Free Republic

I've done a few posts now about scumbag author Jerome Corsi, so it occurs to me that I should devote some attention to his respectable counterparts who've written books on McCain. There are three: The Real McCain, by Cliff Schecter; Free Ride: John McCain and the Media, by David Brock and Paul Waldman; and, by Matt Welch. All three were reviewed positively by this particularly sagacious critic in The New York Review of Books not long ago (all right, it was me). What, the right-wing doubter will ask me, makes these books different from Corsi's? It is obviously the case...

Paul Waldman of Media Matters said Swift Boat Veterans are liars.

I've done a few posts now about scumbag author Jerome Corsi, so it occurs to me that I should devote some attention to his respectable counterparts who've written books on McCain. There are three: The Real McCain, by Cliff Schecter; Free Ride: John McCain and the Media, by David Brock and Paul Waldman; and McCain: The Myth of a Maverick, by Matt Welch. All three were reviewed positively by this particularly sagacious critic in The New York Review of Books not long ago (all right, it was me). What, the right-wing doubter will ask me, makes these books different from...

With barely a whimper a few weeks after its big launch, David Brock's much-hyped Progressive Media USA has collapsed, thrown under the bus by Team Obama. (See previous blog entry here.) Two weeks ago [sorry--I've gotten behind in my blogging] the ambitious 501(c)(4) group, which vowed to spend $400 million trashing John McCain, quietly announced it would "dramatically scale back its efforts in deference to the wishes of the [Democratic] party's presumptive nominee," the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza reports. So much for Brock's claim that the George Soros-sponsored group would be independent and nonpartisan.

Wealthy Democrats are preparing a four-month, $40 million media campaign centered on attacks on Senator John McCain. And it will be led by David Brock, the former investigative reporter who first gained fame in the 1990s as a right-wing, anti-Clinton journalist. The planned campaign is the product of a shakeup in the top ranks of the struggling independent Democratic groups. Brock, now best known as the ex-conservative founder of the liberal group Media Matters, last month quietly assumed the chairmanship of what's expected to be the main vehicle for independent Democratic attacks on McCain, now called Progressive Media USA. The...

Media Matters for America (MMFA) was created in spring 2004 in time for the presidential election campaign. Funded by an estimated $2 million in contributions, the group promotes itself as an online watchdog protecting the public from the deceptions and errors of the mass media that has been bullied or blinded by conservatives. In fact, MMFA is a cog in the growing machine of “progressive” activist and advocacy non-profits, including the online radical agitators at MoveOn.org, the liberal policy wonks at the Center for American Progress and the Democratic get-out-the-vote forces at America Coming Together. These groups were obsessed with...

MOST HILLARY WATCHERS have had a chance by now to view the controversial YouTube video in which the junior senator from New York brags that she has personally helped flood the Internet with a "network" of leftwing blogs. Her boast raises troubling questions. On a practical level, just how exactly does a U.S. Senator go about exerting her power to stack the blogosphere in her favor? One obvious method is to buy favorable coverage. Hillary's boast carries a strong implication that she has subsidized bloggers. Regular readers of Poe.com will be reminded of Bloggergate -- a little-known, but ever-burgeoning, scandal...

Media: A manufactured flap over Rush Limbaugh has stirred talk of new "fairness doctrine" hearings in Congress. That's just what Media Matters, the flacks behind it, were after. Their agenda is worse than it looks. Media Matters, a left-wing nuisance group, recently sought headlines by distorting a Sept. 26 conversation between conservative radio commentator Limbaugh and a listener about a soldier who misrepresented his military record. Media Matters screamed that Limbaugh, whose record of supporting U.S. troops is long and real, was insulting anti-war soldiers as "phony." The claim was as silly as the one Media Matters made a week...

Last week, covering the Rush Limbaugh “phony soldiers” controversy, I described Media Matters, the liberal media watchdog group, as an “avowedly political institution.” Media Matters quickly took issue; a few hours after my article appeared on National Review Online, a posting on the group’s website declared, “Media Matters is not, as the National Review claims, ‘an avowedly political institution,’ but a nonpartisan, progressive nonprofit that is unaffiliated with any political party or candidate.” Indeed, Media matters has to be nonpartisan, if not nonpolitical. It is registered with the Internal Revenue Service as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) charitable institution, meaning it is...

I want to talk about an online slime machine known as Media Matters for America. It is a tax-exempt organization which states its purpose as countering conservatives in the media. I have said before that Media Matters was started with help from Hillary Clinton and took George Soros' money. Media Matters has written to me and all my bosses saying my charge is a lie, that it is an independent organization which plays no political favorites and has never received slime machine cash from Soros-funded Democracy Alliance. Here are the facts: Media Matters was started in offices provided by the...

Last week, two of the leading conservatives in the media, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, were dishonestly and unprofessionally attacked by press outlets that cherry-picked out of context remarks from lengthy radio broadcasts in order to vilify outspoken personalities whose opinions they don’t agree with. Unfortunately, as folks around the country saw this play out on their television sets and newspapers, few were at all familiar with the organization behind the smear campaigns, or that this same group started the firestorm which ended with radio host Don Imus being terminated by NBC and CBS in April. Maybe more importantly, even...

Media Matters For America was created by David Brock, a self-described “hit man,” self-confessed liar, and gossip peddler. His past casts a shadow over his current self-proclaimed dedication to truth-telling. Previously he viciously attacked Clintons and Bushes, Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas, Rush Limbaugh and National Public Radio, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Each time he recants a prior assault he lunges out at a new political enemy. Brock puts himself in the position of someone who says, “I’m a liar. Believe what I tell you.” Journalist Christopher Hitchens wrote Brock “is incapable of recognizing the...

Excerpt - Matt Sheffield's post over at Ace's place ("The Attempted Crucifixion of Frank Luntz") noted the heat PBS had received for having GOP pollster Frank Luntz participate as an analyst at last Thursday's Democrat debate: The blog left's puppet master, David Brock, sends out an "alert" informing them that someone who might possibly be conservative is going to be allowed to report as a "mainstream" journalist. ..... Thankfully, PBS has not backed down. Luntz, who is a respected pollster and is often quoted in liberal publications is not getting the shaft, making him one of the very few Republicans...

Media Matters apparently tried to cover their lie with a half-truth. http://mediamatters.org/items/200606150010 Media Matters attacked Dick Morris for saying that Democrats are supporting Left-Wing Rockefeller Republican Kathleen McFarland for the New York Republican Primary. They posted that the Democrats that supported Clinton only gave money to McFarland during her race for the House, and that Democrats are not supporting McFarland. They were partly correct. The citings that Dick Morris made were indeed false in that they did not support McFarland during her Senate Race, but in her house race. This is completely irrelavent to any conservative Republican; a Republican backed...

NEW YORK Ben Domenech's conservative blog Red America lasted all of three days at the Washington Post. He quit today after numerous examples of alleged plagiarism in his work surfaced. Yesterday, in a seprate matter, he had apologized for calling Coretta Scott King a "Communist" the day after her recent funeral. The embarrassing episode for the Post culminated Friday afternoon when washingtonpost.com executive editor Jim Brady posted the following notice on the Web site: "In the past 24 hours, we learned of allegations that Ben Domenech plagiarized material that appeared under his byline in various publications prior to washingtonpost.com contracting...

On November 8 of this year, David Brock of Media Matters attacked me following my appearance on MSNBC's The Situation With Tucker Carlson by providing faulty and incomplete evidence to call me a liar.

Tell CNN Not to Ditch Coulter by Robert B. Bluey Posted Nov 29, 2005 David Brock's Media Matters for America today asked it supporters to "Tell CNN to ditch Coulter". The fundraising and publicity pleads: "It's time for CNN to stop helping Ann Coulter to spew her false and offensive bile to the American public". Coulter, HUMAN EVENTS' Legal Affairs Correspondent, is a favorite of Brock's to attack. She appeared on the network last week, apparently prompting the dispatch from Media Matters. As a public service for conservatives, I'm sharing Media Matters' email with you. As liberals bombard CNN with...

For liberal talkers, still failing to carve a significant niche in a fiercely competitive media environment, today apparently won't bring their hoped-for "Fitz-mas". Yes, that's how they describe the elusive ratings windfall indicted senior Bush Administration officials might (in a Rhodesian fantasy world) bring to floundering "progressive" talk shows. Al Franken used the term (which refers to special counsel Patrick J Fitzgerald) during a Wednesday CNN interview, as have his radio counterparts, repeatedly. As the New York Times is now reporting, however, Karl Rove is not likely to face charges for now, if ever. Can "Scooter" Libby alone save liberal...

Rather than taking on one of the left's sleaziest characters, is maintaining a stuffy media pecking order more important? Or can this blunder be chalked up to pure ignorance? Exposing a key danger of conservative disunity, a Wall Street Journal columnist has needlessly allowed Air America talk show host Al Franken to score points at his expense. And it's forced the Radio Equalizer to address one of the conservative media's biggest weaknesses: structural quirks that interfere with good story judgment. Is it about rivalries, or other issues?

Throughout the 1990s, David Brock was a muck-raking and highly-paid investigative reporter for the conservative magazine The American Spectator. On a contract which paid him $350,000 he produced just six articles. But these focused on President Clinton’s sexual farragoes and brought Brock much notoriety and fame. Brock had achieved public prominence with a book called The Real Anita Hill, in which he described the accuser of Clarence Thomas as “a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty,” discredited claims and exposed the leftwing smear campaign against the future Supreme Court Justice. Soon thereafter, Brock accepted a million-dollar advance from...

The left is preparing to up the ante in what they see as their bid to take control of Congress and the White House. They announced their plans in a Washington Post story on August 7, describing how at least 80 wealthy Democratic Party supporters each pledged to put up at least $200,000 a year for five years, with an overall goal of raising $200 million dollars to invest in "a network of think tanks and advocacy groups." This follows the intervention of billionaire George Soros in the 2004 presidential election, using a loophole in the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law...

On August 19, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann pronounced nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh "once again, today's worst person in the world" Olbermann named Media Research Center (MRC) president L. Brent Bozell III "a very close second" after the MRC accused Olbermann, in naming Limbaugh "worst person in the world" on his August 17 program, of distorting Limbaugh's August 15 statement.

A left-wing website rescues clueless Democrats in the confirmation fight. When Melody Townsel, the Texas woman who claims that U.N.-ambassador nominee John Bolton chased her through a Moscow hotel, throwing things at her and "behaving like a madman," first tried to tell her story to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the committee showed no interest. It was only after she turned to the influential far-Left website DailyKos that Democrats on the committee realized Townsel might be a powerful weapon in their campaign to defeat the Bolton nomination. The story began on Friday, April 8, when Townsel e-mailed her story to...

In its upcoming issue, Vanity Fair has done an investigation into the current cause of the kooky left, the case of disgraced White House reporter Jeff Gannon/James Guckert. And reporters David Margolick and Richard Gooding have uncovered...nothing. No White House wrongdoing. No secret plotting or illicit Gannon affairs with White House staffers. No Karl-Rove-master-plan-to-undermine-democracy hijinks. Nothing. "As time passed, Gannon came to seem, to at least some of the [left-wing] bloggers, as more like a freelance zealot than the linchpin of some much larger conspiracy," Margolick and Gooding write. "They now admit that for them Gannon emerged as less a...

John Cloud is a staff writer for Time magazine, where he has worked since 1997. Before coming to Time, he was a senior writer at Washington City Paper. He wrote this week's much-discussed Time cover story about Ann Coulter.Brian Montopoli: First things first: Why did you write the story? Did you pitch it, or did the editors come to you and say, "We want to do a cover on Ann Coulter?"John Cloud: Last summer, you know, we put Michael Moore on the cover. And, by the way, at that time we didn't get quite the reaction, certainly not from the...

Well, it's official. The White House Correspondents' Association has weighed in on "Gannongate," saying "individual episodes" should not prompt a crackdown on credentialing. That was a reference to a conservative reporter, Jeff Gannon, heavily criticized for asking anti-Democrat questions. Matt Drudge reported on February 28 that in a resolution adopted at a meeting in Washington that morning, the association said it "stands for inclusiveness in the credentialing process so that the White House remains accessible to all journalists We hope that individual episodes do not obscure the broader principles of a fair and evenhanded credentialing process." The resolution explained that...

Democrats ask White House for documents on conservative blogger BY ELANA SCHOR Knight Ridder Newspapers WASHINGTON - (KRT) - U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the House's top Democrat for homeland security, has found an unlikely place in need of his protection: the White House press room. Thompson and four colleagues, all senior congressional Democrats, have petitioned Bush administration officials to release classified documents about James D. Guckert, a conservative activist who was a daily fixture at White House press briefings. Calling himself Jeff Gannon, Guckert asked President Bush questions at televised news conferences as a representative of Talon News Service,...

Newsroom shills for the left tend to fare badly in confrontations with bloggers, as former New York Times executive editor Howell Raines, former CBS anchorman Dan Rather and former CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan learned the hard way. Now another leftwing journalist hangs on the ropes, bruised and bloodied from an ill-advised brawl with yet another indignant and fatally well-informed weblogger. This time the recipient of the beating is David Brock – founder and CEO of MediaMatters.org, a self-styled media "watchdog" group more accurately described as a smear site targeting conservative journalists. The blogger is author, journalist and conservative...

Media Matters for America, the group headed by conservative turned liberal writer David Brock, has changed course on its stated association with billionaire liberal financier George Soros. After initially claiming on Dec. 1, 2004 that "neither Media Matters nor its president and CEO David Brock has received any money from Soros or from any organization with which he is affiliated," the group is no longer disavowing any connection with groups "affiliated" with Soros. The Media Matters shift came after Cybercast News Service questioned the group's financial ties and demonstrated that there were numerous and extensive links between Media Matters and...

Neither the Jeff Gannon nor James Guckert saga is going to cause the White House Correspondents Association to seek any changes in the White House press-credentialing process. It appears that everyone involved in the process is very uncomfortable in attempting to define exactly what a "journalist" is. And that's a very good thing. WHCA President Ron Hutcheson said on February 15, "I'm not comfortable in passing judgment on who is a journalist and who isn't. My overriding view is that if I am going to make a mistake, it is going to be on letting people in rather than keeping...

NBC News reporter Campbell Brown reports that Jeff Gannon's troubles with the liberal media "started when he was called on by the President at a January 26 news conference and took a swipe at Democrats" with a loaded question. In an interview, Campbell pressed Gannon with her own loaded question: "You don't deny you were writing news with a perspective, with a partisan perspective?" It was as if Brown was implying that other members of the White House press corps would never even think of approaching the news in such a manner. Brown also asked several questions about whether Gannon...

Two leaders of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee want the federal prosecutor investigating the Valeria Plame case to subpoena a personal journal of controversial White House reporter James Guckert, following Editor & Publisher's disclosure yesterday that Guckert claims he kept the journal for the past two years. "It is clear that a primary obstacle to the ... investigation is uncovering a precise chronology of when, and to whom, classified information was leaked," Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), one of those seeking the subpoena, told E&P. "The revelation by Editor & Publisher that Mr. Guckert kept contemporaneous records of his 'reporting' activities...

Brit Hume is the anchor of Fox News Channel's prime time news report, Special Report with Brit Hume, and he makes things up. On February 3rd, Hume intentionally manipulated the words of the 32nd president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to make it appear as if FDR supported privatization of social security. This is a brazen falsehood. President Roosevelt's grandson, James Roosevelt Jr., describes Hume's journalistic malfeasance as an "an outrageous distortion". We agree.

The United Nations has started a blog . And they recruited former Kerry web honcho Peter Daou to run it. Peter Daou and Debra DeShong, both of whom worked for the Massachusetts Democrat in his campaign against President Bush, have taken on new roles with the U.N. Foundation, headed by former CNN mogul Ted Turner. The group looking to boot the United Nations out of the U.S. is now blasting the global body for hiring aides to former presidential candidate John Kerry to help improve its image. Peter Daou and Debra DeShong, both of whom worked for the Massachusetts Democrat...

Jeff Gannon is considering suing liberal interest groups, bloggers and others for a "political assassination" that drove him from his job as a reporter for a conservative news outfit called Talon News, he told NEWSWEEK. Gannon, whose real name is James Guckert, singled out Media Matters—a "well-funded" liberal group headed by longtime "attack dog" David Brock. ("Everything we wrote about him came from the public record," Brock replied.)

Washington, D.C. (CNSNews.com) - David Brock, a former investigative reporter for conservative publications before flipping his political ideology and writing a book titled, "Blinded by the Right," said Monday that the best way for liberals to expose the current conservative influence in the media is to show how conservatives are "simply willing to lie." Brock is currently the president and CEO of Media Matters for America, a liberal media watchdog that takes on some of the biggest names in conservative media. In authoring the 2002 book, "Blinded by the Right, The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative," Brock not only distanced himself...

In a prominent move, The New York Times offered a correction on its editorial page today regarding a previous editorial concerning columnist Maggie Gallagher. She had sent the newspaper an e-mail, E&P has learned, charging "reckless disregard of the truth." This is the latest twist in the current controversy over payments from government agencies to newspaper columnists and whether some are being paid as advisers or with the expectation they may also promote certain policies in their published writing. The Times correction reads: "An editorial last Thursday incompletely described the contract between the Health and Human Services Department and the...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Media Matters for America sent a letter yesterday (January 31) to White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan asking him to consider revoking the White House press credentials apparently granted to Jeff Gannon, the Washington bureau chief and White House correspondent for Talon News, a self-proclaimed news organization that in reality is little more than a partisan activist group. On the heels of the growing scandal surrounding the Bush administration's use of fake "news" reports, the hiring of conservative columnists to promote its policies without public disclosure, and payola to conservative commentators, Media Matters for...

Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley and his wife told a crowd of reporters today that they have a faithful, loving marriage, after the mayor accused agents of Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s administration of spreading false rumors that he had an extramarital affair. "It is difficult to express the kind of anger a father feels in not being able to protect his children from the lies," said Martin O'Malley, a Democrat. "It's hard to defend against this without giving aid to the people trying to push this." Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley and his wife Katie O'Malley hold a press conference...

Media Matters, the Soros-funded media watchdog, made a big stink last summer about talk show host Michael Savage's assertion that some illegal aliens vote. Here is what Savage is quoted as saying on his July 26, 2004, show: "I'll go down the list of people who should not have the right to vote. Let's start with illegal aliens. Should they have the right to vote? Course they shouldn't, but they do. They're being courted by the Democrats as we speak." The so-called watchdogs at Media Matters responded, "Contrary to Savage's assertion, the U.S. Constitution grants voting rights only to American...

Bill O'Reilly The O'Reilly Factor FOX News Channel 1211 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10036 Dear Mr. O'Reilly: In May of this year, I asked that you allow me to come on The O'Reilly Factor to discuss your attacks on philanthropist George Soros. Your producer denied my request, saying you were no longer discussing the topic. Yet in subsequent weeks, you continued to discuss Mr. Soros on your radio and television programs. Despite my offer to discuss Soros, you still did not invite me on -- even complaining during your June 1 Radio Factor, "I mean, we really...

The passions of war in a divided nation can be not only unpleasant, but dangerous as well. They can tie our hands, weaken our resolve, and make us vulnerable to those who are determined to destroy us. But when lives are at stake – and those lives are our own – it is easy to abandon common civilities and to think of our opponents as an enemy camp vying for the right and the power to determine our fates. In these circumstances it is easy to forget the ties that bind us, and that we are, when all is said...

I thought it interesting when George Soros and co. gave $2 million to a self-confessed liar to be the "liberal'" media watchdog. David Brock's site 'Media Matters" doesn't disappoint. It is just what one would expect from a man who has made a career out of sleaze, the betrayal of friends, an alarming lack of scruples and a generally contemptuous attitude towards the facts. So I am not surprised that my attempt to hold Al Franken to account for his own reckless disregard for decency and ethics should draw its first fire from David Brock. Not surprisingly, either, the attack...

MMFA asks NBC not to feature Limbaugh on election night Mr. Neal Shapiro NBC News 30 Rockefeller Plaza New York, NY 10112 Dear Mr. Shapiro: I am writing to you today to ask that NBC not feature conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh as a political commentator during election night coverage, as your network did in 2002. As you should know, Limbaugh has a track record of using extreme, hateful speech that has no place in civil discourse. To pick just a few examples from this year, as documented by Media Matters for America: Limbaugh compared the abuse of Iraqi prisoners...

Pollster Frank Luntz is crying foul after MSNBC canceled his long-scheduled focus group two days before the debate. Luntz, who is under contract to MSNBC, had already spent $30,000 on recruits for several focus groups and invited reporters in Florida to watch -- only to be told that the network didn't want to declare a winner in the debate. "I think they buckled to political pressure," says Luntz, who has advised Republicans from Newt Gingrich to Rudy Giuliani but says he's done no GOP work since 2001. "They caved. . . . Why is it that Democrats are allowed to...

From Roll Call, subscription only. Here's the relevant bit: Looks like the letter had an impact. Although MSNBC did not respond to Brock, a spokeswoman for the network told HOH late Wednesday that the network has decided “not to go with Frank for the debate.” In fact, MSNBC won’t conduct polling at all now, she said. Brock was delighted to hear the news. “It is encouraging that MSNBC responded to criticism in a constructive way. Clearly they realized that employing a partisan pollster does not reflect well on them as a responsible media outlet.” --------------------- From Media Matters: From: Jeremy...

MMFA sends letter to Wal-Mart, Amazon.com, and Barnes & Noble asking these top booksellers to review policies on selling Unfit for Command Dear CEO: In light of an August 19 report in The Washington Post (titled "Records Counter a Critic of Kerry") proving that a key allegation in the new book Unfit for Command by John E. O'Neill and Jerome R. Corsi is fraudulent, I'm writing to express my concern that by continuing to sell Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry as a work of nonfiction, prominent book retailers are complicit in a literary hoax....

Media Matters for America Asks Top Booksellers to Review Policies on Selling 'Unfit for Command'; David Brock Calls AntiKerry Veterans Book 'the Hitler Diaries of this political season' To: National Desk, Political Reporter Contact: Naomi Seligman of Media Matters for America, 202-756-4108 WASHINGTON, Aug. 20 /U.S. Newswire/ -- On the heels of the August 19, 2004 Washington Post article shining the light that a key allegation in "Unfit for Command" is false, Media Matters for America (MMFA) called on three of the nation's leading booksellers to, at the very least, inform customers about the book's false allegations and lies. David...

DAVID BROCK THINKS AMERICA has been duped. How else to explain the popularity of talk radio and the Fox News Channel, the success of conservative books or the sprawling right-wing presence on the Internet? The rise of the right is the result of a nefarious, decades-old campaign by conservatives to create a myth of liberal media bias. Money from wealthy benefactors has and is being used to influence the press and consciously brainwash Americans. The mainstream media are a front group for the Republican Party. And Americans don't even know it. That is the conclusion that people less intelligent than...

David Brock has written a new book called The Republican Noise Machine: How It Corrupts Our Democracy. In it, he purports to expose the vast right-wing media conspiracy, a menace Brock claims to know first-hand as someone who was once a cog in its malignant machine. First-hand knowledge is an important claim for Brock because, as a famous self-confessed prevaricator, he is aware that he stands on shaky ground as he attempts to extend the successful career he has made out of his confession of malfeasance and the political reversal it announced. A similar dilemma haunts the postpartum lives of...