The Vicious Totalitarian Left, Striving To Control and Limit The Free Exchange of Ideas

(my title)

Now that Media Matters has declared victory over Glenn Beck, what’s next on its agenda? Getting Donald Trump to stop questioning where President Obama was born, perhaps, or maybe convincing advertisers to yank their support of another show on Fox News Channel. Maybe the left-leaning watchdog group will step up its campaign against online entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart.

It’s all on the table, but the only thing that’s for sure is whoever takes Beck’s time slot when he ends his Fox News Channel show this year will be an instant target of the group. “We monitor Beck’s 5 p.m. show on Fox. Whoever is in at 5 p.m., we’re still going to monitor,” said executive vp Ari Rabin-Havt, the No. 2 executive at Media Matters. “The likelihood is whoever is on at 5 p.m. is going to be a source of conservative misinformation.”

Media Matters — which operates on a $14 million budget, up from $9 million two years ago (financial backers have included billionaire George Soros, film producer Steve Bing and TV producer Marcy Carsey) — employs 86 people, many of whom make up teams of a half-dozen people who monitor 24 TV shows daily and dozens of radio shows.

The group puts various media personalities and entities into separate “tiers” depending on the amount of “conservative misinformation” each spreads and to what degree they influence the debate.

Fox News is the biggest target and accounts for 55% of what Media Matters complains about. But the group’s Tier 1 also consists of Breitbart, Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal and WorldNetDaily.

Once a Media Matters team member sees, reads or hears something objectionable, they document it in an email list the staff refers to as the “Bat Signal.” Rabin-Havt said the Bat Signal contains up to 500 items a day. If Media Matters zeroes in on one of its Bat Signal items, journalists, Democratic party operatives and others will get an email highlighting the perceived offense.

Excerpt- Full article.