Former Maryland Lt. Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is teaming up with Media Matters for America founder David Brock to form a new group to raise big bucks for Democrats in an effort to compete with Republicans.

Kennedy Townsend is remembered by conservatives for her role in pursuing Linda Tripp, the whistleblower in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. She has long since joined forces with Media Matters, the book-burners of our day, who seek to drive all shred of conservative political opinion out of public discourse.

Of course, Brock and Kennedy Townsend know how marginal their views are: they fully expect 2012 to be a “disaster” without more big money on the Democrat side:

Former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who is positioning herself to be a major player in the Democratic Party’s 2012 fundraising efforts, pledged that a new group she is forming will help Democrats “compete dollar to dollar” with Republicans over the next two years. Townsend has teamed up with David Brock, founder of the liberal media watchdog Web site, Media Matters, to form American Bridge, a group that aims to be a counterweight to right-leaning organizations such as American Crossroads and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which spent millions to support conservative candidates and causes in 2010.

Brock is known for his willingness to go to any lengths to pursue Fox News, while Media Matters has also been trying to become a partisan force by having its often dubious content picked up by outside media outlets. MMfA’s war on Fox has caused some to question the outlet’s tax-exempt status, according to the Washington Examiner: (more…)

Your money at work … attacking both truth and freedom. Why Is Media Matters a 501(c)(3)?

- New Video Suggests Media Matters Ignored Facts In Attempt to Smear Breitbart, Cover Up Pigford Fraud

This morning, Big Government posted video from an event at the National Press Club at which Faya Rose Touré (formerly Rose Sanders), an attorney from the $2.7 billion Pigford “black farmers” discrimination settlement, revealed major flaws in the claims process. Her statements support previous reporting by Big Government and Big Journalism–reporting which Media Matters ruthlessly and wrongly attacked as false.

The newly released video confirms much of what Pigford’s critics have been saying, destroying previous attempts by George Soros’s Big Labor-funded minions at Media Matters to hide the truth.

From Breitbart media’s earliest reporting on the Pigford settlement, Media Matters began recklessly hurling accusations of racism, and lying about Andrew Breitbart and others’ writing about the issue, while discounting facts now shown to be correct.

In hindsight, that appears to have been an orchestrated effort to suppress the truth behind Pigford and potentially keep the scandal from surfacing in mainstream media outlets.

It is an effort that has failed.

- Did Media Matters Collude With DOJ On Black Panther Story?

When news broke of alleged voter intimidation involving the New Black Panthers Party in the 2008 election, Media Matters for America (MMfA) launched a relentless push back against the charges, resulting in almost 8,000 MMfA site specific Google hits in which MMfA attacked virtually anyone who attempted to report on the controversy, while elevating any reporting that minimized it, or the Department of Justice’s decision to drop the case.

Meanwhile, a former MMfA Director of External Affairs, Xochitl Hinojosa, who had actually joined the Department of Justice in July of 2009 as a Public Affairs Specialist, took an active role in pushing back against the story from witin DOJ.

(more…)

Earlier today, a few of us Tea Party “sons of bitches” decided to call on the “debunked” progressive propagandists at Media Matters for America (MMFA) to ask them to produce their latest IRS 990 form–the tax document that non-profit organizations are required to file annually with the IRS to maintain their tax-free status.

Unlike other tax-exempt organizations that make their latest IRS filings easily available at their own websites (such as the Media Research Center, for example), MMFA apparently wants the public to find that information for itself. Since the most recent available IRS 990 filing from MMFA covers 2009, we decided to see if they had any more recent information to provide us.

By sheer chance, we happened to walk into the building as MMFA head honcho David Brock was walking in. He looked very uncomfortable. But he kindly sent a couple of goons–who by this time had brought their own video camera–to deliver a sheaf of papers. Sadly, it was just MMFA’s IRS 990 filing for 2009 all over again.

MMFA’s IRS 990 filings–for 2009 as for previous years–declare that its purpose is “TO NOTIFY ACTIVISTS, JOURNALISTS, PUNDITS AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC ABOUT INSTANCES OF MISINFORMATION, PROVIDING THEM WITH THE RESOURCES TO REBUT FALSE CLAIMS AND TAKE DIRECT ACTION AGAINST OFFENDING MEDIA INSTITUTIONS.”

Only conservative institutions count as “offending,” of course. With its self-described “war” on FOX News, MMFA is now effectively a campaign arm of Obama for America and the Democrats, violating the rules that allow it to avoid paying taxes to the federal government–even as it clamors for the federal government to raise taxes on everyone else.

UPDATE: Laughably, Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. and the Teamsters are now trying to walk back Hoffa’s Labor Day diatribe, relying on MMFA as an “independent media watchdog group” to corroborate their lies. Of course, MMFA’s donors include several unions, including the SEIU and AFL-CIO, which pay for the damage control services that Brock and Co. attempt to provide.

UPDATE 2: An earlier version of this post referred to “goons”–these were the individuals who attempted to block us from filming David Brock, not those who later provided the IRS 990 filing.

He has written about having sex with an underage girl, and claims he once threatened to kill a pregnant girlfriend unless she had an abortion. He claims to hate marijuana, but recommends heroin as the cure for suburban boredom. He mocks “Tea Baggers” and scorns “hippies.” His Russian newspaper was shuttered after a government crackdown, and he’s a regular on The Dylan Ratigan Show on MSNBC.

Meet Mark Ames, the provocateur who created the Koch brothers conspiracy theory.

Long before John Podesta’s Center for American Progress began targeting the Koch brothers for their supposed role in the Tea Party, and two years before the Kochs were cast as the villains of public sector union protests in Wisconsin, Ames had already shaped the Koch brothers meme.

Ames and co-author Yasha Levine launched the conspiracy theory–and its twin themes of drug abuse and gay sex–with a blog post (now removed) at Playboy.com in February 2009, entitled: “Backstabber: Is Rick Santelli High on Koch?” They published almost exactly the same article at their own site, exiledonline.com, as “Exposing the Rightwing PR Machine: Is CNBC’s Rick Santelli Sucking Koch?”

Ames and Levine alleged that Santelli’s famous “rant heard around the world” that inspired the Tea Party movement “was not at all spontaneous as his alleged fans claim, but rather it was a carefully-planned trigger” for an “anti-Obama campaign.” That campaign, they claimed, had been planned for months before the 2008 election, and funded by “the Koch family, the multibilllionaire owners of the largest private corporation in America, and funders of scores of rightwing thinktanks and advocacy groups.”

Ames would later explain that he had been inspired to write about the Kochs by his experiences in post-Soviet Moscow, when he edited a sensational newspaper, the eXile–described last year by Vanity Fair as “arguably the most abusive, defamatory, un-evenhanded, and crassest publication in Russia” before it closed in 2008. (more…)

There has been a good deal of discussion of late about whether or not the IRS should launch an investigation into Media Matters’ tax-exempt status. In today’s part two of a three part series from FOX Business’ Elizabeth MacDonald, details of the civilian complaint filed by C. Boyden Gray demonstrate why the former White House counsel to President George W. Bush believes that Media Matters should have its tax-exempt status yanked.

Citing a pattern of “unlawful conduct,” Gray writes in his petition, which FOX Business has obtained, that the nonprofit has “executed a partisan strategy” in violation of U.S. tax law as it exists “no longer to educate the public but, rather, to declare ‘war on FOX,’” Gray says, quoting from an interview its founder, David Brock, gave to the website Politico.

Also unlawful, Gray says, is the nonprofit’s reported goal to “disrupt” the commercial interests of News Corp. (News Corp. is the parent of FOX News and FOX Business.)

Read the whole article, Former White House Counsel to IRS: Pull Media Matters’ Tax-Exempt Status.

Among the activity noted in the complaint: (more…)

From Fox Business:

First of a three-part series

David Brock, chairman and chief executive of Media Matters for America, told a news website earlier this year that his nonprofit is now moving to “sabotage” FOX News because it says the network is now the “de facto head of the GOP,” among other things.

Anchors and guests appearing on FOX News have said because of such statements, the nonprofit is violating U.S. tax law.

There is no indication the IRS is auditing or probing Media Matters for these alleged violations.

However, interviews with current and former IRS officials, tax lawyers and tax experts, as well as a review of Media Matters’ IRS documents and its activities indicate the nonprofit has put its tax-exempt status in jeopardy for reasons beyond those allegations. (more…)

Politico March 26th:

“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.” [emphasis mine]

Do you think a war on Fox is where it will end? Let’s say that Media Matters succeeds and Fox News goes off the air (that won’t happen – ever – but just for argument’s sake, stay with me). Will Media Matters just pack up and go home? Is Fox News the only outlet that Media Matters covers? Certainly not. They cover Rush Limbaugh incessantly as well as make numerous posts about what happens on Big sites (like this one) and cover a whole array of other conservative outlets. The “war on Fox” is not the end, it’s the beginning.

Frankly, I don’t care that Media Matters declared a war on Fox News. I don’t care that they simply use their site as an outlet to regurgitate talking points from the White House under the guise of “fact checking” conservative media. I DO care that they do this while being considered a tax-exempt charitable organization. Media Matters enjoys a comfy 501(c)(3) status which not only is a vehicle for them not to pay taxes, it gives them a “charitable organization” status and allows others (like Soros) to give large amounts of money while being able to make a deduction on their own taxes.

This war won’t end here. Media Matters is only just beginning to go after the any media outlet that disagrees with their ideology. Media Matters barely “fact checks” intellectual arguments made by conservative media, because they have little interest in arguing the issues. Media Matters goal is to silence their opponents. David Brock, CEO of Media Matters, is quoted above as saying he’s starting a “war”. War indicates victory, victory by wiping out your enemy. We’ve seen them bully advertisers in order to silence their opposition by dehumanizing their opponents.

It’s time to end this madness and win this war. Media Matters charitable status has to go. Many others have echoed this sentiment and I have a few ideas on what you can do:

So What Can You Do?

We go after the problem – Media Matters’ tax-exempt 501(c)(3) status. Again, the problem is not Media Matters’ ideology. The problem isn’t even that they promote their ideology, talking points for the White House, and attack – with intent to silence – the ideology of anyone who disagrees. The problem is that Media Matters does all of this while enjoying the benefits of a 501(c)(3)status! Their work is not charitable, it is inflammatory. Their work is not educating the masses, but rather propagandizing them with “facts” that are either blatant falsehoods or opinions. Other websites do this every day (we’d be happy to provide a list) and they don’t need a 501(c)(3) status to do it. This type of work is not deserving of a tax-exempt status.

(more…)

“This is somebody, who seemingly has such low self esteem Steve, that he’s lurching from one group to another, that whoever will embrace him, and reassure him that he’s a decent guy and be his cheerleader in a dramatic way, that’s who he’s going to be with.

[...]

He switched sides when his book on Clinton didn’t do that well.”

(more…)

The call to disallow Media Matters use of a 501(c)(3)  status is growing, most recently with this in-depth article from the Washington Times:

What the news coverage has ignored is his use of tax-free funds for his organization, Media Matters for America (MMA), for these attacks — a form of government support for activities that clearly do not merit tax-exempt status and that as a result infringe on Fox News’ First Amendment rights.

MMA was originally established as an Internal Revenue Service Section 501(c)(3) organization, that is, an organization that can receive tax-deductible contributions to engage in educational activities. The more precise purpose was to counter alleged media bias and so to “identify occurrences of excessive bias in the American media, educate the public as to their existence, and to work with members of the media to reduce them.”

What MMA actually is doing, however, moves far afield from identifying possible bias to mounting a campaign to undermine a major media outlet and to promote the Democratic Party and progressive causes associated with it. Mr. Brock himself has described this new strategy as “a war on Fox,” an effort “to disrupt [Rupert Murdoch‘s] commercial interests” and look for ways to turn regulators against News Corp.’s media outlets.

(more…)

I expected that Media Matters head David Brock’s descension to progressivism occurred for some sort of principled reason.

No, Brock’s political conversion was a vanity project.

They really DO watch Fox all the time over there.

Brock’s decision to abandon conservatism was a gradual one—and, unlike other famous apostates’, more personal than ideological. “I didn’t wake up one day and say, you know, ‘Supply-side economics doesn’t make sense,’ ” he says. In fact, his move from the right began after he failed to deliver the goods in a book about Hillary Clinton and some of his conservative friends expressed their displeasure with his efforts.

[...]

No amends were more important than the ones he made to Bill and Hillary Clinton. “It wasn’t that he wanted forgiveness from the Clintons,” one Brock friend says. “He wanted in. He wanted to be part of this progressive restoration, and the only way he could do that was to seek reconciliation from the Big Dog and his wife.”

He got his feelings hurt when his book flopped? He expected his conservative friends to blow smoke up his rear and fawn over his book because he was a conservative? He later says that he thinks his friends were only friends with him because he was a “liberal killer,” but what I see here is someone who only valued those friends by the gratification and appreciation they could show him.

He didn’t change positions because of policy, he changed positions because of feelings. And because he wanted to be popular.

He also alleges that conservatives couldn’t handle him being gay (Er, GOProud, anyone?) but has no problem with calling Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham “fag hags.”

Awkward.

The most entertaining thing about the article is the overstated influence of Media Matters, the site ran by the man that Paul Begala called only “‘almost’ indefensible.” 

(more…)

Hubris defined.

The president of tax-exempt, Soros-funded Media Matters for America didn’t take this opportunity to reprimand Mr. Matthews for his recent demand that President Obama produce his birth certificate. Also not mentioned was the fact that Mr. Matthews was named by Media Matters as the “Misinformer of the Year” in 2005.

(more…)

Ever since the shellacking Democrats suffered in the midterms, their strategists and donors have been meeting to discuss plans for 2012. Tuesday, the New York Times reported on the latest high profile effort by David Brock, head of Media Matters:

David Brock, a prominent Democratic political operative, says he has amassed $4 million in pledges over the last few weeks and is moving quickly to hire a staff to set up what he hopes will become a permanent liberal counterweight over the airwaves to the Republican-leaning outside groups that spent so heavily on this year’s midterm elections.

The new group, called American Bridge, will be required to publish its donors on a regular basis; however, the Times indicates that Brock is positioning his new entity in such a way that it will be able to receive anonymous money as well:

Mr. Brock appears to be positioning his new organization so that fund-raising consultants can raise money for Democratic-oriented media efforts not just through American Bridge but also via one of the nonprofit organizations Mr. Brock currently runs, Media Matters Action Network, which does not disclose its donors.

The action network, which tracks conservative politicians and advocacy organizations, is organized as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit group and is set to take on an expanded role in the 2012 elections, including potentially running television ads, according to an internal draft concept paper about American Bridge’s and Media Matter Action Network’s plans obtained by The New York Times.

The hypocrisy of this move is nothing short of stunning. Indeed, even the reliably liberal Greg Sargent at the Washington Post finds it disconcerting. Before the midterm elections, Brock’s Media Matters was churning out partisan analysis calling Karl Rove’s group a “slush fund” full of “secret donations.” Media Matters’ Senior Fellow Eric Boehlert wrote repeatedly that the press was not taking enough interest in the Chamber of Commerce story (a baseless story invented by a writer at Think Progress). And that’s truly just scratching the surface. Searching Media Matters’ for the words “Chamber of Commerce”  yields 154 results between 10/4/10  and 11/4/10. Apparently, railing against anonymous donations was a big deal at Media Matters, but that was long ago…in October.

Now David Brock is raising millions to build his own group which will operate along similar lines. He offered this defense to Greg Sargent “We do not make the rules. We must make 2012 a more equal contest than 2010.” So, like everything that Media Matters puts out, it was always about politics and never about principle. Mainstream journalists who rely on Brock’s content might want to keep that in mind.

Why doesn’t George Soros just go himself?

Media Matters, the liberal media watchdog that spends most of its time attacking Fox News, won a charity auction lunch with Rupert Murdoch for $86,000.

“I look forward to this opportunity to have a friendly lunch with Rupert Murdoch, along with five of my invited guests,” said David Brock, the Media Matters founder and CEO who will be doing the actual lunching. “I will soon contact Mr. Murdoch’s office to determine a mutually convenient time and place in New York.”

Besides the first question, how does a a 501(c)(3) afford this?How can they still operate as a 501(c)(3) when the outfit behaves as a tool through which Soros exercises his hatred of all things conservative?

(more…)

Still glowing from a clean win after NPR’s firing of Juan Williams, the anti-free speech forces on the Left are already dancing in the aisles with the news of their victory over ABC News, who caved to their demands and canceled Andrew Breitbart’s involvement in an online townhall just a few hours before it was set to begin.

David Brock of Media Matters sends a chilling message, stating in no uncertain terms that he hopes the ABC News experience…

“…serves as a warning to other outlets before they too gamble with their credibility.“

And obviously, Media Matters will be the final arbiter of just when these other outlets are “gambling with their credibility.”

Meanwhile… James Rucker, Executive Director of something called ColorOfChange writes on Huffington Post, one of the online publications that demanded ABC News rescind their invitation…   (more…)

In what some might characterize as an act of desperation to stir up his base for voting purposes, Barack Obama, presumably the most powerful individual in the free world, opened the Oval Office to a bevy of leftist bloggers, ones who we’re told have serious issues.

The invitees fall more under the rubric of ideological or issue-oriented activists as opposed to online reporters, though the names are familiar to most political junkies. An administration official confirmed that Joe Sudbay of AMERICABlog; Duncan Black (“Atrios”), who runs the site Eschaton; Barbara Morrill, who writes for the DailyKos; Jon Amato, who is the founder of Crooks and Liars; and Oliver Willis, who runs an eponymous site, spoke with the president on Wednesday.

Amato, of Crooks and Liars infamy, did acknowledge some “issues,” while lashing out at White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs in an excerpt from a previously released video.

Barbara Morrill’s issues, along with some insisting she is actually Barbara Morris, not Morrill, without providing proof, seem to be with defining herself and her role at DailyKos. Morrill, aka BarbinMD, was named Associate Editor in February of 2009 allowing for LithiumCola to move up from Contributing Editor to Featured Writer. LithiumCola has not yet been reached for comment.

On May 14, 2010, BarbinMD changed her username to her alleged real name, not so for Contributing Editor, Angry Mouse. It’s unclear why Angry Mouse was not invited to the Oval Office meeting, though recent reports of an issue with rats in the White House may have had something to do with it. (more…)

Everyone knows that Dana Milbank of the Washington Post is a colossally unserious buffoon, a walking, talking, Walter Duranty-like jackass of legendary proportions.

After then-Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally grazed a friend in a very minor hunting accident, Milbank dressed up on MSNBC as a real-life Elmer Fudd, brandishing a dayglo orange hunting cap and vest. He might as well have pulled down his pants and mooned the TV audience.

In a move that no doubt earned him an eternal place in any frozen hell administered in the afterlife by feminazi Gloria Steinem, Milbank also called Hillary Clinton a bitch in a YouTube video.

Now he’s written a piece in which he subtextually insinuates that Glenn Beck is a would-be cop killer. (more…)

The existence of the JournoList should surprise no one.

I don’t know everybody on the list, but many of the names are easy to recognize and these are all the usual suspects. “JournoLists” combining with a common goal, to spread a leftist agenda.

That Paul Krugman agrees with Joe Klein, who agrees with JeffreyToobin, who agrees with David Brock should shock no one.

The Diamond brothers, Thomas Walsh and Lucky Luciano -- ahead of their time

As a journalist I would never in a million years think to plan, organize, compile and collate stories among those whom I see as my competition. I want to beat them on stories, I want to break stories they don’t have and I want to report on angles they had never thought of. I like to do that here on Big Journalism I can read the other articles and admire the work I see and always try to come up with something better. I believe in competition. I love competition.

Besides, I might have a tough time finding a couple dozen conservatives in the media to collude with, much less the 400 or willing mainly Upper West Side white males who were part of the JournoList. I’ve have seen a hundred times more diversity at a Tea Party rally. (more…)

Even in defeat, the hacks and non-entities at Media Matters — led by the embarrassingly humorless head hack, Eric Boehlert– just can’t write a story about James O’Keefe without letting their bias and contempt for him get in the way of the truth. But what else is new?

Just as in their original post on the affair in New Orleans: O’Keefe reportedly arrested by FBI in alleged “plot to wiretap” senator’s office, Media Matters and the rest of the left-wing media had been salivating over the prospect of seeing O’Keefe behind bars for a “wire-tapping” crime.  Of course, the facts of the case, publicly available from the moment Media Matters and their blood brothers at MSNBC began “reporting” the story, have never supported the fantasy that O’Keefe’s prank was some sort of Watergate style break-in or wiretapping, or bugging or anything resembling a serious felony.

But a perusal of the headlines at Media Matters gives us some great insight to how they’ve been desperate to make O’Keefe our generation’s Bernard Barker, and Breitbart his Richard Nixon.

Alleged wiretap plotter O’Keefe tweets “I am a journalist. The truth shall set me free”

TPM: Alleged phone bug crew came from conservative campus journalism world

FDL blogger: O’Keefe’s statement is riddled with falsehoods

Media Matters‘ Frisch: “What did Breitbart and Fox News know and when did they know it?”

In the three days following O’Keefe’s arrest, Media Matters posted no fewer than fifty-three separate articles about the arrest.  FIFTY-THREE! (more…)

“Where were you when George Bush was President?” You know that question well. It’s been asked of each of us more times than any of us would care to count. Do you know how I usually answer it?

I was home, enjoying my life. I went to work every day and focused on doing the best job that I could do. When I wasn’t working, I hung out with family and friends. I went to baseball games, and barbecues, and obscure little hole-in-the-wall joints to hear some of my favorite live music over a couple of Guinnesses. Yum.

Why? Because while George Bush was president, we had a media establishment that was challenging our government, not our citizens.

I wasn’t necessarily happy with the direction of the country in those days. But I could sleep at night, knowing that we had media that pressed George Bush and our Congress on every single issue. I could know at any given moment what the “death count” was in Iraq because just about every channel splashed a persistent counter in the bottom corner of the television screen. When bills like the Patriot Act were first introduced in Congress, I never lacked for any detail on the dangers of the legislation. There was barely a single detail that went uncovered in the daily political grind. When there was a scandal to research and report, I certainly never had to do that myself. There were reporters who did all that.

Yep, I’m actually missing the Bush days now. I had so much more free time. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always done my homework and researched issues on my own anyway. I recognize that all media is biased to some degree (and has been for quite some time). But I could always count on the media to challenge the government in the days of George Bush. I wrote my fair share of letters, I called and complained about the spending, even attended a few protests, but I can’t say that I ever felt there just wasn’t anyone challenging the president in the mainstream media. Quite the contrary, there was never any lack of DC pushback from the collective press in those days.

But we live in extraordinary times today. There now exists this giant, open cavity where that healthy pushback against government used to be. And when the mainstream media stepped away from that opening in 2008, two things happened:

(more…)

So, just about every single day I get a slew of emails from a dude named Doug Stauffer, from Media Matters. The emails are press  releases – 99% of them devoted to Fox News. I’m sure some of you get them too. Now, the obsession would be hilarious, if it wasn’t so all-consuming for the poor goof. And it made me wonder, what it must be like to have a job where all you do all day is  alternate between watching a news network, and fulminating over watching a news network? That can’t be a life, can it? I mean, if I  had that job, I would probably cry myself to sleep every night,  with or without a shorty robe.  Anyway, I’ve tried to imagine a  typical day at Media Matters – which you’ll find  below in our latest installment of Red Eye Robot Theatre: