Monday, February 13, 2012

Media Matters, The White House & The MSM

The Daily Caller is running an expose on Media Matters. The lowlights from the first installment -

1. Media Matters coordinates weekly with the White House.

2. Media Matters is being run by David Brock, a paranoid manic depressive who supplements his meds with cocaine.

3. The Soros-funded Media Matters plans to spend $20 million influencing news coverage in 2012.

4. Media Matters targets reporters who do not report their spin, orchestrating massive negative e-mail campaigns to the reporter.

5. Media Matters targets company's that advertise on conservative programs. They have successfully gotten Imus and Lou Dobbs fired and may well have played a roll in Glen Beck's departure from Fox.

6. Media Matters has more than a few partners in the media:

“The entire progressive blogosphere picked up our stuff,” says a Media Matters source, “from Daily Kos to Salon. Greg Sargent [of the Washington Post] will write anything you give him. He was the go-to guy to leak stuff.”

“If you can’t get it anywhere else, Greg Sargent’s always game,” agreed another source with firsthand knowledge. . .

“The HuffPo guys were good, Sam Stein and Nico [Pitney],” remembered one former staffer. “The people at Huffington Post were always eager to cooperate, which is no surprise given David’s long history with Arianna [Huffington].”

“Jim Rainey at the LA Times took a lot of our stuff,” the staffer continued. “So did Joe Garofoli at the San Francisco Chronicle. We’ve pushed stories to Eugene Robinson and E.J. Dionne [at the Washington Post]. Brian Stelter at the New York Times was helpful.”

“Ben Smith [formerly of Politico, now at BuzzFeed.com] will take stories and write what you want him to write,” explained the former employee, whose account was confirmed by other sources. Staffers at Media Matters “knew they could dump stuff to Ben Smith, they knew they could dump it at Plum Line [Greg Sargent’s Washington Post blog], so that’s where they sent it.”

Smith, who refused to comment on the substance of these claims, later took to Twitter to say that he has been critical of Media Matters.

Why am I not surprised by any of this, including the fact that the White House and Media Matters are in bed together. Expect that to be studiously ignored by the news media. Regardless, if this is only Part I of the DC's expose, the follow-on stuff ought to be pretty juicy.

4 comments:

dave in boca said...

Facebook tells me to wish you Happy Birthday! Also, Pam Geller had virtually the same stuff from the DC, but was less thorough and didn't provide a link [I get it anyway, but hadn't received DC Monday morning yet....

Wish I was 51 again!!

dave in boca said...

BTW, read the whole article in DC linked in your blog. I recall Tucker C masterminding the defrocking of the Ezra Klein back-channel site where the Goebbels-of-the-left would get their stories straight before spreading agitprop across the MSM & blogosphere. Forget its name late at night.

Of all the miscreants mentioned in the DC piece, the only one I know well is John Podesta, and he is actually a semi-decent chap.....

Most leftists are amped up maniacs like Brock, only even uglier...... The distaff side, especially......

GW said...

Hi Dave. Thanks for the visit and the birthday wish. As to Podesta, I have never met him, but what I have seen of him, he seems one of the less detestable of the left. Brock seems to be off his rocker - but then again, so does the wild stuff put out by Media Matters.

J.P. Travis said...

Since Media Matters is clearly a partisan organization, why does the IRS allow them to file as a 501(C)(3)? Not that I care, but it says something about their honesty. Your website is much classier than mine, where my headline was simply, "Media Matters sucks"."