Media Matters for America, the self-described “progressive” research center and media monitor, has called on “folks” to “really go at” Fox News while demanding other media organizations stop treating America’s top cable news outlet as a journalistic enterprise.
Appearing on MSNBC yesterday, Media Matters President Eric Burns said a recent White House campaign against Fox News is “not enough to get the job done.”
“Folks are going to have to really go at Fox News,” Burns said.
Burns claimed Fox “morphed itself this year into a 24-7 political operation” and claimed the news channel’s goal was to “destroy this presidency and destroy any sort of progressive policy agenda that the American people voted for in November.”
Separately, Media Matters senior fellow Eric Boehlert posted an entry on his group’s website calling on reporters and news agencies to “start treating the cable channel for what it is: a partisan animal.”
“The press needs to drop its longstanding gentleman’s agreement not to write about other news outlets as news players – not to get bogged down in criticizing the competition – because those newsroom rules no longer apply,” he wrote.
Boehlert continued: “The press needs to treat Fox News the same way it treats the Republican National Committee, even though, frankly, the RNC probably can’t match the in-your-face partisanship that Fox News flaunts 24/7.”
Boehlert claimed Beltway media insiders fail to criticize Fox News because they are too “spooked by right-wing attacks about the so-called liberal media.”
“Too often, though, journalists have danced around the obvious. It’s important that this trend now stop. The self-evident truth needs to be told, and news consumers need to understand the extraordinary forces that have been unleashed – forces that dramatically altered the media landscape,” he added.
A Discover the Networks profile points out Boehlert, a regular Fox News critic, was one of the most passionate defenders of University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian, who was accused of having been the North American leader of the terrorist organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Al-Arian currently is under house arrest awaiting a trial on contempt charges after refusing to testify before a grand jury.
Media Matters calls itself a “web-based, not-for-profit … progressive research and information center” that seeks to “systematically monitor a cross-section of print, broadcast, cable, radio, and Internet media outlets for conservative misinformation.”
The organization reportedly received donations from multiple groups funded by billionaire George Soros, including MoveOn, the Center for American Progress, the New Democratic Network and the Democracy Alliance.
Media Matters points out on its site it “has never received funding from progressive philanthropist George Soros.” But the group did not address the matter of receiving donations from organizations funded by Soros.
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