"Aspirin" Friess's pet UNjournalist Tucker Carlson now in a "cheesy" "nothing-burger" war on MMFA
Just as we have Friess to "thank" for keeping crazy little Ricky afloat until he finally got more attention as one of the few right-wing alternatives to the insufferably boring and hypocritical Mittens, we also have Friess to thank for letting supertwit Tucker continue his pretense of being a journalist with the Daily Caller -- he gave Tucker $3 million as seed money and has invested another $500,000:
Foster Friess celebrates The Daily Caller
Kindness that the Daily Caller was possibly repaying when it did "not disclose Friess's financial support of Santorum's super PAC, Red, White, and Blue Fund, when writing about the candidate" -- at least not until after other media organizations mentioned this little oversight.
Or maybe this kindness was in return for Friess calling Tucker Carlson "mature" -- a description I doubt he hears very often -- and for suggesting he'd "re-introduce civility to our political discourse." As Media Matters pointed out in September 2010 when quoting those less-than-reality-based comments from Friess, the Daily Caller had just run a column comparing President Obama to the 9/11 hijackers.
Of course, you could expect an eccentric right-wing donor who jokes about aspirin as contraception to have equally original spins on such terms as "mature" and "civility."
Anyway, little Tucker, the right wing's silliest UNjournalist -- maybe I should make that "one of the silliest" considering all his competition for that honor -- now seems to be joining with Fox News in its perennial, hopeless flailing against the skewering its inaccuracies regularly get (so large a target, so many opportunities for criticism, so little time) from David Brock's Media Matters for America.
Two recent columns from Francis Wilkinson at Bloomberg and Jonathan Chait at New York magazine have examined Tucker's latest adventures in preppydom, um, journalism.
Wilkinson points out that this "intriguing piece of work" relies heavily on unnamed sources showing amazing willingness to dish dirt:
Tucker Carlson Digs Into the Journalistic Muck: The Ticker
It's not every day that you see committed lefties and liberals from "across the spectrum of Democratic politics" handing over dirty partisan laundry to a conservative web site run by a well-known conservative celebrity. It seems Washington is not nearly as polarized as we've been led to believe; here we find a legion of left-wingers eager to let bygones be bygones, reach across the divide and assist the conservative cause.
Remarkably, these inside sources were not only happy to dish dirt on Media Matters. They also jumped at the opportunity to tarnish the reputations of some liberal and not-so-liberal journalists.
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Having dispatched Sargent to the ethical trash heap, via a "source" and a "source with firsthand knowledge," the story then quotes an anonymous "former staffer" impugning the integrity of a long list of well-known journalists.
It's the darnedest thing, but the quotes about a "go-to guy" who is "always game" to be a political tool have a jaunty quality unlike the perennially aggrieved tone of Media Matters, whose staff seems forever in a snit. The language seems so college-spirited, so carefree, so cheesy. A lot like the Daily Caller, actually.
And from Jonathan Chait -- "The Daily Caller Is on the Line. Don’t Pick Up." -- who starts by pointing out, accurately, that "It’s generally best not to take any published claims in the Daily Caller at face value."
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/02/daily-caller-is-on-the-line-dont-pick-up.html
This is … really dumb. Obtaining information from biased sources is an activity known in the journalism profession as “reporting.” The job of a journalist is to process the information and to decide if it checks out, if it’s worth publishing, if it means what the source says it means, and so on. (I have no memory of ever communicating with anybody from Media Matters, but it’s possible I have. )
Now, it’s a good story if the Daily Caller can show that Media Matters got reporters to publish stories that weren’t true, or were slanted to its perspective. But the Daily Caller doesn’t show that.
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So we’re really left with a nothing-burger about an advocacy organization that, like hundreds of advocacy organizations, has given its work to journalists. Scandal!
The right wing is obviously hoping this cheesy nothing-burger journalism will lead to MMFA losing its tax-exempt 501(c)(3) status:
http://nation.foxnews.com/media-matters/2012/02/15/daily-caller-media-matters-tax-exempt-status-may-face-new-scrutiny-congress
But if we're going to look more closely at any organization apparently NOT being entitled to 501(c)(3) status, we should really start with that darling of right-wing politicians and corporations, the giant lobbying machine known as the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. MMFA is simply pointing out errors and bias in right-wing media. ALEC is undermining our democracy by enabling corporations to write legislation introduced by puppet legislators.
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But that's gotta be one of the worst headlines ever. Way too much info 