of a political campaign. In the group’s K Street offices, there are a number of veterans of Democratic causes. One Brock aide did opposition research for the recent presidential campaign of Sen. John Edwards; another did the same thing for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee; yet another worked on the Wesley Clark presidential campaign; another worked for Massachusetts Democratic representative Barney Frank, and so on.

http://tinyurl.com/2kytve

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