The Washington Post ran an adulatory profile Thursday of the Media Matters researcher who dug up old shock jock radio tapes of Fox News host Tucker Carlson and minimized the left-wing organization’s influence on the media landscape.
Carlson, co-founder of The Daily Caller, argued on his Fox News show that he is a victim of “the great American outrage machine,” referring to the organized left-wing boycotts of his advertisers and the calls for him to be fired. WaPo, however, claimed Carlson believes he is the victim of the young woman who found the tapes and sought to compare Carlson’s relative influence to her.
“In reality, credit for the tapes’ publication is due to Peltz: a 20-something in her first adult job who lives in the basement of a D.C. house she rents with five other people, a few cats and a dog named Noodles,” WaPo’s Eli Rosenberg writes.
“I’m not like some high-power-wielding globalist,” Peltz told WaPo. “I’m this kid who’s been on the Internet my whole life and knows how to get around it.”
WaPo also responds to Carlson’s point that Media Matters is partially funded by left-wing billionaire George Soros, arguing that the organization has not been funded by Soros in “many years.” Soros last donated to Media Matters in 2014. Yet Carlson’s radio interviews, which took place between 2006 and 2011, are described by WaPo as his “recent past.”
In addition, WaPo takes issue with Carlson’s attacks on the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), suggesting that the SPLC must be credible because it is “used widely by media organizations.” The SPLC, however, regularly identifies mainstream conservative persons and groups as bigots. In June 2018, SPLC paid out millions to a group because it falsely labeled the group founders as “anti-Muslim extremists.” (RELATED: Southern Poverty Law Center Pays Out Millions To Group It Falsely Labeled Bigoted)
WaPo completely glosses over The Daily Caller News Foundation’s publication of old blog posts from Media Matters President Angelo Carusone on Wednesday that contain offensive terms like “trannies,” “Japs,” and “Jewry.” Rosenberg allows Carusone to wave away the allegations of hypocrisy over his targeting of Carlson and accepts wholesale Carusone’s claim that his old posts were “intended as satire.”
WaPo writes that Carusone’s posts were a “parody” of right-wingers, but as the DCNF’s Peter Hasson explains in a Thursday article, Carusone’s explanation doesn’t match the larger tone of his blog, which frequently contained attacks on Republicans and promotions of left-wing political positions.