Counterbias: Media Does Matter - Just Ask Bill O'Reilly

Media Does Matter: Just Ask Bill O'Reilly

August 11 2004
Counterbias.com
Robert Furs

There it was: in a mid-commotion lull between verbal outbursts from Bill O’Reilly – pompous know-it-all – and the meek responses from a visibly shaken Paul Krugman – economist and hero of liberal America – was a piece of documented commentary that brought O’Reilly’s verbal vengeance on a brand new, little-known organization.

When Bill O’Reilly had discovered, on-air, that Krugman had obtained a questionable O’Reilly quote from Media Matters For America (located at mediamatters.org), a “Web-based, not-for-profit progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media”, he became agitated.

O’Reilly boomed at Krugman: “Media Matters. Oh, I see. A real objective Web site”. He called the organization “garbage” (“stop taking the left-wing garbage and throwing it out there for the folks”, and later, “What a bunch of garbage, Media Matters”). Then, he equated the media watchdog to the Ku Klux Klan (“Media Matters. Oh, my--that's like me calling some Klan operation”).

Finally, to end his tirade against Media Matters For America, O’Reilly brushed them off as a hate group: “You call the left-wing hate groups up to get your propaganda.”

Media Matters is a hate group only in the sense of their hating on-air extremism, disinformation and smear tactics of what its leader, David Brock, calls the “Right Wing Propaganda Machine”. Whatever names it goes by – the right-wing media, or the Republican media complex – Media Matters For America is an organization that will fight it if it spills distortion, mistruths, and slanderous or extremist statements on its viewers.

As the Right-Wing Media so often does, if MediaMatters.org’s mere existence is any indication.

The organization’s website has quickly become an important staple of the liberal web surfer’s diet. It is regularly linked and referenced on progressive websites. According to an unscientific Google search, “about 7,230” sites link to Mediamatters.org – compared to 2,330 for the conservative, much older and more established Media Research Center website, or the 745 linking to popular liberal site Buzzflash.com. Media Matters has recently been promoted through mentions in columns by the Toronto Star’s Antonia Zerbisias and the New York Times’ venerable Paul Krugman.

If you haven’t heard of Media Matters before, you’re not alone. They didn’t exist last year, or during the 2000 elections when the anti-Gore bias pervading the media was left without an effective counterattack – because they launched in May of 2004.

If only they’d been around sooner, Democrats are sure to say. Mediamatters.org would’ve been helpful during the Clinton Nineties, when the “Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy” with the media as puppy dog (and sometimes ringleader) almost destroyed a Presidency.

Yet, in one of the ironies that make Media Matters all the more credible, its founder, President and CEO David Brock was once a part of that very Right-Wing Conspiracy wreaking havoc in the nineties.

His book Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative, according to his website, “was a 2002 New York Times best-selling political memoir in which he chronicled his years as a conservative media insider”. Conservative media, indeed: Brock contributed to the anti-Clinton fervor, including his 1998 book, The Seduction of Hillary Rodham, which one Amazon reviewer said makes “The President comes off like a real sleaze…[seeming] to make [Hillary] one as well by both association, conspiracy, and her own behavior.”

Now, Brock has a new book to go along with his new organization: The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy. Brock would know all about that subject, and he brings such knowledge to Media Matters For America.

As a somewhat-skittish member of the Republican Media (afraid to just come out and admit his party preference), Bill O’Reilly harbors a strong distaste for Brock’s organization. His anger at the mere sound of the words ‘Media Matters’ during the Tim Russert debate with Paul Krugman, resorting to visible anger and smear attacks rather than calm disregard, show that he knows the danger the new movement poses to the usual O’Reilly daily dissemination of falsehoods and bias.

Of course, O’Reilly doesn’t take criticism well, and one of his shticks is to start a bitter feud with anyone who dares criticize his deceit or questionable methods: his individual rivals include Al Franken, Globe and Mail TV critic John Doyle and columnist Heather Mallick, journalist Bill Moyers, Jeremy Glick, G. Gordon Liddy, rappers Ludacris and Jadakiss, and a whole lot more. George Soros and Michael Moore both have been victims of O’Reilly’s verbal denouncements – and smears – not for criticizing O’Reilly, but rather, the Bush administration, a crew he obviously chooses to side with on almost all occasions (while still deceitfully claiming that he takes no sides). The obvious lesson is, criticize or oppose O’Reilly or something he identifies with (read: Republicanism, conservatism, or Bush), and you’re next on his ratings-hungry hit list.

Organizations take O’Reilly’s hit as well. The ACLU is “fascist”, Moveon.org is “socialist”, “loony” and “extremist”; every other organization has a dirty label, but only if they’re on the leftward side of the spectrum – including Media Matters, which is now a “hate group” in O'Reilly's one-sided world of spin.

If a matter-of-fact media watchdog that does nothing more than issue journalist-style reports on a website is considered a “hate group”, one must wonder whether O’Reilly has reconstructed the meaning of the word ‘hate’.

Fox News offers more ‘hate’ (against liberals, Arabs, Clintons, or O’Reilly’s enemies, for instance) on a daily basis than Media Matters ever has.

In fact, Media Matters exists in a state of innocence, exuding a vitriol- and hate-free sterility.

But in O’Reilly’s world, ‘hate’ is synonymous with anything opposed to conservatism, Republicanism, George W. Bush or his administration, or – get ready for it – Bill O’Reilly. And Media Matters is surely an enemy of the latter. O'Reilly wasn’t ready for a popular watchdog group dedicated to logging and disseminating his deceptions, lies, misstatements and outlandish statements when he entered the business – and now, in addition to the Al Frankens of the world, O’Reilly has to deal with a serious group watching his every word and ready to pounce on misstatements and lies.

He wasn’t ready for it. Judging by his continuous slanderous labeling of his favored Bush administration’s enemies (such as the “propagandist” Michael Moore, or “Leni Riefenstahl”), attacks on Al Franken and others, or unjustifiably and laughably labeling Media Matters as a “hate group”, O’Reilly still isn’t ready for it.

And he never will be, unless he cleans up his shoddy act.

Judging by the direction the mainstream media has followed in the last few years, and the proven enormous impact the conservative media echo chamber can have on America’s political scenery, organizations like Media Matters For America can only expect their roles to become more vital. Witnessing the positive reaction to the website, and Bill O’Reilly’s intensely negative one, it’s clear that David Brock and his “hate group" MediaMatters.org is on the right track.