With Weigel Exposed, To Whom Will Media Matters Turn For a ‘Conservative’ Source?

It’s always disheartening to see someone from your own camp take a bad hit as Dave Weigel has.  The Washington Post blogger, who was hired to provide coverage “inside the conservative movement and the Republican Party,”resigned over recently leaked emails from the Journolist listserv, in which he used some less than flattering language in his personal commentary about many of the people he was covering.

While I’ve always been respectful of Weigel’s insights and his writing, I would be being less than honest however if I’d said there wasn’t something about his posts that I’d also found worrisome.  The revelation of the Journolist emails only strengthened my gut feeling, especially when I saw how nasty the rhetoric was in the emails.  Frankly, that part surprised even me.

It’s not that I wasn’t open-minded to the views that Weigel has always presented; I could appreciate that he has criticisms of the right.  But as someone assigned to provide conservative insight, his commentary sometimes struck me as being penned more from a liberal viewpoint than that of a conservative or libertarian one.  It almost seemed more targeted to pleasing Media Matters’ readers.  And since I already follow a number of liberal journalists to balance out the material I read from conservative and libertarian leaning authors, Media Matters’ tone isn’t exactly what I’m usually looking for.  But perhaps there was a reason his posts sometimes seemed that way to me.

Weigel’s writings did provide a relatively unbiased dose of insight some of the time, whether right-leaning or not.  Here at Big Journalism, we’ve even referenced his posts on a few occasions, especially in circumstances when a conservative perspective was so very needed. For example, when stories surfaced attempting to paint James O’Keefe as a racist, it was Weigel who – at the time still writing for the Washington Independent — dug in deeper to clarify his previous remarks and revealed the true story behind the event that liberal “journalists” falsely portrayed as supposed proof of their racist claims.  Multiple publications went on to issue corrections to their stories shortly thereafter.

From a more unbiased perspective, Weigel wrote this post about the March incident that involved Democratic representatives Carson, Cleaver and Lewis outside the Capitol building on the day of a key health care vote.  In that post, Weigel debates the evidence over whether a racial slur was hurled at the Congressmen by tea party activists.  And while he commented that he was “ready to call this round for conservatives,” referring to the lack of due diligence on the part of the mainstream media that fuels the bias about which conservatives complain, he also provided examples of some very unflattering behavior exhibited by other tea party activists at that rally the prior day.  I know it didn’t make him popular with most Tea Party activists, but I found his writing to seem genuine on the matter, flattering or not.

There are people today who may criticize Weigel’s writings and say his posts weren’t right-leaning enough, pointing to the fact that the blogger was hired by the Washington Post to provide the conservative and Republican perspectives.  When you review the entire body of Weigel’s writings, both at the Washington Independent and the Post, it was always very clear to me that he was hardly close to that of a conservative or libertarian slant.  Personally, I always sensed a liberal tinge in his content and in the way it was presented.

But I don’t necessarily take issue with any of that.  Journalists can still report information truthfully and offer a perspective that happens to lean a particular direction – as long as the content provides information of value that is factual and accurate, that’s all I care about.  I can peel back the leanings if I want and simply rely on the facts provided.  (Then again, sometimes I want the left or right perspective as part of a balance of multiple sources I’m reading). But for those who seem surprised by Weigel’s apparent liberal leanings in the wake of these leaked emails, I think he always leaned this way in his coverage.

What’s more disturbing to me are the possibilities that always concerned me from the very start.  Now that his apparent real views have been exposed, to whom was Weigel targeting some of his previous posts, really?  Is it possible that some were serving more of a liberal purpose than others recognized? It is not so much the content or the perspective of his writings that have ever been of any concern for me.  It’s been the distribution of and references to that content.

Media Matters frequently refers to David Weigel’s posts as a backup source, and has done so for quite some time.  It is this relationship that has always given me pause in relying upon Weigel’s information entirely.  Simply visit the Media Matters website and search “Weigel”; as of this writing, 71 matching entries over three pages are displayed.  I personally checked approximately 55 of those and found all to use Weigel as a favorable source upon which to rely for making key points in Media Matters’ posts.  Many of those references aren’t just little links over to posts either; they are frequently very supportive endorsements of Weigel’s writings.  There is without a doubt a very heavy reliance upon Weigel on the part of Media Matters as the sort of “conservative voice of reason” – the source that allows George Soros’ paid hacks and non-entities to imply, “Look, see? Even your own guy doesn’t support you; even your own guy has this to say about it…”

Here’s just one example of many such exchanges between Media Matters and Weigel:

Karl Frisch ends this Media Matters post with this call to action:  “Weigel’s entire piece is well worth a read, as is his follow-up on the emails he received following its posting.”

Plenty of other similar examples exist, where both Media Matters and Weigel seemingly disparage, or in some cases mock, various subjects in a collaborative fashion (or at least from the same viewpoint).  Other than Sarah Palin, subjects also include shared jabs at Andrew Breitbart, Byron York, Matt Drudge, and Fox News, just to name a few.  How does agreement happen that often when both are said to be on opposite sides of the political spectrum?

Given the history of Media Matters’ typical behavior, this is not an organization known to utilize conservative authors in any fashion other than to mock them directly.  One might try to argue that Media Matters saw Weigel’s writings as a trustworthy, unbiased conservative source to help boost their own credibility.  But there would be two issues with such an argument.

First, despite what liberals might claim, there are plenty of other right-leaning writers who offer unbiased facts on many of the very subjects Media Matters has covered, so why must their righty source so often (seemingly always) be Weigel?  Secondly, Weigel’s writings, as we’ve seen, have not always been all that conservative. That sort of defeats the purpose for Media Matters.

This is why I was always suspicious of relying upon Weigel’s posts.  Not because I lack the respect for him as a writer, or because of his content or his views – on the contrary.  I just never knew when his posts might show up as the justifying source or fodder for a Media Matters mocking piece.  And Media Matters is one organization for which I have zero respect.

Now, this of course is speculation.  I’m certainly not one to definitively determine whether there is any direct collaboration between the two, or if it’s simply nothing more than the fact that Media Matters happens to like Weigel’s writing and refers to it — a lot.  But what remains a constant in the back of my mind is the history of this organization.

As I’ve detailed previously, Media Matters was a spawn of Rob Stein’s Democracy Alliance, with DA’s key funders for its new independent media outlet being George Soros and John Podesta.  What many people don’t realize is the type of recruitment in which this organization has engaged since its inception.  Media Matters specializes in finding party turncoats, and in some cases, it’s helped to accelerate some peoples’ turns for them.  Its CEO, David Brock, authored the book, Blinded by the Right: the Conscience of an Ex-Conservative. Now speaking as a former conservative, Brock has claimed he was chastised by the right because of his views, including the fact that he is gay.  But others have long said that it was Brock who began to create distrust amongst his own circles, saying one thing to one audience, while doing another and seemingly catering to the left to spite the very causes he was supposed to be supporting.

Like Brock, other turncoat recruits have found a home at Media Matters:  Eric Burns, once a Republican strategist who worked for Gov. George W. Bush, switched and joined the Democratic Party in 2002.  He’s currently President of Media Matters and recently appeared in Chris Matthews’ tea party documentary, ”The Rise of the New Right.”  Karl Frisch, once a Republican political consultant who worked on Republican Congressional campaigns in the late 1990’s and McCain’s 2000 Presidential campaign, switched to working for California Democratic Party candidates later in 2000 and then Howard Dean’s Presidential campaign in 2003-2004, followed by various press/communications positions with Democratic senators until 2006.  He is now a major contributor to Media Matters.

Others include former Republican Party staff/aides who, upon experiencing their own PR scandal or crisis, were eventually recruited into Media Matters.  Funny though, none of these bios makes any mention of their previous Republican lives.

Combining this hiring history with the outfit’s obvious fondness for Weigel’s posts, who knows?  Perhaps Media Matters has been hoping all along something like this recent turn of events might happen.  It could certainly open up the door for them to try and recruit Weigel.  They have been especially silent on the issue these last few days.  It will certainly be interesting to see where this ousted “conservative” blogger ends up in future weeks.