Replies

Media Matters for America (MMFA), a “Web-based, not-for-profit progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media,” was founded by David Brock in mid-April 2004.

Along with former MoveOn consultant Tom Matzzie and John Podesta’s Center for American Progress, it is behind Progressive Media, a liberal messaging campaign launched in 2008 and expanded in 2009 to become a ‘war room’ for promoting the foreign and domestic policies of Barack Obama.

The site “was devised as part of a larger media apparatus being built by liberals to combat what they say is the overwhelming influence of conservative commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly.” The “project was developed with help from the newly formed Center for American Progress, the policy group headed by John D. Podesta,” Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff. “Brock said he hoped it could help provide fodder for fledgling liberal radio talk shows being started across the country, including those of the comedians Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo.”

Mr. Brock, who has also spoken with Senator Clinton, Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota and former Vice President Al Gore about his project

Funded with “more than $2 million in donations from wealthy liberals.” “Among Mr. Brock’s donors is Leo Hindery, Jr., the former cable magnate; Susie Tompkins Buell, who is co-founder of the fashion company Esprit and is close to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, and Ms. Buell’s husband Mark; and James C. Hormel, a San Francisco philanthropist whose appointment as ambassador to Luxembourg was delayed for a year and a half in the late 1990’s by conservative lawmakers protesting what they called his promotion of a ‘gay lifestyle.’

Media Matters for America is funded in part by the Democracy Alliance.

The Media Matters Action Network is a 501(c)4 organization that is a partner organization to MMFA. In December 2008, the Media Matters Action Network acquired the Media Transparency website from Cursor Inc

Key personnel:

David Brock - CEO
Eric Burns - President
Marcia Kuntz - Editor-in-Chief
Jeremy Schulman - Research Director
Jamison Foser - Senior Fellow
Eric Boehlert - Senior Fellow
Duncan Black - Senior Fellow
Karl Frisch - Senior Fellow
Jessica Levin - Press Secretary

Media Matters for America
455 Massachusetts Ave. NW
Suite 600
Washington DC 20001
Telephone: 202-756-4100
Fax: 202-318-0836
Website: http://mediamatters.org/
RSS Feed: http://mediamatters.org/tools/syndication/latest.rss

Democracy Alliance

Niki Jagpal

Media Matters for America’s partner organization, Media Matters Action Network launched Conservative Transparency in November, 2009.

******

APRIL 13, 2007

Behind the Fall of Imus, A Digital Brush Fire
In a Blur, Watchdogs, Blogs, Email, Spur Radio Host’s Firing

Ryan Chiachiere was. A 26-year-old researcher in Washington, D.C., for liberal watchdog organization Media Matters for America, he was assigned to monitor Mr. Imus’s program. Mr. Chiachiere clipped the video, alerted his bosses and started working on a blog post for the organization’s Web site.

Media Matters posted the video and transcript on its Web site and sent an email blast to several hundred reporters, as it does nearly every day.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB117641076468168180-TfMzyqKQiK1gcJfwRly5ONRZTEo_20080411.html