The effort to bring down El Rushbo apparently doesn’t stop with reaching out to advertisers to drop his show. The latest effort from Media Matters for America is a radio campaign that highlights his attack on Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke.
Media Matters is spending at least $100,000 for two ads that will run in eight cities, cites CBS News. The ads use Limbaugh’s own words about Fluke, who testified at a congressional hearing that contraception should be paid for in health plans: that she wanted to be paid to have sex, which made her a slut and a prostitute. In return for the money, he said Fluke should post videos of herself having sex.
Media Matters claims that 58 companies have specifically asked that their ads be excluded from the show, which is reportedly cleared on some 600 affiliates.
In one of the ads, listeners are urged to call the local station that carries Limbaugh to say “we don’t talk to women like that” in our city. Ad time was purchased in Boston; Chicago; Detroit; Seattle; Milwaukee; St. Louis; Macon, GA; and Cedar Rapids, IA. The cities were selected to support active local campaigns against Limbaugh or because of perceptions Limbaugh may be vulnerable in that market, said Angelo Carusone of Media Matters: “What we’re really looking for is a way to demonstrate the persistence of the effort and the fact that it is on a wide scale.”
Limbaugh said he’s being targeted in an attack that was long-planned: “They’re not even really offended by what happened. This is just an opportunity to execute a plan they’ve had in their drawer since 2009.”
Limbaugh’s team also posted an online response to the radio campaign, explaining, “It was planned ahead and activated at the first moment Brock [Media Matters for America founder David Brock] could manipulate a media frenzy. Make no mistake, Brock’s ‘marketplace of ideas’ offers only one brand: Brand Brock. All others will be forced off the shelves with intimidation and lies. Media Matters for America stands for censorship, and nothing more than that.”
RBR-TVBR observation: We have to wonder if all of this is actually just plain ol’ politics. We’re heading toward the presidential election and Rush’s focus has been taken off his usual ball, onto his own crisis. Limbaugh has a lot of impact on elections. The less he says against Obama and the more he says on defending himself just diminishes the sway he has with listeners, specifically independent voters. Yes, he sure did a terrible thing, but are Media Matters’ efforts really all about him at this point or affecting the influence he has with voters? Remember, George Soros gave Media Matters a $1 million donation last year. Looks like we know where at least some of that money is going. Look, Media Matters serves a good purpose as a media watchdog, but it seems to be going a bit beyond its charter lately.
Media Matters has long lost it’s role as “media watchdog” and has morphed into the defacto media smear machine for the democratic party. It has become blatantly obvious that Carusone and Brock are nothing more than the Gestapo for the left!
“Gestapo”? What a stupid, obnoxious thing to say. You are ignorant of what “censorship” means.
And you are ignoring The Brownshirts from Media Matters. NAZIs were burning books and killing “undesirables” before they were in power.
What good purpose does MM serve? Please provide two specific examples.
Media Matters For America mission statement:
Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.
Launched in May 2004, Media Matters for America put in place, for the first time, the means to systematically monitor a cross section of print, broadcast, cable, radio, and Internet media outlets for conservative misinformation — news or commentary that is not accurate, reliable, or credible and that forwards the conservative agenda — every day, in real time.
Using the website mediamatters.org as the principal vehicle for disseminating research and information, Media Matters posts rapid-response items as well as longer research and analytic reports documenting conservative misinformation throughout the media. Additionally, Media Matters works daily to notify activists, journalists, pundits, and the general public about instances of misinformation, providing them with the resources to rebut false claims and to take direct action against offending media institutions.
Their chronicling the disturbing and disgusting filth that spews from Laimbaugh’s foul mouth is completely in line with their mission.
Since We The People do not each have the luxury of using the PUBLIC airwaves to broadcast our views it is helpful for MMFA to remind us how We The People CAN exercise our First Amendment right to speak our minds to the corporations who purchase ads on his vile program as well as the stations who carry his hate show. Using our voices and allowing the free market to decide if they choose to anger their customers by advertising on a show that repeatedly degrade women and many other groups should be just fine to those on the right.
Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting CONSERVATIVE misinformation in the U.S. media.
1.) Who verifies that the information is wrong and not just uncomfortable?
2.) Why only CONSERVATIVE “misinformation?” (See point one.) Please don’t expect anyone to seriously entertain the baseless assertion that in the totality of American media the bias is so strong to the right that a watchdog needs to be parked on it’s porch.
3.) While I appreciate their honesty in not feigning objectivity, the use of “educational” foundations such as this, and others on both the left and right, as political disinformation machines casts a strong light on the need to review 501 (c) (3) regulations. You want to stop the unfair advantage of corporate America in public discourse? Start with corporations whose only reason for existence is to give wealthy individuals to co-mingle their wealth with just enough truly private donations to give their propaganda and intimidation machines the thinest veneer of being a true public organization.
Final sentence should read, Start with corporations whose only reason for existence is to give wealthy individuals a chance to…..
Tim,
Media Matters is a political outfit, nothing more. It’s mission is to silence the opposition, specifically the Right.
Please let us know what Media Matters has done to silence people on the left like Bill Maher, who has “repeatedly degraded women”. I think you will find that MM is perfectly fine with that, since that trash talk is coming from the Left.
Re: “George Soros gave Media Matters a $1 million donation last year.”
Perhaps this will offset the $1 million donation that News Corp (read: Robert Murdoch & Fox News) made to the Rupublican Governors Association.
This is as silly an accussation as Ed saying “Media Matters is a political outfit, nothing more. It’s mission is to silence the opposition, specifically the Right.”
Read the MM Mission Statement, which says that it’s purpose is “…correcting conservative misinformation…”
Anyone want to discuss Bain Capital and Clear Channel’s attachment to Romney, or the Mays’ donations to the Republicans?
Does anybody want to blame Rush for putting his foot in his mouth again?
Oh, for crying out loud…”a good purpose as a Media Watchdog”? When was the last time you saw MM criticize, let’s say…Rachel Maddow…or Ed Schultz for some of the outrageous things they say? No…they’ve become a one-sided, biased organization (for which they get a now undeserved tax exempt status) totally funded by lefty millionaires for the sole benefit of democrat candidates. And it is now out to silence conservatives in the media by going after spineless advertisers (and hopefully on their part, spineless radio managers) who will say “how high” when MM says “Jump”.
What Rush said was impolite at best and certainly politically incorrect at worst. But, don’t forget, Sandra Fluke has now been outed not as a college student, but a democratic activist and operative who was put in front of a fake, make believe congressional hearing just for the purposes of getting the attention of a lapdog media. I don’t support flag burning, either…but I understand its free speech ramifications. Rush has the right to say what he said…it is protected under the First Amendment. He is paid for his opinions. He is not a newscaster who has an obligation to “get the story right”, or to be “fair and balanced”.
Give a list of the outrageous things Rachal Maddow has said. The reality is … she’s never said anything outrageous. Ever.
There’s a supposition on the right that the leftie talkers are a mirror image of their rightie talkers and that they spew the same level of hate and twisted logic. So obviously it’s hypocracy when they complain because “they do it too”. But nothing could be further from the truth. There’s no equivalence at all. The right uses tortured logic and vitriol to cover over their thin trumped up arguments. If you ever watched Maddow, Thom Hartmann and others, even once, you would notice a huge difference.
Please righties … get out of your hate bubble, investigate and decide for yourself.
And Faux News isn’t a “one-sided, biased organization?” Please……
Is there anything on MMFA’s site that isn’t true? For all the criticism of it, it seems the criticism is only because it exists, not that there are lies on MMFA’s site.
Carbonite couldn’t run from Rush Limbaugh fast enough yet is still a prominent sponsor of the Glenn Beck radio program.
Go figure!
Three of the stations targeted by MM are Cumulus stations that had already planned to replace Rush with Huckabee. MM selected thoe station in hopes they could take credit for the change. It’s all politics.
That is 100% right.
It was reported in the Taylor on Radio report Monday that John Dickey with Cumulus said they have no plans to drop Rush at any of their stations and will honor their contracts. Do you know something different?
I find it amazing that people like Rush Limbaugh can use religion as a shield to say things that are at the very least hurtful and have people stampede to defend him. Ms. Fluke was well within her constitutional rights to go before that committee and testify on the availability of contraceptives. After which, she was attacked by Limbaugh, causing many people to come to her aid. Now, everyone speaking out in the young lady’s defense is being branded a leftist censor by the conservative community. Limbaugh has the right to voice his opinion just like everyone else. However, a man that calls himself a Christian and a conservative at that should not be using that kind of language, no matter what the subject or circumstances.
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