Watching the right-wing

Published May 3, 2004 2:02PM (EDT)

David Brock continues doing penance for, as he says, being a former conservative media insider who helped damage the democracy by spreading misinformation masquerading as journalism. Brock has launched a Web site called Media Matters, described as a "new Web-based, not-for-profit progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media." Brock first disavowed his past in his 2002 book "Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative."

A quick check of Media Matters today shows Brock and friends taking to task Linda Chavez, the conservative pundit and columnist who called John Kerry a "communist apologist" in a column she wrote for the Heritage Foundation's Townhall.com. Then Chavez appeared on Fox News, and when pressed by an anchor who asked her if her words weren't just a bit strong, Chavez lied. "Well, I didn't call him that actually," she said. Expect many references to Fox News and Townhall.com, with a healthy dose of WorldNetDaily.com, on Media Matters.

And we can't forget Rush. Media Matters has a whole report monitoring Rush Limbaugh's commentary over the course of six recent weeks, called "Meet the New Rush, Same as the Old Rush." Of the 77, um, questionable comments Limbaugh made from March 15, 2004 to April 29, 2004, there's this gem about participants in the March for Women's Lives: "Some of these babes, Im telling you, like the sexual harassment crowd. Theyre out there protesting what they actually wish would happen to them sometimes." [4/26/04]

Media Matters' efforts will include a Radio Project, which will, among other things, daily analyze Limbaughs show.


By Geraldine Sealey

Geraldine Sealey is senior news editor at Salon.com.

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