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

A July 24, 2006, post by Media Matters made the following false claim (from screen cap):

As the video/audio of the broadcast clearly reveals, Hume articulated no such thing. What’s astonishing is that MMatters accompanied the video/audio of the segment with their post!

So did MMatters do the honorable thing and apologize to Mr. Hume for their baseless smear? No. Instead, they issued a "correction" that stated, "[W]e believe that we erred in stating unambiguously that Hume used the pronoun ‘we,’ and we regret the error." No apology to Mr. Hume accompanies the "correction."

Has MMatters’ search for "conservative misinformation" reached a new level of desperation such that editorial standards have been sadly degraded (even mitigated more than they are now)? Who allowed this post to be published? Why was it published? The claim in the post was so blatantly untrue that it’s almost bizarre that it was composed.

In weak atttempts to attack Ann Coulter, Media Matters’ posts on July 7, 2006 and July 24, 2006 contain either irrelevant, false, or misleading information regarding research on Darwinian evolution.

Media Matters employs particularly long and rambling posts of irrevelant information and unhelpful links. Their aim appears to be that they hope readers just take their word for whatever they’re saying. Of course, this ploy doesn’t work. Smart readers know better.

1. Media Matters asserts that evidence contradicts this claim: "Biological evolution cannot explain how the eye was formed."

Media Matters cites a 2004 study by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) that claims to "provide concrete evidence about how the human eye evolved." In fact, the study does no such thing.

As Tom Magnuson has illustrated, EMBL’s study is nothing but a leap of faith.

"No one has provided a complex chemical evolutionary path from one irreducibly complex feature to another in a living being. Making assertions out of thin air is not science," concluded Magnuson (emphasis mine).

Coulter 1, MMFA 0.

…

2. Media Matters claims the following is false: "The ‘Cambrian explosion’ disproves the theory of evolution."

As part of their rebuttal, MMatters simply provides a series of alternative "explanations" to the Cambrian explosion, none of which are very convincing or support their case. As common sense dictates, an alternative "explanation" is not a disproval. The bottom line is that Darwinian scientists have been unable to provide a scientific cause for the Cambrian explosion.

For the truth about the Cambrian explosion, check out "Intelligent Design: The Origin of Biological Information and Higher Taxonomic Categories," by Stephen C. Meyer and the book by Jonathan Wells, Icons of Evolution.

Coulter 2, MMFA 0.

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3. MMatters also claims this is false: "No evidence exists of transitional species."

Unfortunately for Media Matters, evidence of transitional species do not exist. Again, MMatters is unable to rebut the claim. None of the examples that MMatters provides have been scientifically proven to be transitional species!

For more on this, see Icons of Evolution by Jonathan Wells. His book is a thorough, yet accessible, debunking of the evolutionary falsehoods that neo-Darwinists often espouse.

Coulter 3, MMFA 0.

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In addition, a particularly sad element of MMatters’ post is their apparent defense of the publication of Ernst Haeckel’s fraudulent embryo drawings by authors of modern science textbooks. Although scientists had known for years that the drawings were bogus, they published them in well-known and reputable textbooks. Only after the fraud became more publicly known, the scientists finally removed them. The reader is sadly left with the impression that MMatters defends these authors. They were caught red-handed in a fraud that they were perpetrating for years, but MMatters appears to think this is OK because the authors eventually got around to removing their fraud.  For MMatters to attack Coulter for reporting on this is simply sad, but it should come as no surprise to regular (and not-so-regular) visitors to Media Matters.

The bottom line: MMatters has been unable to land a blow on Coulter’s book.

A flimsy July 25, 2006, post at Media Matters blares the following:

(Reid made his remarks on the July 24, 2006, episode of MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews.)

There are two significant issues with MMatters’ post:

1. First, the headline gives a radically different impression than the summary. MMatters’ headline gives readers the initial impression that Reid asserted that all Democrats are "angry" and "crazy." Of course, Reid stated no such thing. As his remarks clearly reveal, Reid was referring specifically to the "liberal anti-war wing of the Democratic Party."

2. Second, Reid’s analysis is quite correct! It is amazing how "angry" and "crazy" the "liberal anti-war wing" of the Democratic party gets at Sen. Lieberman. At the far-left site Daily Kos, comments like these have been posted about Sen. Lieberman. (WARNING: Profanity alert.)

Like this …

And this …

And this …

Pardon me if I agree with Reid that comments like these seem somewhat "angry"!

MMatters misrepresented Reid in its headline, and Reid was correct in his comments.

A July 20, 2006, post from MMatters blares, "Third time’s not the charm: Sunday-morning talk shows still imbalanced."

MMatters dubiously claims that Republicans and conservatives outnumbered Democrats and progressives from April to June of 2006 during guest appearances on ABC’s This Week, CBS’ Face the Nation, and NBC’s Meet the Press.

MMatters posts colorful graphs to try to support their claim. But there is one glaring omission.

Where is the complete list of guests? Media Matters doesn’t provide one! Who is a "conservative"? Who is "neutral"?

The reader is simply left to trust Media Matters. This, of course, doesn’t work. This site has already documented how Media Matters inaccurately labels talk-show guests (click the link). Media Matters has been caught red-handed labeling liberal guests as "neutral" and neutrals as "conservatives." Needless to say, the veracity of that so-called study has been shredded. One can readily conclude that MMatters doctors their labeling to get their desired results.

Given Media Matters’ dishonest track record, and given that MMatters does not provide a list of guests, and their labels, one can only conclude that MMFA is again misleading their readers.

Here is a textbook example of how Media Matters misleads their readers. A July 11, 2006, post falsely claims that MSNBC host Chris Matthews "praised" a television ad from conservative Republican Vernon Robinson.

First of all, Matthews did not praise the ad. Watch the Matthews clip yourself (it’s at the MMatters link). Matthews stated that the ad was "a little ethnic" and agreed with guest Roger Simon that "it was over the top." Matthews also agreed with another guest, liberal Time columnist Mike Allen, that Robinson’s "voters are not a highest-common-denominator crowd." That’s "praising" an ad? No way.

But here’s the deception from MMatters: Guest Roger Simon stated, "[Robinson’s ad] was a dead-on attack." Matthews clearly replied, "Yeah," but Matthews’ agreement with Simon does not appear in the "transcript" that MMatters displays! Watch the video yourself! Look at MMatters’ "transcript"! MMatters has clearly misled their readers.

Matthews "praised" the ad?? Not at all. He agreed with his guests that it was "a dead-on attack" and aimed at voters who "are not a highest-common-denominator crowd" (!)

Media Matters has clearly published another false claim.

While attacking ABC News 20/20 host John Stossel, a July 10, 2006, post from Media Matters makes the following false claim: 

The truth? It is flat-out, 100% false that there is a scientific consensus on the causes of global warming. There are "scores of scientists" who have criticized Al Gore and his fallacious movie.

In addition, Media Matters misleads their readers by citing a 2001 study that has been "discredited."

The bottom line: Gore and his Inconvenient Truth film have been flat-out debunked. The following two links are must-reads:

The weekly "Media Matters" post by Jamison Foser, on July 7, 2006, is an especially weak attempt at claiming that "the media continued to call every match for Bush and his party." But particularly glaring is how Foser misinforms his audience regarding an August 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB). Foser repeats a misrepresentation he made two weeks earlier in a June 23, 2006, post.

On June 23, Foser baselessly claimed that a CIA briefer "attempt[ed] to draw [President] Bush’s attention to an August 6, 2001, memo titled ‘Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US’." Foser then claims on July 7 that "[President] Bush ignored pre-9-11 memos and briefings warning that bin Laden was ‘Determined to Strike in US’" Notice how Foser’s "August 6, 2001, memo" miraculously multiplied into "pre 9-11 memos and briefings" in two weeks’ time. Amazing, eh? Well, Foser is deceiving his readers.

At issue is President Bush’s PDB of August 6, 2001. Foser and the MSM have falsely reported or implied that the title of the PDB itself was ‘Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US’. This is not true. The truth is that the title is on a single one-and-a-half page item among several in that day’s briefing.

A PDB is a digest that spans several pages (usually 10-20). It contains several different topics in a portfolio-like presentation. You want to see? Here is what a PDB looks like:

As you can clearly see, it’s not just a couple sheets of paper. Foser is clearly misinformed on this.

In addition, Foser clearly implies that the August 2001 PDB item contained actionable material that President Bush could have followed up on that would have prevented the September 11 attacks. Again, this would be false. For example,

1. The PDB item states "suspicious activity" in the U.S. included "recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York." Sounds damning, doesn’t it? Except that the World Trade Center towers were not federal buildings!

2. There is nothing in the PDB item that indicates any plot to fly planes into buildings. The item states that the CIA and FBI were investigating a Bin Laden group in the US planning "attacks with explosives."

3. But the part of the PDB item that Foser and his friends in the MSM don’t want you to know about is the last paragraph. It states that the FBI was "conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it consider[ed] Bin Ladin-related" (emphasis mine). This shreds the image that Foser and his friends want to portray; that is, that Bush "did nothing" prior to 9/11 and could have prevented the attacks. In fact, President Bush told the 9/11 Commission that he "remembered thinking it was heartening that 70 investigations were under way."

And there you have it. More misinformation from Media Matters. (Nice alliteration, eh?)