The amateur right's new war on Media Matters

Media Matters, the very effective watchdog of  right-wing media abuse, is a thorn in the side of the ethically-challenged big boys of the establishment media, especially Fox News. The right has been coming to the aide of Fox News for some time, accusing Media Matters of everything from being a 'bully' to being a stooge for Barack Obama and George Soros.

Like anything on the right, these attacks against Media Matters are tightly organized, marshalling the forces of every right-wing troop willing to go to war with the organization that keeps calling them out on their bullshit. At the moment, Tucker Carlson (you know him as the CNN host who was so thoroughly humiliated on the air by Jon Stewart his show was almost immediately cancelled) of the HuffPo wannabe Daily Caller and Andrew Breitbart, along with a host of breathless conservative blogs, are waging a concerted battle against Media Matters.

What's telling is how obvious the whole Daily Caller/Big/right-wing blog campaign on the truth-telling Media Matters has become. Daily Caller's initial salvo the other day into the fight was a barn-burning 'expose' on MM. Problem was, there were no verifiable sources to their story - it was made up entirely of anonymous quotes. You know the type, the kind made up in Tucker Carlson's fevered imagination.

Today's watered-down version of the attack in action. Still no traction.

Surprise! As soon as the Media Matters story broke, Breitbart's army of blogs joined the fray. Coincidence! Now I see one of Andrew's 'Big' blogs is quoting Alan "Israel First" Dershowitz, who is accusing Media Matters of being, gulp, "Stalinist". Why? Because Media Matters is in the business of exposing lies and deceptions being made daily by Fox News, right-wing media, blogs and lackey right-wing hacks like Dershowitz. And that scares them. Their stock-in-trade is made up of gross exaggerations of the news, right-wing propaganda and outright lies. Media Matters is in their lyin' way.

What say you, you haven't heard of this attack on Media Matters? That's the joke. Outside of Carlson, Breitbart and right-wing blogs, nobody has. Because nobody cares. Yes, there's a chance Fox News will take a bite out of this story - and it will - but the big boys in media are yawning big time. Media Matters backs up its investigations, unlike the right wing which will print any garbage and when that garbage is proven to be false - often because of Media Matters' diligence - no apology or correction is forthcoming.

After the dust settles on the latest war by the right wing, expect no correction, no apologies. The damage - at least in the fevered minds of the right - will have been done. Media Matters will have been eviscerated on the blogs. The windbags will have had their say. But Media Matters will keep doing what it does - expose right-wing lies and deceptions - and this whole tag-team takedown of MM will blow over like the hot air that it is.