“The whole attitude of the site sort of mirrors Joan Walsh’s imprint that she left there which is sort of cold, aloof, and off-putting. But nothing personal against Joan.”

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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.

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Join Breitbart.tv Editor-In-Chief Larry O’Connor as he interviews the newest addition to the “Big Team,” Dana Loesch, Editor of Big Journalism. We’ll discuss her plans for Big Journalism as well as her exclusive story on thuggish reporters in Chicago that swept through the web today.

In the article “Andrew Breitbart’s Video ‘Evidence’ Of Lying Congressmen Is Anything But” published August 6th at Mediaite, author Tommy Christopher makes a number of factual errors and unverifiable claims that ought to be corrected or clarified.  The problematic sentences are identified in block quotes with explanations of the errors beneath each quote:

Earlier this week, conservative media figure Andrew Breitbart seized upon a New York Times story correction as proof that Civil Rights hero John Lewis (D-Ga) and others were “lying” when they claimed that a crowd of protesters had hurled the “n-word” at them as they walked to the Capitol to vote on health care reform.

Breitbart did not accuse John Lewis of lying in his Big Journalism post; in fact, the only reference to Lewis at all comes by way of a quote from the New York Times correction. Breitbart did, however, accuse Rep. Andre Carson of lying: “Which [media outlet] will be the first to admit that Congressman Carson lied about the events of that day?”

…its important to go over the other evidence that the incident did occur, at least as told by the corroborating testimony of three credible eyewitnesses. In a court of law, that’s called evidence.

There is only one corroborating witness, not three.  Rep. John Lewis has never gone on record saying he heard the n-word used at this event.  Rep. Emanuel Cleaver said he heard racial slurs like “a chorus” as he walked a “few yards behind” Rep. Lewis, but video evidence proves Cleaver was not walking to the Capitol with Lewis and Carson when the events in question occurred. (more…)

All through the 2008 presidential campaign we saw it time and again: any potential threat to then-candidate Barack Obama was sought out and destroyed by the Leftist media – MSNBC, Media Matters, Daily Kos and the like–  before it could could reach a critical point in the MSM and do any damage to Their Annointed One.  Whether it was Bill Ayers, Sarah Palin, Reverend Wright or Obama’s weaker than weak resume, the goal was to blow legitimate stories out of the water using whatever amount of lies, distortion, or double talk was needed to muddy those waters and confuse the narrative.

This tactic was designed to either give the MSM enough cover to ignore the story altogether or hand them the talking points necessary to blow the story back into the face of Republicans and the McCain campaign.

My favorite example of this template at work is how Obama’s ties to domestic terrorist Bill Ayers somehow morphed into a full-blown MSM storm about “hate-filled and dangerous” McCain campaign rallies. Second place goes to how Obama mangling a revealing answer to an honest question from a constituent immediately turned into a media meme over whether or not this private citizen had a plumber’s license. And let’s not forget how we all walked into the voting booth knowing more about Sarah Palin’s tanning bed than Barack Obama’s college records.

SIDE NOTE: Conservative or not, anyone who thinks this happens by accident instead of design needs to get out of the way because you’re part of the problem. (more…)

While some people debate the merits of the current healthcare legislation in Congress, or attempt to expose corruption in our government, Max Blumenthal instead engages in character assassination using the most questionable sources.

Recently, as has been well-documented on BigJournalism, Blumenthal branded James O’Keefe a racist for attending a debate at which Jared Taylor spoke. He did this despite the fact that O’Keefe sided with Taylor’s opposition, a black conservative named Kevin Martin.

The video below summarizes Blumenthal’s Alinsky tactics and highlights clips from the most recent CPAC where he continues his viciousness. As Andrew Breitbart wondered, what does Blumenthal really stand for, if it isn’t for destroying people’s lives?

**Post updated with higher quality video and audio.

A funny thing happened on the last day of CPAC.  Max Blumenthal, recently corrected and embarrassed “journalist” from Salon.com paraded through the convention with a camera crew.  Like last year, he was looking for a confrontation of some kind.  I’m not sure what Max uncovered in his fact-finding mission, but I know that as he was leaving, a confrontation found him.

As luck would have it, Andrew Breitbart was walking in the front door of the Wardman Park Marriott Hotel at the exact moment Blumenthal was walking out.  Breitbart took this opportunity to address his beef with Blumenthal head-on and assailed Blumenthal for his attempt to link James O’Keefe to white supremacists.

Toward the end of the conversation, Blumenthal says to Breitbart that he did not call anybody any names.  At this moment I jumped into the fray and challenged him on the point.  I reminded him that he had, in fact, called O’Keefe a racist.  Blumenthal attempted to deny it, but as you can see from the video, he was only able to stick to that story for so long.

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Greg Marx at the Columbia Journalism Review has come out with his report on the James O’Keefe/Max Blumenthal/Salon dust-up last week, and the results are not pretty:

UNFORCED ERROR AT SALON

“O’Keefe’s race problem” story goes astray on key detail

… At issue here is a more specific point: Blumenthal’s claim in the original story that, “Together, O’Keefe and [fellow conservative activist Marcus] Epstein planned an event in August 2006 that would wed their extreme views on race with their ambitions.” That was the line that most directly tied O’Keefe to Epstein, whose record includes a subsequent arrest for assaulting an African-American woman, and that most directly gave him ownership of the event.

The problem is that, as it appeared in the Salon story, the source for the claim was unclear. And, as became apparent over the next couple days, Blumenthal’s sources—including Daryle Jenkins, director of a racism watchdog group called the One People’s Project, which monitored the event, and a pseudonymous freelance photographer known as Isis—did not actually know whether O’Keefe had planned the gathering.

But as a journalist, it’s incumbent upon Blumenthal—and any outlet that publishes his work—to distinguish between what his sources actually observed and what they believe to be true. A journalist’s claim to an audience’s trust is based on the implicit promise that he will take that step. And that responsibility, obviously, doesn’t go away just because you’ve got a good story or a worthy target. (more…)

Chuck Johnson is at it again. He must be out on a weekend pass. I feel compelled to answer the Little Green Monster after I saw him go after James O’Keefe with that same tired wet noodle of a charge he has leveled at so many, calling him a white nationalist. Johnson claimed in an LGF post that “ACORN sting filmmaker James O’Keefe was photographed attending a 2006 white nationalist conference titled ‘Race and Conservatism.’”

Sounds terrible, right? Sure, until you get the facts that Johnson doesn’t tell you. When it became clear that it wasn’t a “white nationalist conference,” Johnson tried to slither out of responsibility for his words by saying in a new post: “It’s very clear that I attributed the ‘white nationalist conference’ claim to One People’s Project; that’s what the words ‘according to’ mean.”

Busted! As if it weren’t obvious that in his original post, he was approving of and endorsing what One People’s Project said. But this is typical of Johnson’s weaselly hit-and-run smear tactics.

Meanwhile, Larry O’Connor at Big Journalism uncovered the truth about O’Keefe’s supposed participation in this conference: (more…)

In Max Blumenthal’s article “James O’Keefe’s race problem” for Salon.com of February 3, 2010, Mr. Blumenthal makes a number of unverifiable and provably false claims regarding James O’Keefe’s attendance at a 2006 conference called “Race and Conservatism.”  Below are the list of quotes containing misinformation and an explanation of why they need to be addressed by the editors of your publication.

From left: Marcus Epstein, Jared Taylor, Kevin Martin, and John Derbyshire at what Max Blumenthal dubbed “a white-nationalist confab”

We kindly request corrections to all:

According to One People’s Project founder Daryle Jenkins, O’Keefe was manning the literature table at the gathering that brought together anti-Semites, professional racists and proponents of Aryanism.

As noted in this post here by Larry O’Connor, we contacted Mr. Jenkins, who identified David Weigel as his source for the claim that Mr. O’Keefe was manning the table.  Mr. Weigel has denied that Mr. O’Keefe manned the table and has no knowledge to suggest Mr. O’Keefe was involved in the orchestration of the event at any level. In an interview with BigJournalism.com, Mr. O’Keefe denied having planned the event.

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