What is Media Matters?

- David Brock’s Media Matters for America is widely recognized as a web based 501(c)(3) propaganda front for leftwing billionaire George Soros.

- Standing behind Brock was John Podesta, a former chief of staff in the Clinton administration and the head of the "progressive" Washington, DC think tank, the Center for American Progress. In 2004 Podesta provided Brock with office space for his fledgling enterprise.

- The Center for American Progress (CAP) is widely understood to be what one inside source called, “the official Hillary Clinton think tank” – a platform designed to highlight Hillary’s policies and to enhance her prestige as a potential presidential candidate.

Robert Dreyfuss reports in the March 1, 2004 edition of The Nation: “The idea for the Center began with discussions in 2002 between [Morton] Halperin and George Soros, the billionaire investor. … Halperin, who heads the office of Soros’ Open Society Institute, brought [former Clinton chief of staff John] Podesta into the discussion, and beginning in late 2002 Halperin and Podesta circulated a series of papers to funders.”


- Soon after, Media Matters received over $2 million in seed donations from a roster of affluent donors including… Susie Tompkins Buell, a co-founder of the fashion company Esprit and a close ally of Senator Hillary Clinton; James Hormel, a San Francisco philanthropist who nearly served as ambassador to Luxembourg during the Clinton administration; Bren Simon, a Democratic activist…

- Prior to founding Media Matters, David Brock met with a number of leading Democratic Party figures, including Senator Hillary Clinton, former Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, and former Vice President Al Gore.

- Today, more than a few of the organization’s roughly 30 staff members are Democratic operatives. Among these are Media Matters’ chief communications strategist Dennis Yedwab, who is also the Director of Strategic Resources at Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

- Brock’s personal assistant, Mandy Vlasz, is a Democratic pollster and a veteran consultant to Democratic campaigns, including the 2000 Gore/Lieberman campaign. Katie Barge, the Director of Research at Media Matters, formerly presided over opposition research for Senator John Edwards’ unsuccessful 2004 presidential campaign…

- Media Matters receives financial support from the Tides Foundation [run by Teresa Heinz Kerry], the Arca Foundation, the Peninsula Community Foundation, and the San Francisco Foundation.

- 2002,Brock suffered a breakdown and was committed to the psychiatric ward of Sibley Hospital in Northwest Washington."He had delusions, he thought people were trying to kill him," reveals a source who befriended Brock last July at the hospital.Brock told fellow patients that he did not feel safe — even inside of the hospital’s secure medical setting!
"He spent time in the ”The Quiet Room’, there was just a mattress on the floor, and he had some books. He was so tired and stressed."


What does Media Matters want? They would seek to bar Glenn Beck, Neal Boortz, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage, Michael Smerconish, John Gibson and anyone else who counters the DNC line from the public airwaves.

If Media Matters has its way the only people who will be allowed to use the public airwaves will be Messrs. Brock, Soros, Chomsky, Ms. Hillary Clinton and other officially approved Democrats.


In their own words:


On April 11, NBC News announced that it was dropping MSNBC’s simulcast of Imus in the Morning in the wake of the controversy that erupted over host Don Imus’ reference to the Rutgers University women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos.” The following day, CBS president and CEO Leslie Moonves announced that CBS — which owns both the radio station that broadcast Imus’ program and Westwood One, which syndicated the program — has fired Imus and would cease broadcasting his radio show.

But as Media Matters for America has extensively documented, bigotry and hate speech targeting, among other characteristics, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and ethnicity continue to permeate the airwaves through personalities such as Glenn Beck, Neal Boortz, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage, Michael Smerconish, and John Gibson…It is our hope that this incident will begin a broader conversation about the responsibility that news corporations, journalists, and media figures have to the American public. This is an opportunity for the media to truly raise the bar to a higher standard and return to the fundamentals of journalism.”

*sweetnes-light/mediamatters/fpm/drudge/the nation/UPI