When I check my morning inbox, there’s no shortage of advertising waiting for me.
The Gap is offering to sell me clothes. Radio Shack is offering to sell me electronics. And Media Matters for America is offering to sell me a mainstream media landscape free of conservative voices.
Make no mistake; as much as it may appear that ideology is driving groups like Media Matters, MoveOn.org and Color of Change, they’re also pushing their agenda for marketing reasons, citing dubious “achievements” designed to get their liberal niche audience to click the Donate Now button.
You can see this in Media Matters’ latest public-relations assault on Dana Loesch. Media Matters states its mission as combating “conservative misinformation,” but in this case, there is very clearly no misinformation speak of.
Loesch — at worst — was delivering an outrageous opinion in a show of support for the troops, as part of her job trying have an interesting and entertaining radio show. That’s not misinformation, and MMfA knows it.
So why does Media Matters care, and why drag CNN into it? The answer is very simple. It’s how they raise money.
This is from a fundraising letter from Media Matters for America that I received on December 27, 2011. If you’d like to learn how to write fundraising emails, pay attention, because this one is pretty well done. Bang on a few hot button issues, make it seem like you made some real progress, toss in a few references to the idea that “we’re all in this together!”, and then go for the kill and ask people to dig deep to help support you with a donation:
The work you’ve helped Media Matters do this year has hindered the ability of the right-wing media to manipulate public debate over critical issues. We’ve pushed back as conservative media outlets declared climate change a “hoax” and a “conspiracy.” We’ve exposed their relentless smear campaign against the Occupy Wall Street movement.
We fought back with the truth when they lied about Planned Parenthood. We challenged their facts when they called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.” And we exposed their dishonesty when they tried to portray union leaders, members and supporters as “violent thugs.”
Now, we need your year-end financial support as we prepare for 2012 and all the special challenges it will bring.
Don’t let right-wing media distort public debate in 2012. Make a year-end donation now to support Media Matters‘ efforts to keep conservative misinformation in check:
I’ve been involved in reporting some of these stories, so when I see Media Matters talk about the “smears” against Occupy Wall Street I know that they’re referring to things like pointing out rapes and violence or referring to self-avowed, self-described communists and anarchists as communists or anarchists.Simply put, there was no misinformation involved in the “smears.”
Media Matters has no accountability whatsoever for making statements like this. They don’t respond to critics and, as I learned on the Pigford story, leaving repeated messages for them or asking for open debate simply falls on deaf ears. It wouldn’t make them money.
I’m not critical of either marketing or fundraising. Forget ideology; this is just how it’s done . I’ve written fundraising letters along the same lines for all sorts of different products. But let’s not be naïve about what is driving the agenda at Media Matters, or let their supporters pretend to have a moral high ground. MMfA is lying for dollars.
They want scalps because scalps help raise money. If they can get Loesch fired at CNN, they can use that “success” in order to hit up their mailing list for more contributions. It’s manufactured outrage, and using I’m using “manufactured” in exactly the same sense that one uses it to discuss what factories produce. The purpose is the same. It’s a product, and it’s what MMfA makes every day. What Media Matters is selling it its contributors is a sense that working together, they will be able to silence Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Andrew Breitbart, Erik Erickson, Dana Loesch and everyone else who has a conservative opinion. Please give generously.
In other words, the leftist wet dream of censorship is their business model.
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