Saturday, January 21, 2006

FAIR vs. Media Matters

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, the media watch organization founded by Jeff Cohen 20 years ago, focuses on monitoring the right-wing and ruling class bias of the nation’s mass media. Media Matters for America, the media watch group launched two years ago by former right-wing hatchet man David Brock, focuses on exposing “conservative misinformation” in the mass media.

FAIR’s roots are authentically left-wing, while Media Matters has embraced an anti-Republican agenda. Under this model, Media Matters has quickly surpassed New York-based FAIR as the leading voice exposing right-wing bias in the media. DC-based Media Matters has developed a well-oiled media monitoring operation that disseminates its daily findings through an easy-to-navigate website.

FAIR remains loyal to the organizational strategy it developed upon its founding in the 1980s. The group publishes its bimonthly Extra! magazine and produces the weekly CounterSpin radio show. Media Matters, on the other hand, thrives in today’s fast-paced world where technology advancements have allowed the group to develop an active rapid response operation.

Because it operates as an anti-Republican group, Media Matters has attracted financial support from wealthy Democratic Party donors. The group’s fundraising success enabled it to hire enough staff to gain traction in a relatively short timeframe. FAIR remains more grassroots and foundation-based in its fundraising. Democrats who give money to Media Matters tend not to be ideological soul mates, or even cousins, of the people who run FAIR.

FAIR and Media Matters have carved out niches for themselves in the media watch world. FAIR will likely continue to conduct systematic analysis of right-wing and ruling class bias in the media, while Media Matters will be more instantaneous in presenting its critique of right-wing media misinformation.

Cohen, with media critic and FAIR colleague Norman Solomon, wrote Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media. The book, published in 1990, examines trends in TV and newspaper news coverage during the 1980s, providing insight similar to the media criticism that FAIR had been disseminating in Extra! since 1987.

The “bible” of the Media Matters operation is David Brock’s 2004 book, The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy. The book profiles the financial sponsors of right-wing media outlets and describes how right-wingers have succeeded in shaping political debate in the United States.

In the book, Brock explains that right-wingers’ domination of the media has been so successful because few have risen to oppose it. That’s why he decided to launch Media Matters.

Media Matters might be a tool of the Clinton faction of the Democratic Party. But with Republicans in control of all branches of government in Washington, Media Matters is providing an important public service by aggressively monitoring media outlets and members of the press who serve as stenographers for the right-wing establishment.

To its credit, Media Matters is targeting more than the usual suspects on Fox News and talk radio. The group also is keeping a close eye on traditional news outlets such as the Washington Post, which has had a right-wing bent on its editorial pages for decades and maintains a rigid bias in favor of the ruling elite in its news coverage. -Mark Hand

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