WP - "Media Matters, the watchdog group that loves to hate Fox News"

[TomCADem]

Here is an interesting article on Media Matters, except for the effort to draw a comparison between Soros' contribution to Media Matters with Rupert Murdoch's ownership of Fox News. Of course, I guess you have to slip in some right wing talking points to be "fair and balanced."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/02/AR2010120205779.html?hpid=moreheadlines

It takes only an instant for a visitor to Media Matters for America's headquarters in downtown Washington to sense its mission, if not its methods. A few steps into its modern offices, which resemble a newspaper newsroom, a pair of prominently displayed signs spell out the basics: "Fox Keeps Fear Alive," reads one; "Restore Sanity, Fight Fox," reads its companion.

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 Beck and Bill O'Reilly to find dubious facts, logical contradictions and poisonous - at least to Media Matters' liberal sensibilities - rhetoric.

* * *
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.

"I don't consider it a media institution," Brock says. "It's a political institution that Fox News Chief Executive Roger Ailes created after Obama came into office. . . . We're here to counter their lies and misinformation."