Should Media Matters Lose Nonprofit Status for Fighting Fox?
Politico Arena question of the day really hit a nerve with me. We live in such a mediated society that there is no question the media forms us as it informs us. Nor is there any questions of Fox News’s slant. But ownership of the airwaves apparently isn’t enough for this greedy group. Read on, and then share your thoughts.
Arena Question: Fox News is ratcheting up its counterattack against Media Matters, a liberal advocacy group and the network’s most persistent critic. The news channel has recently run more than 30 segments calling for the nonprofit group to be stripped of its tax-exempt status.
Has Media Matter’s reporting on Fox been unfair? And should the self-proclaimed watchdog group lose its nonprofit status?
How I Answered: Oh good grief. Fox going after Media Matters reminds me of the time my sister complained to our mother that I had hit her back.
Fox is a corporate Goliath that uses its powerful franchise of the airways to skew public perception to advantage right-wing political power, and yet it has the hubris to call what it does “fair and balanced.” For giant Fox to attack the tax exempt status of its David-sized critic is as ludicrous as my sister’s complaint.
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To begin with, as the legal experts have pointed out, there is the small point of free speech on the side of Media Matters. The Constitution applies regardless of whether an an organization is for profit or not. Equally important, it’s only fair and balanced that the left should have the opportunity to research and respond to news reportage, since in addition to the Fox behemoth, the right has funded nonprofit organizations that criticize the mainstream media for decades. In fact, these conservative groups have prevailed largely by intimidating journalists with the fear of being labeled “liberal” regardless of the veracity of their reportage. If Fox News is so sure of its reporting quality then it should have nothing to fear from its far less well-heeled critics. (NB: here’s one example of a correction of Fox’s fact mangling from Media Matters website.)
But then perhaps the big media bully remembers how the Biblical story ends.
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“To begin with, as the legal experts have pointed out, there is the small point of free speech on the side of Media Matters. The Constitution applies regardless of whether an an organization is for profit or not.”
No it does not actually. You cannot act as a lobbying organization when you are a non profit. I have worked for them and the organizations cannot. Just like a church cannot tell you who to vote for or they’ll lose status as well. You can have a organization that stands on a issue but not something that totally goes against another organization specifically.
Hi nedm, I believe you mean that nonprofit 501 (c)3 charitable organizations can’t participate in electoral activities.
However, nonprofit organizations can conduct advocacy activities, including lobbying. The extent to which they can lobby depends on whether they have declared their “intent to lobby” with the IRS, but even those who have not done so may spend a small percent of their funds influencing legislation and conducting grassroots lobbying.
Further, I have been on Media Matters’ e-mail list of quite some time, and their work appears to me to be not lobbying but fact checking, spin-dissecting, and media analysis. Their activist efforts are generally addressed to the news media, not to influencing legislation and not at all toward electing or unelecting candidates. My point is that Fox criticizing MM for criticizing them when right wing nonprofit groups have been slinging mud at network television and other mainstream media for years is illogical and hypocritical.
FYI, here is the “about” section from Media Matters website:
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.