CNN’s Brian Stelter hosted a Media Matters for America (MMFA) staffer on “Reliable Sources” Sunday, despite the left-wing activist group’s history of misleading readers.
Stelter spoke to MMFA senior staffer Matt Gertz about a study regarding President Donald Trump’s tweets. Gertz tracks Trump’s tweets to “figure out if he heard it on Fox News,” according to Stelter, who did not mention the multiple times MMFA has spread misinformation.
“The president really fixated on Fox’s commentary. He is trying to catapult their propaganda into the mainstream, picking up quotes and arguments that they make and then telling all of his followers all about it,” Gertz claimed Sunday.
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In July 2019, MMFA published a list labeling numerous conservatives as “extremist figures” who had been invited to a White House summit. Included on this list was Republican Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, TPUSA chief creative officer Benny Johnson, journalist Tim Pool, the Heritage Foundation, PragerU and others.
“We used to reserve words like extremist to describe people who took down the World Trade Center, or who wear masks and then vandalize universities and assault reporters,” Turning Point USA founder and president Charlie Kirk, another conservative on the list, previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Media Matters cheapens that word and proves what a joke it is by using it to describe mainstream organizations like TPUSA, Heritage and PragerU.”
The left-wing activist group’s own president mislead readers as well – with Stelter’s help – in March 2019. After the DCNF reported on numerous past offensive statements from Media Matters President Angelo Carusone, he told Stelter it “was intended to be a giant, obnoxious right-wing caricature, a parody of a right-wing blowhard living my life.”
Stelter published Carusone’s misleading statement in his newsletter and falsely claimed the DCNF’s article did not have new reporting. Additional statements on Carusone’s blog suggested his claim that it was a “parody” was false. (RELATED: Time Magazine Columnist’s Trump Quote Went Viral — Then He Admitted He Made It Up)
Media Matters also teamed up with Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to push a viral but inaccurate claim from her policy advisor regarding her Green New Deal proposal in February 2019.
Robert Hockett, one of Ocasio-Cortez’s advisors on her Green New Deal, pushed an inaccurate claim about her proposal on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show. Hockett later admitted that the claim was wrong.
MMFA researcher Andrew Lawrence, however, tweeted out a clip of the segment that went viral. Lawrence falsely wrote that Hockett had debunked “all the conservative media lies straight to [Carlson’s] face.” The tweet was retweeted by Ocasio-Cortez and went viral, despite its misinformation.
