Media Matters As Journolist II — With White House Coordination

Thanks to recent reports at The Daily Caller, anyone out there who still contends that the establishment press is fair and balanced — or even tries to be — can officially STFU, i.e., Stifle The False Utterances. Excerpts follow.

Feb. 12 (“Inside Media Matters: Sources, memos reveal erratic behavior, close coordination with White House and news organizations”) –

… “We were pretty much writing their prime time,” a former Media Matters employee said of the cable channel MSNBC. “But then virtually all the mainstream media was using our stuff.”

… “We called it ‘fingerprint coverage,’” explains one former staffer, “where you know it was the result of your work.” As an example, he cites the left-wing group Color of Change, co-founded by the controversial former White House “green jobs” czar Van Jones, which received much of the credit for pressuring advertisers to drop their sponsorship of (Glenn) Beck’s show. But in fact, he says, Media Matters developed the campaign that cowed Beck’s sponsors.

… MSNBC executives weren’t the only ones talking regularly to Media Matters.

“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.

… A group with the ability to shape news coverage is of incalculable value to the politicians it supports, so it’s no surprise that Media Matters has been in regular contact with political operatives in the Obama administration. According to visitor logs, on June 16, 2010, Brock and then-Media Matters president Eric Burns traveled to the White House for a meeting with Valerie Jarrett, arguably the president’s closest adviser. Recently departed Obama communications director Anita Dunn returned to the White House for the meeting as well.

It’s not clear what the four spoke about — no one in the meeting returned repeated calls for comment — but the apparent coordination continued.

Yours truly exposed HuffPo’s Stein as a shameless, truth-challenged shill in 2008 when I shredded his “evidence” that John McCain hadn’t appropriately vetted Sarah Palin before selecting her as his presidential running mate. Stein’s pathetic response “updates” at his original report only reinforced his shamelessness.

Feb. 13 (“Inside Media Matters: David Brock’s enemies list”) –

An internal Media Matters For America memo obtained by The Daily Caller reveals that the left-wing media watchdog group employs an “opposition research team” to target its political enemies. Included in the list of targets are right-leaning websites, conservative think tanks, prominent financiers and donors, and more than a dozen specific Fox News Channel and News Corporation employees.

“We will conduct extensive public records searches and compile opposition books on individuals,” declares the memo, likely written in late 2009. Investigations, it says, “will focus on the backgrounds, connections, operations and political and financial activities of the individuals.”

Go to the link for the list.

Feb. 13 (“Politico reporter withheld information about liberal Media Matters”) –

About a year ago, the organization Media Matters For America gave Politico reporter Ben Smith a 2010 planning memo for a profile he was writing on the liberal advocacy group.

But Smith curiously withheld key parts of the 89-page document when he published his story, “Media Matters’ war against Fox,” in March 2011.

The Daily Caller became aware of this after obtaining the same document while reporting the series “Inside Media Matters,” which debuted here late Sunday night.

Smith made no mention of Media Matters targeting organizations other than Fox News, such as the libertarian Cato Institute and the conservative Heritage Foundation. Nor does he reveal that, according to the memo, Media Matters was intent on researching Republican political figures like Republican former U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina and Republican Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, and the prominent libertarian political donor Peter Thiel.

“An opposition research team will serve to hold Thiel and others like him accountable,” the memo states. Smith made no mention of such efforts in his story.

He also failed to disclose Media Matters’ interest in marginalizing political news websites including Newsmax and Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government, saying only that the organization had narrowed its focus to “Fox and a handful of conservative websites.”

It’s not clear why Smith, who recently left Politico for the website BuzzFeed, didn’t include more specifics from the lengthy document in his March 2011 story if he had the full copy.

Oh, I think I know.

Feb. 13 (“Media Matters memo called for hiring private investigators ‘to look into the personal lives’ of Fox employees”) –

A little after 1 p.m. on Sept. 29, 2009, Karl Frisch emailed a memo to his bosses, Media Matters for America founder David Brock and president Eric Burns. In the first few lines, Frisch explained why Media Matters should launch a “Fox Fund” whose mission would be to attack the Fox News Channel.

“Simply put,” Frisch wrote, “the progressive movement is in need of an enemy. George W. Bush is gone. We really don’t have John McCain to kick around any more. Filling the lack of leadership on the right, Fox News has emerged as the central enemy and antagonist of the Obama administration, our Congressional majorities and the progressive movement as a whole.”

“We must take Fox News head-on in a well funded, presidential-style campaign to discredit and embarrass the network, making it illegitimate in the eyes of news consumers.”

What Frisch proceeded to suggest, however, went well beyond what legitimate presidential campaigns attempt. “We should hire private investigators to look into the personal lives of Fox News anchors, hosts, reporters, prominent contributors, senior network and corporate staff,” he wrote.

After that, Frisch argued, should come the legal assault: “We should look into contracting with a major law firm to study any available legal actions that can be taken against Fox News, from a class action law suit to defamation claims for those wronged by the network. I imagine this would be difficult but the right law firm is bound to find some legal ground for us to take action against the network.”

Frisch went on to call for “an elaborate shareholder campaign” against News Corporation, the parent company of Fox News …

… In at least two places, the memo makes suggestions that in retrospect look like prescient predictions. The first concerns Rupert Murdoch: “Murdoch’s problems in the U.K. (hacking the cell phones of prominent Brits) are hardly known to U.S. news consumers. We should do our best to bring embarrassing Murdoch news to the attention of his U.S. audience.” The effort appears to have succeeded.

Republican and conservative candidates this fall — especially the Republican presidential nominee — will be running against their Democratic Party and leftist opponents and those candidates’ campaigns, which now, absent conclusive evidence to the contrary, officially include the establishment press, with coordination from the very top.

There is no defensible reason why the mainstream press deserves any form of cooperation or deference from Republican or conservative candidates.