“MEDIA MATTERS Watch” : Media Matters’ Falsehoods Exposed!

Another "study" by Media Matters instantly loses credibility under scrutiny. A May 22, 2006 study makes the flimsy claim that the guest list so far in 2006 on The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News has been "dominated" by Republicans and conservatives.

How does Media Matters disserve and deceive their readers this time? It’s all in the labeling. MMatters compiled a list of all the O’Reilly Factor guests between January 2006 and April 2006. They individually labeled each one as either "Democrat," "progressive," "Republican," "conservative," or "neutral."

Quite simply, MMatters inaccurately labeled the guests and achieved the desired result for their "study." In several instances, MMatters labeled an obviously liberal/Democrat guest as "neutral." In other cases, they baselessly labeled a non-partisan guest as "conservative." See the deception?

Here are just a few examples:

• Ellis Henican is an persistant Bush-basher and a proud cheerleader and defender for Democrats; but Media Matters lists him as a "neutral." Yikes!
• Actor Kirk Cameron appeared on the Factor in April to share his story of how Christianity transformed his life in a wonderful way. That was enough for MMatters to label him as "conservative." … But when author Michael Baigent (author of the despicable Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Jesus Papers) appeared to discuss the outrageously false claim that Jesus faked his death and resurrection and that Christianity is a sham, MMatters labelled him "neutral"!!
• Jonathan Turley is clearly a liberal; you’d have a tough time finding a lib who disagrees with him. He recently appeared on Air America Radio and chummed it up with Randi Rhodes. He also recently penned a piece in the Chicago Tribune in which he compared the Bush White House to the HBO crime family, the Sopranos. Yet (are you ready for this?) he is listed three times by MMatters as "neutral."
• Alex Jones is the pathetic director of the Shorenstein Center at Harvard. A few years back, Jones extended a fellowship to Al Franken to compose a book. The result was Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. Jones defended the book even though Franken’s book is filled with lies, errors, falsehoods, and misleading passages. Jones is a former NYTimes columnist, and he is also on the board of the Columbia Journalism Review, which is well-known as a liberal outfit. MMaters’ label for Jones? "Neutral."
• Marvin Kalb is also a Shorenstein guy. He thought it was "dangerous" for writer Bernard Goldberg to claim that the media has a liberal bias. Kalb is clearly a lib, but MMatters unabashedly calls him "neutral."
• Jesse Watters is a producer at The O’Reilly Factor. He appeared as a guest to discuss some cases about lenient judges of questionable competence. That was enough for MMatters to call him "conservative."
• David Wallechinsky blogs over at the liberal Huffington Post, but MMatters says he’s "neutral."
• Nick Anderson is a political cartoonist. He appeared on the Factor to defend an especially despicable and spiteful anti-Rumsfeld cartoon by Tom Toles. Media Matters says … "neutral"!
• Mark Lunsford’s beautiful daughter, Jessica, was kidnapped, raped, and killed by a convicted sex offender. Mark wants tougher punishment for sex offenders so they’re not released from jail to go out and commit these horrible crimes again. Mark is just a regular citizen trying to do some good for the protection of children. For this, apparently, Mark Lunsford gets a "conservative" label.
• Zvika Krieger thinks it’s A.O.K. for a former Taliban official (!) to enroll at some courses at Yale. Media Matters’ conclusion? "Neutral"!
• Raul Hinojosa appeared about the illegal immigration issue. He is an unapologetic open borders advocate. His company is called "No Borders." This makes him "neutral" in Media Matters’ eyes!

This is an incomplete list, but you should get the picture. Media Matters’ study is unequivocally bogus. Are you really surprised?