Media Matters Considered Digging up Dirt on Fox News Personnel, Endangers Tax-Exempt Status

Howard Kurtz reports on an internal memo from Media Matters which indicates the group at least CONSIDERED using Rupert Murdoch-type mud digging in an attempt to discredit employees of the conservative-leaning Fox News network.

Isn't THAT like the pot calling the kettle black? 

In a 2009 internal memo from the liberal media watchdog group, former Executive Karl Frisch says, "We should hire private investigators to look into the personal lives of Fox News anchors, host, reporters, prominent contributors, senior network and corporate staff."

Wow.  Way to win the debate in the marketplace of ideas.  This sounds like something J. Edgar Hoover might have done in the 1950s.

Oh, and BTW, Media Matters is (for the moment) a tax-exempt organization.  So, OUR tax dollars are helping to fund these Gestapo-like tactics.

Kurtz dissects the issue in a video interview with Vince Coglianese, senior online editor for the Daily Caller.  (See the Daily Caller's series on the issue here.)

Once Media Matters gathered up the requisite "dirt" on Fox personnel, the idea was to target them personally through attacks on their character via billboards in their communities and placing yard signs in their neighborhoods, as a few examples.

Further, the ideas discussed, included mud-slinging not only at Fox anchors and executives, but lower-level producers and other staffers.

To be fair, there is no evidence that Media Matters followed through on the tactics the Frisch memo describes, but the idea that a tax-exempt group would seriously consider this approach should concern all Americans, regardless of their political affiliation. 

Yet, Media Matters has not refuted the Daily Caller's story.

That alone speaks volumes.

American Truism #3.