How to fight MediaMatters, far-left smears (Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage)

The far-left is on the warpath, with General Wesley Clark calling for Rush Limbaugh to be removed from Armed Forces Radio as part of a followup to a MediaMatters-originated smear. That follows the same group having smeared Bill O'Reilly, and, apparently unrelated to that, the San Francisco supervisors (led by Gerardo Sandoval) have passed a resolution condemning Michael Savage for "hate speech".

What can you, yes you, do about these attempts by the far-left to silence their critics?

One thing you can do is to point out and publicize errors in the coverage by MediaMatters, ThinkProgress, and similar smear merchants.

Even easier, take the "re-transmitters" to task: try to reduce the credibility of those who simply rip-and-read from Media Matters press releases. For instance, consider this comment I posted on an entry by Karen Tumulty of Time Magazine a few days ago (linking added):

This is truly negligent "reporting" on Tumulty's part. If she's going to provide a quote like this, she might want to at least acknowledge the other side. Is Tumulty a real reporter, or just a hack?

If enough people do things like that (being situationally appropriate of course), eventually it will sink in, and people like Tumulty will learn to think twice before simply promoting Media Matters smears.

Politics · Tue, 10/02/2007 - 18:20 · · Importance: 1