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David Brock has said a priority at Media Matters For America, the nonprofit organization he runs, is to take down Fox News Channel. In May, the progressive watchdog group even launched a website, DropFox.com, to encourage companies to pull their advertising off of the No. 1 cable news network.
Recently, though, Fox News has been fighting back with ammunition supplied by The Daily Caller, which has been running a multi-part expose on Media Matters that includes allegations that it coordinates its message with the White House, a no-no for a tax-exempt organization that claims to be nonpartisan. Republican lawmakers are already looking into the issue.
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The series also claims that Media Matters intended to do opposition research on Fox News personalities in order to dig up personal dirt on them and publicly humiliate them. Caught in the crosshairs is MSNBC, which the Daily Caller accuses of being a lapdog for Media Matters.
One of the more dramatic examples of FNC’s counterattack occurred Wednesday during a six-minute segment on Hannity, the show hosted by conservative firebrand Sean Hannity, who was not amused to learn that Media Matters had put him on its “enemies list.”
“If they have an enemies list and they collaborate with the White House, does it mean the White House may have an enemies list?” Hannity asked Wednesday. “By the way, my name was on the list. Shocking.”
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Added Andrea Tantaros, a host of The Five on Fox News: “There’s nothing charitable or educational about Media Matters, and just because they’re labeled a charity, folks, doesn’t mean they do good work.”
“The soul purpose of Media Matters is to take out a for-profit company, which is News Corp., the parent company of this network,” she said.
Video is below.
“They also want to infiltrate Fox News, interestingly,” Hannity said, “and follow us in our private lives in the hopes of taking out people. This is now – that is an enemies list. To hurt people specifically because you disagree with them.”
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“This just reminds me of a propaganda campaign to destroy people,” he said on FNC’s No. 2-rated show. “The politics of personal – real personal – destruction, because they don’t want other voices. That’s frightening.”
Hannity then laid into his competitors at NBC and MSNBC.
“How does NBC get out of this?” he asked. “Because the next installment – they said it publicly and I spoke to the guys at The Daily Caller – the next installment is they’re going to show examples: Media Matters wrote this, and this is the script on NBC News.”
Tucker Carlson, who founded The Daily Caller and has been co-authoring much of the coverage of Media Matters, has been on The O’Reilly Factor and Fox & Friends, two FNC shows, to discuss the expose.’ This led Mediaite to ask whether Fox News was in cahoots with The Daily Caller in an effort to destroy Media Matters.
The headline generated from posing the question was: “Fox News: There Is ‘Absolutely No Coordination’ With Daily Caller On Takedown Of Media Matters.”
