Posted on 04/15/2007 7:14:53 AM PDT by rface
The morning Don Imus uttered the phrase that appears to have ended his career, Ryan Chiachiere was watching. .... the 26-year-old researcher for Media Matters in America, a liberal media watchdog group, .....
Media Matters workers packaged a video clip of Imus' statement along with a written transcript and several paragraphs of contextual information. Then they e-mailed the material to hundreds of journalists and interest groups.
It is a process that happens more than a dozen times daily at the Web-based nonprofit, often without any clear progress toward Media Matters' stated goal of "correcting conservative misinformation."
There have long been journalism watchdog groups, but "what Media Matters clearly has learned is that the Web is the way to get it done quick," says Charlotte Grimes, the Knight Chair in political reporting at Syracuse University's communications school.
Founded in 2004 by David Brock, a conservative-turned-liberal author who often writes about the press, Media Matters' purpose is to correct falsehoods and omissions, especially those that seem to have a conservative spin, according to its Web site. It analyzes conventional news output and controversial media personalities, such as Imus, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage and others.
Media Matters will also keep experimenting, Frisch says. The group has opened an office in Colorado, home of several conservative news outlets, to see how Web monitoring works on a statewide level - quite well, according to Frisch.
Frisch says the group is keeping a particularly close eye on global warming skeptics, as well as on the rest of the world's sharp-tongued morning show hosts. It hopes to use its current moment in the limelight.
"It's not just Imus," a subsequent e-mail release from the group said this week, above a list of offensive comments from other, mostly right-wing, hosts.
(Excerpt) Read more at baltimoresun.com ...
Another attempt to turn Imus into a conservative? In other stories I’ve read, It said they monitored Imus, even though he’s a Lib, because he had conservative guests.
They are coming after Conservative Talk Radio. No doubt about it. In order to tell the lies they are going to need to tell to get Hillary elected there must be no one to set the record straight.
Look for an attempt to return the “Fairness Doctrine”, a bit of Stalinist wording which covers the fact that it was and is designed to shut down non-approved speech.
We are in for a hell of a fight.
Wrong.
They monitored Imus because he ripped Hillary.
Imus just got himself some Arkansas Payback.
L
Oh, good point... I’m sure that’s exactly why the were monitoring him.
I said this days ago when it started, even before Savage or Beck started saying who is next. I shutter to think the machinations she may put the country through (via the new left underground/Soros) even before (G-D forbid) she is elected CIC.
Don Imus will come out farther ahead in this than anyone else. Number two will be CBS, they were given a reason to dump a program that was not making money for them. In my opinion, the Revs. Jackson and Sharpton will come out dead last. Their response enforces whatever opinion someone might have had about them before the ruckus. If you like them then they’ve shored up support from you. If you dislike them, it’s just another example the pressure for PC is growing in these times.
It would not surprise me at all if CBS simply made up the story that the sponsors of the Don Imus show were putting pressure on them to fire him. No sponsor is going to speak up at this point and deny the story, the response would be ask if they approve of what Imus did.
It could even end up that Media Matters actually harmed their own cause with their impetuous actions! There are a lot of people who want Rosie O’Donnell gone and the success of getting Imus fired could serve as a catalyst for a move on Rosie. It won’t be by the same people, but to the ignorant masses it won’t matter.
I wonder what little serendipitous gift we can expect from Media Matters next?
Agreed. This is the most important presidential election since 1980, in some ways, since 1860. We have come to a fork in the road, one way leads to the collectivization of “it takes a village”, the other...I’m not sure...don’t know if the GOP stands for smaller government anymore.
Imus was just low hanging fruit. He was never a serious target of these Stalinist, but just a convenient one. The hit on him both tested and demonstrated their muscle and it will allow them to claim their ultimate targets were not chosen for political reasons. The Leftist know he was one of their own but surley feel he had to take the fall FOR THE TEAM.
This is the financial source for Media Matters.
Democracy Alliance was founded by former Clinton Treasury official Rob Stein and various donors in 2005.
“At least 80 wealthy liberals have pledged to contribute $1 million or more apiece to fund a network of think tanks and advocacy groups to compete with the potent conservative infrastructure built up over the past three decades,” The Washington Post reported in August, 2005. [1]
Rob Stein’s PowerPoint presentation on how the Right built a strong infrastructure of think tanks, non-profits, non-profit groups, scholarship recipients, academics, lobbyists, right wing activists and the media led to the founding of the Democracy Alliance, and also a separate organization, the New Progressive Coalition.
The Democracy Alliance tries to keep a low profile and its wealthy donors prefer anonymity. According to published reports, organizations funded by Democracy Alliance are asked not to reveal the funding.
In 2006 a San Francisco, CA, office was established by the Democracy Alliance at the Presidio in the Tides Center, where Alliance member Drummond Pike has his offce.
Rob McKay of the McKay Foundation and Anna Burger of SEIU are the elected chair and vice chair of the board of directors of the Democracy Alliance. [2]
“Members of the Democracy Alliance include billionaires like George Soros and his son Jonathan Soros, former Rockefeller Family Fund president Anne Bartley, San Francisco Bay Area donors Susie Tompkins Buell and Mark Buell, Hollywood director Rob Reiner, Taco Bell heir Rob McKay ... as well as New York financiers like Steven Gluckstern.” [3]
In October 2006, an article in The Nation magazine reported “the Alliance’s 100 donors have distributed more than $50 million to center-left organizations and activists—a lot of money, yet still largely symbolic given the deep pockets of its members. Even as the donors pour millions into a new political infrastructure, however, problems have emerged that mirror many of the problems of the Democratic Party today and the progressive movement in general. The first is determining what, exactly, the group stands for and wants to accomplish. ... Rob Johnson, an early board member, says the tension in the Alliance is between ‘party subsidizers’ and ‘climate changers’—those who want to fund organizations that work toward more effectively electing candidates versus those who aspire to change the fundamental nature of political debate with a stronger set of governing principles. ... Since its inception, the Alliance has been unabashedly elitist, while also poorly run. ... To stabilize the organization internally after almost a year of early stumbles, the partners chose as its managing director Judy Wade, a member of the elite firm McKinsey & Company, consultants to multinational corporations.” [4]
I do not know how we do it, but we must crack down on this shadow government that operates separate from the constitution, law, and oversight. I’ll bet these same watchdogs deplore the Minute Men.
...a certified mental-patient, homo and DNC scumbag-for-hire.
If the tables were turned, a “conservative” group could have a treasure trove from AirAmerica.
I have heard things on that station that left me wondering how they can get by with it—things that are over the top compared to Imus’ remark.
Don’t bother to ask me why I listen to AirAmerica——I’ve lived a long life and have learned along the way that it’s profitable to know what the opposing side from yours is saying and doing. (”know your enemy”)
I can tell you that if Imus’ woes don’t cause the guys at AA to do a little self-inspection, I’ll be surprised. In my area, except for the 2-hour Saturday morning garden talk show, AA is one stream of hate talk and defamatory remarks after the other. It is a bona fide hate-speech station, without humor and without class.
A MediaMatters/Brock/Soros/Hillary! connection is an easy one to grasp. The Team Clinton has a long memory and its hard to find anyone who has every crossed them not getting eventually smacked.
That makes it very personal with me. David Brock is a total waste of human protoplasm. Brownshirts like him need to be called out and neutralized.
That’s how it’s done.
Their goal is to silence all who disagree with radical leftist dogma.
I admire your fortitude; I would consider listening to that drivel to be a form of torture. In fact, I can’t take more than five minutes of NPR.
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