One Side Is Not Enough: The Diminished Relevance Of Media Matters
by Colby Hall
2:51 pm, February 14th, 2011
Last Thursday, Media Matters published an extensive (and somewhat breathless) account from an anonymously sourced individual that was only identified as a former Fox News Insider. The report included lots of detail that alleged Fox News’ bias, with pithy quotes like “they’re a propaganda outfit but they call themselves news” and “stuff is just made up,” and was clearly intended as a scathing indictment of Media Matters’ mortal enemy, Fox News.
While the story made some ripples in like minded sites like Think Progress and The Young Turks, the story made barely any mention in mainstream news outlets, and ended up serving as a stark reminder of Media Matters’ growing irrelevance in the world of media criticism.
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Just two or three years ago, Media Matters would have been described as exactly the sort of media organization the country needed. As a nation, we have been increasingly ignoring facts in favor of slogans, scapegoats, and sophistry; anyone yearning for facts, fact-checking (even with a partisan bend) serves our nation well. In fact, web sites like Politifact and both Media Matters on the left and Newsbusters on the right, served as inspirations during the creation of Mediaite. Much to the chagrin of some on the right, Mediaite still often cites Media Matters assessments and uses their clips (in much the same way our recognition of Newsbuster’s angers many on the left.)
But something unfortunate happened, as Media Matters seems to have become exactly the sort of blindingly partisan, subjective, and even misleading site that it was created to monitor. So what happened? How did an organization committed to “notify[ing] activists, journalists, pundits, and the general public about instances of misinformation” get usurped by pedantic whiners who have transformed a noble idea into an irrelevant, publicity-seeking rag?
