Liberal Journalist's Media Monitoring Project Targets Conservatives
by Fred Jackson and Jenni Parker
May 4, 2004
(AgapePress) - An ex-conservative turned liberal journalist is launching an Internet site to counter what he calls "the right wing dominated debate over liberal media bias."David Brock's conversion from conservative to liberal journalist back in the late 1990s has made him a darling of the left. His latest venture involves the creation of a website with the help of two million dollars in donations from what the New York Times terms as "wealthy liberals." The site is called Media Matters for America, and Brock describes it as "a progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media."
The project is also received backing and developmental support from former Clinton White House Chief of Staff, John Podesta, who heads the newly formed policy group, the Center for American Progress. Brock told the times he hopes it can help "provide fodder" for liberal radio talk shows starting up across the U.S., including those of comedians Al Franken and Janeane Garofolo.
Brock says his purpose in creating the website is to combat what he perceives as the excessive influence of the right-wing and its domination of debate over liberal bias in the media. He claims that by dominating that debate, conservatives have actually helped shift the media and American politics toward the right. The journalist says his Media Matters project is an effort "to create an institution to combat what [the right] is doing."
On a typical day in Brock's new offices, about a half-dozen researchers sit in a darkened room before a bank of computer screens and television sets, watching things like Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes and the O'Reilly Factor, or MSNBC's Scarborough Country, and scanning sites like The Drudge Report.
According to Brock, his people will monitor the conservative media and use the website to correct what he regards as their "erroneous assertions." The liberal journalists says his group will "comprehensively monitor a cross-section of print, broadcast, cable, radio, and Internet media outlets," and "our website will be the principal vehicle for disseminating our research.
According to the New York Times story, Brock's key targets will include Rick Scarborough, the former Republican representative from Florida who now has his own radio program; and talk show host Rush Limbaugh, whom Brock characterized -- quoting Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz -- as more influential than news anchors Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, or Peter Jennings.
In addition to monitoring the conservative media, the Media Matters for America group is inaugurating four special projects for 2004. Brock notes that the Democracy Project will track and "swiftly correct conservative media misinformation" on major political issues, while the Radio Project will monitor, analyze, and "correct" targeted political talk radio
Meanwhile, Media Matters' founder says the Columnist Project will play the part of watchdog over print and online opinion writers' discourse. And through the Activism Project, which is currently in the planning stages, Brock says Media Matters will work to build and mobilize a community of activists to take action against what he considers to be conservative misinformation in the media.
