The "explosive new allegations" against the Obama Justice Department that hit the airwaves in June were in fact "completely unsubstantiated" assertions that were not broadcast so much as "trumpeted" by Fox News. That's the world according to Media Matters for America, the rapid-response liberal cadre of "misinformation" hunters that for six years has been raising its visibility -- while also raising the volume of invective that flavors much of today's press criticism.
The Fox story, elicited by daytime America Live interviewer Megyn Kelly on June 30, was a triple bank shot of politics, law, and putative video drama. It was built around charges by conservative operative J. Christian Adams, a former Bush administration Justice Department lawyer. He argued that his successors in the Civil Rights Division were reverse racists because they refused to prosecute a voter-intimidation case based on film clips of New Black Panther Party members standing menacingly in front of a Philadelphia polling station on Election Day 2008.
Readers of Mediamatters.org learned that the charges were based on "hearsay" from a Republican activist with a history of bashing President Obama and working as a poll watcher in 2004 for President Bush. A hyperlink sent readers to Adams's June 28 Pajamas Media post, in which he deplored "the profound hostility" in the Civil Rights Division "toward a race-neutral enforcement of civil-rights laws."
Media Matters then tracked the story as it was picked up on July 7 by CNN -- criticizing the cable network for not mentioning some conservative criticism of the Right's sudden fixation on the Black Panthers -- and by The New York Times. (The Washington Post was tardy, as ombudsman Andrew Alexander later complained in his column, waiting until July 15 to cover the Adams dustup.)
Thus did the digital Left's fastest-growing watchdog group, which claims 5 million visitors a month to its website, intercept a story launched by the conservative "noise machine" and seek to steer it toward the friendlier shoals of the mainstream press.
The Media Matters view of Washington soared in January, when the nonprofit's nearly 70-member staff moved into the panoramic, glassed-in sixth floor of a new building a few blocks from the Capitol, on Massachusetts Avenue NW. Its "more collaborative" work environment features seven rows of newsroom-style desks; researchers sit in front of their computer monitors beneath fluorescent lights and exposed ceiling ducts.
"We hire former journalists, editors, Ph.Ds, political researchers, and ex-TV producers," Ari Rabin-Havt, the group's vice president for research and communications, explains. "We look for more than experience -- certain personality types who pay attention to detail."...
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Charles S. Clark @'National Journal Magazine'
The Fox story, elicited by daytime America Live interviewer Megyn Kelly on June 30, was a triple bank shot of politics, law, and putative video drama. It was built around charges by conservative operative J. Christian Adams, a former Bush administration Justice Department lawyer. He argued that his successors in the Civil Rights Division were reverse racists because they refused to prosecute a voter-intimidation case based on film clips of New Black Panther Party members standing menacingly in front of a Philadelphia polling station on Election Day 2008.
Readers of Mediamatters.org learned that the charges were based on "hearsay" from a Republican activist with a history of bashing President Obama and working as a poll watcher in 2004 for President Bush. A hyperlink sent readers to Adams's June 28 Pajamas Media post, in which he deplored "the profound hostility" in the Civil Rights Division "toward a race-neutral enforcement of civil-rights laws."
Media Matters then tracked the story as it was picked up on July 7 by CNN -- criticizing the cable network for not mentioning some conservative criticism of the Right's sudden fixation on the Black Panthers -- and by The New York Times. (The Washington Post was tardy, as ombudsman Andrew Alexander later complained in his column, waiting until July 15 to cover the Adams dustup.)
Thus did the digital Left's fastest-growing watchdog group, which claims 5 million visitors a month to its website, intercept a story launched by the conservative "noise machine" and seek to steer it toward the friendlier shoals of the mainstream press.
The Media Matters view of Washington soared in January, when the nonprofit's nearly 70-member staff moved into the panoramic, glassed-in sixth floor of a new building a few blocks from the Capitol, on Massachusetts Avenue NW. Its "more collaborative" work environment features seven rows of newsroom-style desks; researchers sit in front of their computer monitors beneath fluorescent lights and exposed ceiling ducts.
"We hire former journalists, editors, Ph.Ds, political researchers, and ex-TV producers," Ari Rabin-Havt, the group's vice president for research and communications, explains. "We look for more than experience -- certain personality types who pay attention to detail."...
Continue reading
Charles S. Clark @'National Journal Magazine'
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