Killing the Messenger Read online

  And in addition to pushing traditional outlets to skew to the right, conservative watchdogs were creating a rationale, a justification, and a market for explicitly right-wing media that played to its audience’s sense of grievance with the “liberal” press: Rush Limbaugh, his imitators on talk radio, and, eventually, the Fox News Channel.

  In October 2003, Bill O’Reilly could write: “For decades, [liberals] controlled the agenda on TV news. Now that’s over.” My old buddy Matt Drudge hailed “the beginning of a second media century.” And Weekly Standard columnist David Brooks described the conservative media as “a dazzlingly efficient ideology delivery system that swamps liberal efforts to get their ideas out.”

  Liberals who watched Fox News recoiled at the constant stream of conservative misinformation being served up around the clock. But Fox didn’t care—because liberals weren’t the target audience. A 2004 Media Vote poll found that 88 percent of daily Fox viewers strongly supported President George W. Bush.

  Instead, the idea was to reinforce right-wing messaging for the conservative base and bully mainstream media into swallowing it whole. The hugely powerful right-wing media, unmatched by anything on the left, could say whatever it wanted to its growing audience—at the time, 22 percent of Americans got their news from conservative talk radio, according to Gallup—and putatively “neutral” mainstream outlets were afraid not to give credence to its claims.

  Few progressives failed to notice that the media climate had turned hostile. And many wrote books thoroughly debunking Rush Limbaugh’s claim to be a “truth teller,” Sean Hannity’s claim to be a “responsible journalist,” Bill O’Reilly’s claim to run a “No Spin Zone,” and, of course, Fox News’s insistence that it was “fair and balanced.”

  But as I surveyed the political landscape in 2003, I didn’t see anyone doing what I thought was necessary to solve the problem, as opposed to simply describing and decrying it.

  What we needed was a system by which right-wing media no longer operated with impunity and its false charges could be answered in real time. What we needed was a way for liberals to register their concerns in newsrooms to discourage them from recycling right-wing misinformation—not with lengthy critiques of conservative influence in the New York Review of Books, but by fighting it out in news cycle after news cycle.

  What we needed was a watchdog group of our own—one that, in the words of my draft prospectus for Media Matters, would be “nimble, quick, sharp, and focused.”

  At the time, nobody was even systematically recording talk radio, let alone transcribing and archiving it, making it impossible to hold the hosts accountable. As far back as 1994, Democrats were saying publicly that they needed to monitor Rush Limbaugh in real time—but no one ever did it.

  But I wanted to do more than just subject some poor intern to listening to Rush. I wanted to take on right-wing print outlets like the Washington Times and the Wall Street Journal editorial page, conservative magazines, books, columnists, and websites the same way: tracking everything these guys said, calling them out in real time when what they said wasn’t true, and making sure the mainstream media didn’t repeat their lies without hearing from us.

  I wrote a plan to fund a team of five researchers—one for each area of focus: Radio, TV, Print, Internet/Books, and Pundit Profiles. We’d build a website to catalog our findings, designed to reach the media itself, progressive activists, top bloggers, and everyday news consumers who might write a letter to the editor or call their local TV outlet when they saw or heard something wrong. And we’d produce daily Web content so that we could help shape each news cycle.

  I hoped to launch in the spring of 2004, as the presidential election heated up, create some early momentum with a small group, track our progress, and then grow to scale. And I needed to find some funding—$1.8 million, specifically—to make it happen.

  As it happened, purely by chance, a personal friend knew a Democratic strategist named Rob Stein. He was quietly working to build the network of progressive megadonors that would become known as the Democracy Alliance. Rob seemed like a good place to start pitching, but he was skeptical. Progressives, he explained, don’t like to fund permanent institutions the way my old friends on the right did. Instead, they funded from election to election, flitting from project to project based on whatever they thought the next important fight was. He thought I’d find the whole experience of trying to build a piece of progressive infrastructure frustrating—but I was thankful when he agreed to help me anyway.

  At that time, Rob was thinking along some of the same lines. His pitch for the Democracy Alliance urged wealthy progressives to fund broad-based (rather than single-issue) progressive institutions on a sustained basis by illustrating how the right’s willingness to do the same—building an architecture of money, message, and media—had been so effective politically. I was happy to help Rob fill in some of the backstory on the conservative machine, he advised me on my business plan, and I later joined his road show as he enlisted wealthy progressives to sign up for the alliance. I was a firsthand witness to how the right had built up its network, including the ones who used to sign my paychecks.

  Meanwhile, as requested, I sent President Clinton my prospectus, which laid out an ambitious plan to create “the leading media watchdog group for progressives in the United States,” one that would “identify, expose, and correct media malpractice—wherever it’s found, in every news cycle.”

  I also sent it to Senator Tom Daschle, the Democratic Senate leader, whom I’d met the year before, when he invited me to discuss Blinded at the Senate Democratic Caucus weekly lunch. He was one of many people who had received a copy of the book from President Clinton, in Daschle’s case, complete with Clinton’s own margin notes.

  That lunch had been my first real journey into the heart of the Democratic establishment I’d spent so many years harassing. It was held in the Capitol’s ornate LBJ Room, where Majority Leader Lyndon Baines Johnson had held court. Dozens of powerful Democratic senators were in attendance. Still, I was less nervous than you might think. I relished the opportunity to tell my story. And I was ready to answer every question the senators might throw my way.

  Being invited to this lunch was an early sign that there was an influential audience for my message. And I learned from the senators’ questions that they were truly interested in knowing how the other side had accomplished all it had. Frankly, they didn’t seem nearly as interested in my personal odyssey, or the shenanigans I’d helped to pull, as they were in understanding the right’s decades-long institution-building effort.

  I’m sure there was skepticism about me in the room, but it never made itself apparent. Instead, I fielded questions from Senator Joe Biden about a right-wing leadership institute that had a large campus in his home state of Delaware. Senator Dianne Feinstein of California asked about specific institutions like the Heritage Foundation, where I had worked. There were a lot of questions about the Federalist Society and its role in grooming the right-wing judiciary. I was beginning to feel less like a snitch and more like an expert witness.

  But there was one juror who waited until the very end of the lunch to speak: the junior senator from New York, Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom I had never met except once back in 1995 at a book signing for It Takes a Village, where I had approached her for an interview for the book I was writing about her. (Understandably, she politely declined.) I imagine I wasn’t the only person waiting for her take on my presentation. Speaking last, she reinforced what I’d said about the power of the right-wing media machine and urged her fellow senators to take seriously what I was saying. “Here are the three points David just made that you guys need to remember,” she began, summarizing my case more clearly than I had.

  That event meant a lot. That morning, Matt Drudge had published on his website the (false) claim that I had worked on Blinded from a mental ward. And to be well received by this room full of accomplished Democrats—including Hillary herself—made me feel a lit
tle less vulnerable.

  I didn’t yet know, of course, that this conversation would be a prelude to my future. I never expected to end up helping Democrats compete in the political media wars. I wasn’t sure they even wanted to compete in those wars at all.

  But after I sent my business plan for Media Matters to Senator Daschle, I was invited to a meeting in his office with Senator Harry Reid and a handful of aides and Democratic operatives. Democrats had just lost control of the Senate. There was widespread sentiment that the party had to start doing things differently, particularly in the area of media and communications.

  Everyone at the meeting agreed that an organization like Media Matters should be formed. I explained that Media Matters would be a nonpartisan group engaged in media criticism, a form of public education, and therefore should be incorporated as a tax-exempt charity. So unfamiliar was the group with ideological infrastructure like the Heritage Foundation and the Media Research Center on the right, both 501(c)(3) charitable endeavors, that several aides expressed astonishment with my plan.

  Finally Senator Reid, seated at the end of a long wooden conference table, spoke up. “Well, if theirs is c3, then ours is going to be c3,” he declared, pounding the table with his fist.

  The real question in the room was whether I was the right person to form the group, and I wasn’t totally sure myself. Some raised the valid point that I might be viewed skeptically as a truth-squad leader given my checkered journalistic history—and the credibility of Media Matters would be of paramount importance. Meanwhile, there was the issue of liberal skepticism—could someone with my baggage really go out there and raise money from wealthy progressives?

  At that point, I turned to Senator Daschle and offered to give the idea away.

  But someone intervened. It was John Podesta—the former chief of staff for President Clinton who had recently formed the Center for American Progress, which would go on to become a powerhouse progressive think tank in Washington. John argued that it was precisely because I had spent so long inside right-wing media that I was just the person to fight it.

  The senator said he thought John was right, and the matter was settled. John soon gave me office space at CAP while I worked to launch Media Matters.

  Meanwhile, President Clinton had given a copy of my plan to Hillary, who immediately sprang into action, inviting me to pitch it to meetings of her national Senate fund-raising council at the Clinton homes in Washington and Chappaqua. I would now see that the Clintons were as committed to forcefully confronting the organized right as I was, and to building and funding the permanent ideological machinery that success would require. It was on the basis of this mutual understanding that an early bond was formed.

  Going to dinner at Bill and Hillary Clinton’s house felt like an out-of-body experience. These were, after all, people I’d worked hard to destroy.

  But at dinner, the Clintons were warm, welcoming, and gracious. When the food had been served, I stood up and made my pitch to a hundred or so people sitting under a white tent on the back lawn of the Clintons’ Chappaqua home. Throughout, Hillary sat at a head table directly in front of me, nodding affirmatively. President Clinton was doing the same at a table nearby.

  When I finished, they both spoke in support of me and my project—Hillary joking that they were inviting the fox into the henhouse, and Bill speaking about the importance of forgiveness in life while assuring their friends that every word I had spoken was true.

  Forgiveness. That was the gift the Clintons gave me.

  The former president gave me a tour of the house before I left, showing off the memorabilia he’d accumulated in office. And as I was leaving, still a bit dazed, Hillary followed me down the driveway, listing the dinner guests who she said would be interested in financially supporting the new venture. She asked if I knew what my next move would be. I said I had no idea. She told me to be in touch with her staff for help. And she went to work, as well.

  A few days after the Chappaqua dinner, I addressed a group of Hillary’s supporters in Washington, including Susie Tompkins Buell, the founder of Esprit and a close friend of Hillary’s, who quickly spoke up and said she wanted to host a fund-raiser for Media Matters in San Francisco. I didn’t know who Susie was, but I was happy to have the help, even more so when I found out she was one of the most important progressive donors on the West Coast, and downright stunned when, led by major donors Steve Silberstein and Louise Gund, I raised $800,000 in seed money at one dinner party, nearly half what I thought I needed to get started.

  A few days after I met Susie, Kelly Craighead, who had been one of Hillary’s closest aides in the White House and had just left Hillary’s political action committee, called and offered to work with me to launch the organization. With Kelly came a valuable Rolodex. Yet her first call, to long-time Democratic donor B. Rappaport in Texas, didn’t bode well. Rappaport flat-out told Kelly she was crazy to be working with me and hung up the phone. Luckily, his response wasn’t at all typical, and in time he became an enthusiastic financial supporter.

  Our first task: Find that other million dollars. Rob Stein had cautioned me that he’d seen many promising initiatives on the left begin to operate with too little seed cash, living hand-to-mouth and invariably going under—he warned that we should avoid starting operations until we had fully funded the plan.

  Kelly set up a meeting in New York with Peter Lewis, the Progressive Insurance mogul, and his son Jonathan. At the time, Peter was coinvesting with George Soros in a number of political committees they hoped would defeat President George W. Bush in the 2004 election. The two put more than $60 million into Americans Coming Together, an independent media advertising and field organizing operation.

  Peter and Jonathan had both read Blinded (by now, I was coming to understand that the book was a pretty effective calling card). Peter thought that perhaps he and Soros would split the million dollars, giving me the chance to launch in time to have an impact on the 2004 election. But Soros passed, saying he’d already funded a project at the Columbia Journalism School to fact-check the media, so Peter stepped up all by himself. (Soros later became a donor, as well.)

  All of a sudden, we were a real organization—and one operating on Peter’s sped-up election-year timetable. Kelly took the helm as chief of staff and lead fund-raiser. And we were off to the races: On May 3, 2004, Media Matters for America opened its doors.

  Within days, we were monitoring Rush Limbaugh, and, sure enough, he didn’t disappoint. Less than a week after our launch, Rush compared the horrific abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq to a college fraternity prank. It was exactly the sort of thing he’d been saying for years—but now, there was a system in place to make sure that the world found out about it, and that he faced consequences for saying it.

  We acted fast, posting the transcript on our website so he couldn’t wriggle off the hook. And to show we were serious about getting his comments noticed, we ran a cable TV ad featuring them. Once upon a time, Rush’s most inflammatory remarks provoked nothing but guffaws from his “dittohead” audience. This isn’t my insult, by the way—Rush’s listeners were famously so devoted in their allegiance to everything their hero said that they referred to themselves as “dittoheads,” and callers often greeted him with a hearty “Megadittoes!” But now, for the first time, Rush’s words were coming back to haunt him. The story made international headlines, with Limbaugh coming in for a wide round of condemnation.

  With this early victory, we had proof of concept—clear and convincing evidence that a professional watchdog operation that always got its facts right could make lying a liability for the right if we could catch them in the act.

  That operation was housed in a rented space in downtown Washington that looked every bit like the start-up it was. Researchers sat at rows of desks tucked along a narrow corridor, recording and watching cable news or plugging in headphones to monitor right-wing radio. Two of them were devoted to nothing but Rush. Other staffers toiled away up
dating the website. Our press team stayed on top of mainstream outlets, prodding them to acknowledge the right-wing misinformation we were finding.

  The days began at 5 a.m., and they were powered by caffeine, youthful energy, and the victories we quickly began to rack up. In the same month we brought Rush’s Abu Ghraib comment to light—our first month in existence—we highlighted the fallacy of Bill O’Reilly’s talking points on income redistribution; exposed Matt Drudge for peddling talking points word for word from the Republican National Committee; and called out Fox News contributor Linda Chavez for labeling John Kerry a “communist apologist” and then, in what would emerge as a pattern, lying about having done so.

  We felt good about our launch. Progressives were excited to see someone taking it to the right-wing bullies who haunted the airwaves. Some of the more fair-minded conservatives shrugged, acknowledging that it couldn’t hurt to have another fact-checker in the game. And, of course, many of the leading lights of the far right went entertainingly berserk at finding themselves called out for what they were saying on the air, inevitably punching down at our upstart organization and helping us attract more influence (and more funding).

  Media Matters quickly became a force to be reckoned with. In April 2007, Don Imus, the shock jock whose popular show was broadcast nationwide on MSNBC, made a racially loaded remark about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team, calling the players “nappy-headed hos.” Before Media Matters, the remark might have gone unnoticed, coming as it did at 6:14 in the morning. But a Media Matters researcher caught it, and we quickly posted the video and transcript to our website.

  By the next day, MSNBC had come out against the remark, condemning its own host’s “offensive comments.” Imus himself grudgingly apologized, as well. And in a previous era, that might have been the end of it.

  But as the Washington Post reported, we were able to show that “the comments [were] ‘just the latest in a long history of racial slurs made on the show by Imus, his guests, and regular contributors.’” This was someone whose executive producer once said, on the air, that Hillary Clinton was “trying to sound black in front of a black audience” when speaking at a civil rights event in Selma, Alabama. “Bitch is gonna be wearing cornrows,” he mused, adding that Hillary would be “giving Crips signs during speeches.” The shocking development wasn’t that Imus had said something so offensive, it was that he had been given airtime on a national cable news network for so long.