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Media Matters for America

Media Matters for America Treasurer among Who’s Who on George Soros Democracy Alliance


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By —— Bio and Archives January 14, 2008

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With David Brock getting the lion’s share of the attention as the benighted “King of Switcheroo” over at Media Matters for America, who pays any attention to members of his board of directors? Guess that’s how most folk missed that Media Matter’s Treasurer, Rachel Pritzker Hunter is among the Who’s Who in the George Soros $100 million clearing house known as the Democracy Alliance (DA).
“Rachel Pritzker Hunter of the Hyatt Hotel Pritzkers was a DA board member after the group was created.” (Matthew Vadum James Dellinger, Capital Research Center, Canada Free Press, Jan. 10, 2008). Missing Rachel’s membership in Democracy Alliance, which funds groups like Media Matters is a natural with hatchet man David Brock going after anything right of center out on the hustings. Shell-shocked by their stinging defeat only three years ago, Soros and other wealthy liberals aimed to fund a political comeback. They created a permanent political infrastructure of non-profits, think tanks, media outlets, leadership schools, and activist groups, or what Vadum and Dellinger describe as a kind of “vast left wing conspiracy” to compete with the conservative movement. A founding DA member, Pritzker Hunter, a nutritionist claiming expertise in sensitivity to foods by profession, is a generous donor to Democrat candidates and politicians. According to documents filed by the Federal Election Commission, Pritzker Hunter gave $500 to Ohio Democrat Senator Sherrod Brown in August of 2006. In 2004, Pritzker Hunter gave $1,000 to Howard Dean’s campaign, $500 to Senator John Kerry and $500 to Democrat Presidential nominee Wesley Clark. Some journalists might categorize Media Matter’s treasurer’s DA membership as a classic conflict of interest on the board of a media monitor organization perpetually on the hunt for “conservative misinformation”, but Media Matters Pooh-bahs only recognize Republican conflicts of interest. There may have been a method in the madness that allowed someone as blatantly controversial as David Brock at the helm of Media Matters. The USS David Brock keeps changing course. A conservative turned liberal writer, Brock was a reporter for the conservative magazine The American Spectator in the 1990s. “In the aftermath of his biography of Hillary Clinton that brought disastrous reviews, Brock engaged in a public self-denunciation, characterizing all his past writings critical of liberal figures as a confection of lies and slanders.” ( HYPERLINK "http://www.DiscoverTheNetworks.org" [url=http://www.discoverthenetworks.org]http://www.discoverthenetworks.org[/url], A Guide to the Political Left). Better at reinventing himself than even “The Material Girl”, in his new mode, Brock insists that the mainstream media have fallen under the sway of conservative ideology. “He believes that conservatives have moved the mainstream media “to the right and therefore they’ve moved American politics to the right…I wanted to create an institution (Media Matters) to combat what they’re doing.” How any government of any political stripe could bestow a 501 © (3) public charity status on a group that admits to focus on a hunt for “conservative misinformation” in today’s media world, begs ridicule. “In addition to “news or commentary that is not accurate, reliable, or credible,” the organization’s concept of “misinformation” includes anything that “forwards the conservative agenda”. Thus political differences of opinion are often portrayed by Media Matters as lies or worse.” With everybody not on their side a potential liar, Media Matters is a sort of ACLU of the media monitoring game. Brock comes down like a brick on the wrong side of freedom of speech, and it should surprise none of his many detractors that he is one of the leading proponents of the tossed out Fairness Doctrine. In fact, it is Brock and his allies on the left who clamor for legislation to bring back the Fairness Doctrine, as an easy way to rid the airwaves of popular radio talk show hosts. The nest of vipers who are Brock’s main backers are proof positive that the big money behind Media Matters won’t be drying up anytime soon. “Standing behind Brock in creating Media Matters was John Podesta, a former chief of staff in the Clinton administration and the head of the “progressive” Washington, DC think tank, the center for American Progress,” according to DiscoverTheNetworks.org. “In 2004, Podest provided Brock with office space for his fledgling enterprise. Soon after, Media Matters received over $2 million in seed donations from a roster of affluent donors including Leo Hindery Jr., a former cable magnate; Susie Tompkins Buell, a co-founder of the fashion company Espirit and a close ally of Senator Hillary Clinton; James Hormel, a San Francisco philanthropist who nearly served as ambassador to Luxembourg during the Clinton administration; Bren Simon, a Democratic activist and the wife of shopping mall developer Mel Simon; and New York psychologist and philanthropist Gail Furman. Media Matters, which can accept tax-deductible contributions under section 501 © (3) of the tax code, has also benefited from the patronage of Peter Lewis, chairman of the Progressive Corporation and a longtime consort of leftist financier George Soros. “Media Matters has not always been forthcoming about its high-profile backers. In particular, the group has long labored to obscure any financial ties to George Soros. But in March 2003, the Cybercast News Service (CNS) detailed the copious links between Media Matters and several Soros “affiliates”—among them MoveOn.org, the Center for American Progress, and Peter Lewis. Confronted with this story, a spokesman for the organization explained that “Media Matters for America has never received funding directly from George Soros.” (emphasis added), a transparent evasion.” If the King of Switcheroo as head of a media monitoring group that only goes after conservative misinformation is not enough controversy, it has now come to light that not only did Hillary Clinton help start Media Matters with former conservative David Brock in charge, she bragged about it to a convention of the far left. At the Daily Kos convention—a gathering of the far, far left—Hillary Clinton said the following: “We are certainly better prepared and more focused on, you know, taking our arguments, and making them effective, and disseminating them widely…in a lot of the new progressive infrastructure, institutions that I helped to start and support like Media Matters and Center for American Progress.” Controversy has not put a crimp in Media Matter’s financial style. Kicked off with $2 million in May of 2004, by August the organization’s operating budget had already doubled to $4 million. Only one year later, Media Matter’ revenue for 2005 was $8,470,957. From Dec. 31, 2006 a Form 990 shows Media Matter’s assets at $5,874,246. Brock’s compensation is listed at $230,611 for the year ending Dec. 31, 2006. Not bad for a guy that David Horowitz, founder of www.FrontPageMag.com says was “a sleazy gossip sort of writer when he was on the right, and he’s a sleazy gossip writer on the left, and an unscrupulous one on both sides.”



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Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years’ experience in the print media. A former Toronto Sun columnist, she also worked for the Kingston Whig Standard. Her work has appeared on Rush Limbaugh, Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com.

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