Soros-funded Media Matters declares war on Fox News

The far-left wing organization Media Matters - funded in part by George Soros - announced it is engaging in what Politico calls an "all-out campaign" of "guerrilla warfare and sabotage" against Fox News.

According to its website, the group claims:

Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.

But by declaring war and announcing it plans to "sabotage" Fox News, the organization has lost any pretense of objectivity - not that it ever had any to begin with.  Clearly, the organization is about ensuring only one point of view is disseminated.  So much for free speech or freedom of the press.

Politico reports:

The group, launched as a more traditional media critic, has all but abandoned its monitoring of newspapers and other television networks and is narrowing its focus to Fox and a handful of conservative websites, which its leaders view as political organizations and the “nerve center” of the conservative movement. The shift reflects the centrality of the cable channel to the contemporary conservative movement, as well as the loathing it inspires among liberals — not least among the donors who fund Media Matters’ staff of about 90, who are arrayed in neat rows in a giant war room above Massachusetts Avenue.

A visitor to Media Matters' website finds almost nothing but attacks against Fox News programs and hosts, with the obligatory attacks against Rush Limbaugh or other conservative talk show hosts.  Unlike Newsbusters - its conservative counterpart - Media Matters appears bent on one mission: silencing conservative speech.

Instead of countering views heard at Fox News, Media Matters is out to destroy the network any way it can.  Politico notes:

Media Matters, Brock said, is assembling opposition research files not only on Fox’s top executives but on a series of midlevel officials. It has hired an activist who has led a successful campaign to press advertisers to avoid Glenn Beck’s show. The group is assembling a legal team to help people who have clashed with Fox to file lawsuits for defamation, invasion of privacy or other causes. And it has hired two experienced reporters, Joe Strupp and Alexander Zaitchik, to dig into Fox’s operation to help assemble a book on the network, due out in 2012 from Vintage/Anchor. (In the interest of full disclosure, Media Matters last month also issued a report criticizing “Fox and Friends” co-host Steve Doocy’s criticism of this reporter’s blog.)

Part of their overall effort against Fox is a "boot camp" where liberals are trained by Media Matters to advance liberal causes on-camera.  Jason Horowitz writes at the Washington Post:

“I’m here to be intensely trained,” Lee Brenner announced as he came through the door of a discreet building near Dupont Circle.

The brick carriage house is usually the headquarters of the Mathematical Association of America, but for a few days in the middle of March, the left-wing organization Media Matters for America converted it into a partisan boot camp where rebel forces were trained for combat on Fox News. Over four grueling days, Harvard-honed instructors drilled a dozen softie policy wonks, molding them into an elite unit of smiling, succinct and well-coiffed talking heads.

Because of this, Media Matters should reconsider their 501(c)(3) status which is designated for religious, charitable, scientific, literary, or educational purposes. MMFA no longer meets any of these qualifiers (it’s arguable they never did) and under the banner of waging a war against Fox News and the GOP puts them in an entirely different zip code.