The Washington Post:
“Misinformation is dangerous when it metastasizes,” Rabin-Havt says. “Fox is going to lie with impunity. Rush Limbaugh is going to lie. The problem is when a story jumps from Fox News to CNN or the New York Times or The Washington Post. Our job is the head these things off at the pass.”
Rabin-Havt is the Vice President of Media Matters. The CEO, David Brock, was a conservative before he was a liberal.
Media Matters is the watch dog group that loves to hate Fox News. .
Fighting Fox is what Media Matters does, relentlessly and obsessively. In the six years since its founding, the watchdog group has evolved from an all-purpose scourge of the conservative media into Fox News Channel’s veritable shadow and constant irritant. From well before sunrise to long after it each day, teams of young researchers sift through video clips and transcripts of programs hosted by Fox stars such as Glenn Beckand Bill O’Reilly to find dubious facts, logical contradictions and poisonous – at least to Media Matters’ liberal sensibilities – rhetoric.
Brock further explains:
The dogged pursuit of Fox, says Media Matters’ founder David Brock, reflects not just the cable network’s popularity among conservatives but its power to set, and perhaps distort, the political agenda. Brock and his staff say they regard Fox as something more than just the televised equivalent of talk radio; they describe it as a de facto political operation, with a leading role in disseminating conservative messages, supporting conservative candidates and mobilizing voters.
