After falling out with Coulter, WND’s Farah to debate gay GOP leader – September 06, 2010 1:31 pm ET

Simon & Schuster hosts “Young Guns” video featuring link to website collecting donations for GOP – September 03, 2010 7:51 pm ET

Newsweek cover (sans asterisk) sure reads like Fox News talking points – September 03, 2010 2:58 pm ET

Hackers 2 starring Rupert Murdoch & Co.? – September 03, 2010 12:05 pm ET

The Big Picture for September 3, 2010 – September 03, 2010 11:51 am ET

UPDATED: National Journal profiles Media Matters as “rapid-response liberal cadre of misinformation hunters” – September 03, 2010 9:54 am ET

How much did the Washington Times sell for after all? – September 02, 2010 8:58 pm ET

Break out the tiny violins: Fox News’ Ailes sees dip in pay – September 02, 2010 7:14 pm ET

Will Stephen Colbert hold a “Restoring Truthiness” Rally? – September 02, 2010 6:09 pm ET

Coult-zilla vs. Moth-Farah – September 02, 2010 2:02 pm ET

Deggans: “Beck’s move toward eliminating hatred could start with his own radio and TV appearances” – August 30, 2010 8:06 pm ET

Is John Bolton the latest Fox News personality considering a 2012 White House bid? – August 30, 2010 6:55 pm ET

UPDATED: Parents use Facebook to fight Omaha World-Herald over denial of same-sex wedding announcement – August 30, 2010 5:04 pm ET

AFA to Beck on same-sex marriage: “wake up and smell the arsenic” – August 30, 2010 4:47 pm ET

Ambinder gets it right on “outing” closeted, anti-gay public figures – August 30, 2010 4:46 pm ET

The battle between WorldNetDaily founder Joseph Farah and Ann Coulter over the right-wing author’s decision to keynote a gathering of gay Republicans is set to take a different path on September 17.

GOProud — the gay GOP group Coulter will be addressing — put out the following press release indicating its board chairmen will be debating Farah, the right-wing’s homophobic birther king:

Today, GOProud, the only national organization representing gay conservatives and their allies, announced it has accepted World Net Daily’s offer to participate in a debate at their “Taking America Back” conference on September 17th in Miami, FL. Christopher R. Barron, Chairman of GOProud’s board, will square off against World Net Daily’s Joseph Farah.

“Since we announced that conservative author and columnist Ann Coulter would be headlining our Homocon 2010 in New York City, Farah has attacked GOProud, attacked Ann, and challenged our work almost every single day,” said Barron. “I look forward to standing on the stage with Mr. Farah to defend GOProud, to debunk the misinformation he has spread, and to make the case for GOProud’s conservative mission.”

Farah and Barron have agreed to debate the thesis, “Is GOProud Conservative?”

“I welcome the opportunity to debate whether GOProud is really a conservative organization. Our work on behalf of conservative policies and conservative candidates speaks for itself,” continued Barron.

According to a review of Federal Elections Commission records, Matalin has made campaign contributions to Cantor and “Young Gun” featured candidate Tim Griffin during this 2010 election cycle.

Politico reports this afternoon that the “Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s attorneys sent Simon & Schuster a letter Thursday, hinting that the publisher may have violated several campaign finance laws that prohibit in-kind contributions by corporations by posting on its website a promotional video for a book penned by three top House Republicans.”

Let’s break it down shall we?

Terrorist-Coddling

Warmongering

Wall Street-Loving

Socialistic

Godless

Muslim

President

Let’s tackle the two I don’t link with examples.

You’d be hard pressed finding a Fox News personality accusing the President of warmongering. That being said, many on the network have certainly claimed Obama participates in class warfare.

That last one about Obama being President is indisputable, but Fox News folks have certainly said that ACORN — with its shadowy ties to Obama — committed voter fraud. Nod, nod. Wink, wink.

While the Newsweek cover-story by Jonathan Alter is about what Obama can do to fight back against these lies, it could just as easily have been an entire piece about Fox News’ role in pushing these smears. It’s a point that Alter does address when discussing the latest Newsweek poll that shows the number of people who think the president is a Muslim has almost doubled (emphasis added):

The blame for this extends from Fox News and the Republican leadership, to the peculiar psychology of resentment in public opinion, to the ham-handed political response of the Obama White House. Whatever the cause, if smash-mouth tactics are validated by huge GOP gains in the midterm elections, then Big Lie politics may be with us for good.

In some ways, it has always been with us, going back to the 18th-century calumny of James Callender against John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton. More recently, the Rev. Jerry Falwell sponsored a film that falsely accused President Clinton of ordering murders and dealing drugs. What’s changed about politics as a contact sport is the reach of the lies. With the exception of Father Charles Coughlin, the anti-Semitic “radio priest” of the 1930s, reactionaries haven’t generally had big audiences. But now the cranks who once could do little more than write ranting letters to the editor on the red ribbons of their typewriters (loaded with exclamation points and in all caps, of course) can spread their venom virally, with the help of right-wing billionaires underwriting their organizations. And while the cable network they watch, Fox News, might not actively promote the idea that the president is a foreign-born Muslim, it does little to knock it down. Fox often covers Obama’s place of birth and religion more as matters of opinion than of fact.

Media Matters has thoroughly documented the role right-wing media have played in advancing these myths, no doubt affecting public perception.

I’m sure you can find other examples of Fox perpetuating these smears in the Media Matters archives. Post your thoughts in the comments thread below.

Is there any part of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire not embroiled in controversy?

The New York Times Magazine has an explosive report detailing how reporters at News of the World — a Murdoch property and Britain’s largest tabloid — were found to have hacked the phones of Royal family members and those of their inner circle last year.

The piece by Don Van Natta Jr., Jo Becker, and Graham Bowley is a must read and includes some startling background on the year-old scandal (emphasis added):

As Scotland Yard tracked [News of the World reporters Clive] Goodman and [Glenn] Mulcaire, the two men hacked into Prince Harry’s mobile-phone messages. On April 9, 2006, Goodman produced a follow-up article in News of the World about the apparent distress of Prince Harry’s girlfriend over the matter. Headlined “Chelsy Tears Strip Off Harry!” the piece quoted, verbatim, a voice mail Prince Harry had received from his brother teasing him about his predicament.

The palace was in an uproar, especially when it suspected that the two men were also listening to the voice mail of Prince William, the second in line to the throne. The eavesdropping could not have gone higher inside the royal family, since Prince Charles and the queen were hardly regular mobile-phone users. But it seemingly went everywhere else in British society. Scotland Yard collected evidence indicating that reporters at News of the World might have hacked the phone messages of hundreds of celebrities, government officials, soccer stars — anyone whose personal secrets could be tabloid fodder. Only now, more than four years later, are most of them beginning to find out.

As of this summer, five people have filed lawsuits accusing News Group Newspapers, a division of Rupert Murdoch’s publishing empire that includes News of the World, of breaking into their voice mail. Additional cases are being prepared, including one seeking a judicial review of Scotland Yard’s handling of the investigation. The litigation is beginning to expose just how far the hacking went, something that Scotland Yard did not do. In fact, an examination based on police records, court documents and interviews with investigators and reporters shows that Britain’s revered police agency failed to pursue leads suggesting that one of the country’s most powerful newspapers was routinely listening in on its citizens.

As Media Matters noted last summer, Murdoch has already been forced to pay about $1.6 million to settle lawsuits related to the hacking scandal.

Walid Zafar discusses the way Fox & Friends treats different political figures, how Beck’s supposedly non-political rally turned political, and what the right-wing might do now that one of its favorite climate change skeptics has changed his tune.

Be sure to post your feedback with a “rating” and “review” of the podcast on iTunes and YouTube.

Out today is the latest edition of National Journal Magazine which includes a profile describing Media Matters as “the rapid-response liberal cadre of ‘misinformation’ hunters that for six years has been raising its visibility — while also raising the volume of invective that flavors much of today’s press criticism.”

Some excerpts from Charles S. Clark’s piece (paywall):

The Media Matters view of Washington soared in January, when the nonprofit’s nearly 70-member staff moved into the panoramic, glassed-in sixth floor of a new building a few blocks from the Capitol, on Massachusetts Avenue NW. Its “more collaborative” work environment features seven rows of newsroom-style desks; researchers sit in front of their computer monitors beneath fluorescent lights and exposed ceiling ducts.

[...]

To push an output of 350 to 400 pieces of content a week, the researchers work in three shifts beginning at 5 a.m. and ending after midnight. They are organized in five-person teams assigned to such beats as health care, energy and climate, and the Supreme Court. Each team has an editor with final authority on printed reports and statements, although Web-posting privileges are egalitarian.

Above the online sleuths and less-than-famous pundits is a bank of televisions that follow 17 networks. The center has a video archive going back six years and a custom-built suite for clipping and mounting video live on the Web in five minutes or less. At one end of the room is a radio booth that can transmit Media Matters’s interviews to 100 participating stations.

A wall-mounted whiteboard summarizes the day’s pending stories, labeled “smears.” Those are assertions from news industry and right-wing sources for which rebuttals are in progress. On one recent day, the smear board included “Biden said 8 million jobs aren’t coming back”; “Obama hates British due to torture of his grandfather”; and “Biden compared GOP to Nazis.”

The casually dressed staffers are not short on self-confidence. “We have never made a major mistake as an organization,” Rabin-Havt says, “and that has helped our reputation grow.” Countering misleading rhetoric with hard facts and persnickety documentation, he says, shows “the respect we have for our readers.”

You can read the entire profile with a National Journal subscription.

$1

Yep, the right-wing DC rag that never turned a profit was sold back to Rev. Sun Myung Moon — the man who believes he is Christ returned to earth (seriously) — for $1 after more than a year of turmoil.

So, what did right-wing internet types have to say when the Washington Post Co. sold Newsweek for the same price?

Media Research Center founder Brent Bozell issued the following statement:

There’s something entirely believable about the Newsweek sale.  A left-winger pretending to be centrist sold it to another left-winger pretending to be centrist. Newsweek is a dying magazine because no one wants to read their left-wing propaganda masquerading as ‘news.’ The $1 price tag, then, is probably just about right.

I haven’t been able to find a statement from Bozell yet on the Times’ identical sale price. So, if Newsbusters managing editor Ken Shepherd — who posted Bozell’s statement with the note that Newsweek was sold to “the guy from RoboCop Sidney Harman, for a grand total of one dollar” — has one, let’s have it.

Robert Stacy McCain called Newsweek’s sale, “Jon Meacham’s $1 Legacy” but apparently hasn’t had time to write about the identical sale price of the Times.

Hotair had fun at Newsweek’s expense too. Under the headline “Good news: Newsweek sold — for a dollar,” Allahpundit wrote:

Technically it’s a dollar plus an agreement to assume their huge financial liabilities, but if you throw me an opportunity for a headline that sweet, I’m going to take it every time.

What are Allahpundit’s thoughts on the Times’ sale price? Crickets as far as I can tell.

I could keep going but you get the picture.

Roger Ailes — the Fox News boss who apparently talked News Corp. honcho Rupert Murdoch into giving that $1 million contribution to the Republican Governors’ Association — didn’t make as much money this year as he did last year.

The Hollywood Reporter’s Georg Szalai reports:

[Rupert Murdoch’s] salary was unchanged at $8.1 million, while his performance-based bonus dropped to $4.4 million. His total compensation compared with $22.2 million a year earlier. The figures were detailed in a regulatory filing late Tuesday.

[...]

Fox News head Roger Ailes made only $14.0 million, down from $22.1 million the year before, even though he had a higher bonus and higher incentive plan compensation. The decline was driven by a dip in the theoretical value of pension and other earnings, after a big pension payout last year.

What: It’s time to Restore Truthiness to America!

When: TBA (Ask Stephen Colbert)

Where: TBA

Why: America, we are at a crossroad. Truthiness in this nation is at an all-time low since the inception of the concept was founded by the great American, Stephen Colbert. In its rich history over the past five years, Truthiness has become synonymous with American values such as freedom, honor, and Taco Bell. Recently our nation has suffered a truthiness drain. In fact, untruthiness is as common as measles vaccinations that cause cancer. We as a nation have stopped relying on our emotions and gut. We need to get back to what makes this nation great. Act on impulse not fact. Stop wasting time analyzing and just take what people
say on face value. Why think when someone else can think for you. It’s superficial. It’s quick. It’s American. Restore Truthiness now!

How can you help? Spread the word. Tweet, Facebook Like, Join the Facebook Group, Share, Upvote, Do whatever you have to do. Make this be tomorrow’s news!

The effort, an obvious poke at Fox News’ resident rally-vangelist Glenn Beck’s 8-28 “Restoring Honor” fringe-fest, even has an official Twitter feed.

Those not familiar with the tenants of “truthiness” should watch this video for a refresher:

Early crowd estimates for the “Restoring Truthiness” rally, which hasn’t even taken place yet, peg attendance at more than one billion people, a figure confirmed by Fox News and conservative blogs.

Cross-posted at Media Matters.