The curious link between MMFA and the White House war on Fox
posted at 9:50 am on February 14, 2012 by Ed Morrissey
Apparently, the people at Media Matters take the term “investigative journalism” seriously — even if they misunderstand it. According to a September 2009 e-mail obtained by Tucker Carlson at the Daily Caller, Media Matters Director of Media Relations Karl Frisch proposed to founder David Brock and MMFA president Eric Burns that the organization conduct a campaign to “embarrass and discredit” Fox News, which Frisch called the “enemy” which the progressive movement needed after winning the presidency and control of Congress. Among the ideas Frisch proposed was hiring private investigators to dig up dirt on Fox News anchors and staff:
A little after 1 p.m. on Sept. 29, 2009, Karl Frisch emailed a memo to his bosses, Media Matters for America founder David Brock and president Eric Burns. In the first few lines, Frisch explained why Media Matters should launch a “Fox Fund” whose mission would be to attack the Fox News Channel.
“Simply put,” Frisch wrote, “the progressive movement is in need of an enemy. George W. Bush is gone. We really don’t have John McCain to kick around any more. Filling the lack of leadership on the right, Fox News has emerged as the central enemy and antagonist of the Obama administration, our Congressional majorities and the progressive movement as a whole.”
“We must take Fox News head-on in a well funded, presidential-style campaign to discredit and embarrass the network, making it illegitimate in the eyes of news consumers.”
What Frisch proceeded to suggest, however, went well beyond what legitimate presidential campaigns attempt. “We should hire private investigators to look into the personal lives of Fox News anchors, hosts, reporters, prominent contributors, senior network and corporate staff,” he wrote.
After that, Frisch argued, should come the legal assault: “We should look into contracting with a major law firm to study any available legal actions that can be taken against Fox News, from a class action law suit to defamation claims for those wronged by the network. I imagine this would be difficult but the right law firm is bound to find some legal ground for us to take action against the network.”
Did MMFA actually put Frisch’s plan into action? At the moment, the answer appears to be no, at least not in terms of hiring the investigators. In the two-plus years since Frisch’s e-mail, MMFA hasn’t dropped a personal bomb on anyone from Fox. The lawsuits haven’t piled up, either. They have sent trackers to public events and bitterly criticized Fox’s reporting, but that’s a legitimate form of activism, if often tedious and tiresome.
What is interesting about this memo is the timing. Yesterday, I wrote that the true red flag in The DC’s exposé wasn’t the fact that MMFA successfully got its message out via the media; lots of orgs manage to do that, including some we like, and reporters/commentators like Ben Smith and Greg Sargent didn’t do anything the rest of us eschew. The real issue was the fact that MMFA did that while coordinating closely with the White House, which prompted the question of whether Barack Obama and his staff weren’t really the hands pulling the strings on its MMFA marionette.
So what was going on at the White House at the time that Frisch sent this memo to Brock? It was just within days that Obama and his administration launched their weird war on Fox News. On October 11th, White House communications chief Anita Dunn — one of MMFA’s main contacts at the White House — went on a nine-minute tirade about Fox on CNN, calling it “an arm of the GOP.” On October 12th, Fox announced that the White House had told them a week earlier that Obama would not do an interview with their network. The same day, John Nichols at The Nation — a leading progressive magazine — called Obama the “Whiner in Chief” over the ongoing battle with Fox. Obama himself joined the attack on October 22nd, complaining that Fox was more like a talk-radio station than a news outlet. Only after this ill-advised war began to unsettle more friendly media outlets and expose the President to gales of criticism over the spectacle of the government launching an attack on a media outlet did the White House retreat at the end of the month from the war they had started.
This looks like a strong circumstantial case for coordination between MMFA and the White House, and once again, it’s not entirely clear just which of the two ran the show. It’s getting pretty easy to connect the dots and see the outline of a covert attempt to influence and bully the media through sock-puppetry with MMFA. If the White House war on Fox had gotten a more sympathetic reaction, I wonder whether that army of PIs would have been deployed.
Update: Fox News Insider picked up this post early this afternoon. I thought they might take an interest in it.
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Sweet. How sweet it is.
Finally, Obama’s chikkinzzz are coming home to roost.
petefrt on May 19, 2013 at 8:22 PM
This.
When you have to plead incompetence to defend against charges of malfeasance, you know you might be in trouble.
petefrt on May 19, 2013 at 8:36 PM
ear relevant…
driguana on May 19, 2013 at 8:59 PM
Flush this lying tudd down the drain with the rest of the Obamacrap.
kemojr on May 19, 2013 at 9:34 PM
This was Dan Pfeiffer’s week in the barrel, like Susan Rice he was given the White House talking points and sent on a mission. He really needs to get copies of these tapes and watch them and see how foolish and unbelievable he looked and sounded. The White House is losing the little credibility it still had by sending these shills out every week trying to do damage control. Community organizers make poor leaders.
savage24 on May 19, 2013 at 9:42 PM
Pfeiffer’s statement that the law is irrelevant because the IRS conduct was “outrageous” and “inexcusable”, tells us all we need to know about this administration.
However, the follow-up should have been, “On what standard do you judge their conduct to be outrageous and inexcusable since the law is apparently not an appropriate standard?” (At least in Pfeiffer’s mind.)
What this comes down to is this: “if the Administrative deems something “outrageous” and “inexcusable,” then it is declared such. As we have seen in so many other areas, if the Administrative deems something to not be “outrageous” and “inexcusable,” then it is declared such.
In their mind, the law is – in fact – irrelevant. That’s what makes this situation so dangerous.
It’s not socialism. It’s worse.
EdmundBurke247 on May 19, 2013 at 10:36 PM
Irrelevant = “What Difference Does It Make?”
jaydee_007 on May 19, 2013 at 10:41 PM
A fitting capstone to Ed’s story about loss-prevention (aka employee theft) and management’s “permission structure” in this post.
(Not to mention the jaw-dropping statements of Eleanor Clift in this one.)
AesopFan on May 19, 2013 at 11:40 PM
I enjoy popcorn and hope it is a long week.
Drill and Fill on May 20, 2013 at 12:41 AM
Hey give Barky a break. He had to get his sorry ass out to Vegas.
tbear44 on May 20, 2013 at 4:49 AM
Of course they sent Pfeiffer out to do the Sunday shows. He was the most senior expendable staff member they had . . .
BigAlSouth on May 20, 2013 at 5:39 AM
Pfeiffer… The guy with the red shirt in the landing party…
Boudica on May 20, 2013 at 5:53 AM
Perfect!
lea on May 20, 2013 at 7:11 AM
Does anybody else remember the campaign in 2008 when Obama defended his lack of administrative experience by saying he was just so smart and tuned in that his instincts were better than experience. Someone needs to dredge up these sound bites and play then with the current line about the government being too large to control and that the White House only knows what it reads in the newspaper.
bartbeast on May 20, 2013 at 8:43 AM
If where the president was during the Benghazi crisis is “irrelevant”, then he wasn’t where one would expect the Commander-in-Chief to be. So, where was he? Was he watching a movie in the residence? Was he bowling? Or was he having a bi-curious outing with his good buddy Reggie Love? If Obama was AWOL, as I suspect he was, it is he who is irrelevant. This entire stinkin’ criminal Obama Regime must go and now!
SpiderMike on May 20, 2013 at 9:31 AM
If this continues all week, it will be ‘O’ himself doing the rounds on the Sunday talk shows – except for Fox, of course. (‘O’ can do everything better than everyone else as he has been known to say.)
He then gets the extra benefit that no one will challenge him like they have begun to do with his minions.
Carnac on May 20, 2013 at 11:00 AM
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