Weston Kosova has this fascinating piece in Newsweek about what was the Don Imus Show and why he was fired.
The reason he was fired is nestled about 1/4 of the way through the article.
In fact, unknown to Imus, one of his most loyal listeners in Washington, D.C., was watching, and taping, the show every day for just that reason: to make a record of everything Imus said. But 26-year-old Ryan Chiachiere wasn't a fan, and he wasn't tuning in to be entertained. Chiachiere is one of a handful of young activists who spend their days wading through hours of radio and cable shows for Media Matters for America, a liberal group whose sole purpose is rooting out and "correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media." Wired on coffee, Chiachiere was watching a recording of Imus's show when he noticed the "hos" remark.
It was a big hit at the group's morning meeting...
The group posted a video clip of the exchange on its Web site and put it up on YouTube. It sent e-mails to journalists and civil-rights and women's groups.
The word, and the outrage, spread quickly. A week later, Imus was gone, banished from his multimillion-dollar television and radio show even before he had the chance to complete the all-too-familiar cycle of public penance that high-profile sinners are usually granted.
In short, this was a hit by the wiseguys of the left, Media Matters.
I've written before about the lies and obfuscations of Media Matters. Media Matters is a PR whoring operation for the left, determined to find "conservative misinformation."
Of course, I've found lots of liberal misinformation from sites like Media Matters and F.A.I.R. I've even e-mailed them when they had inaccuracies in their stories, not that they ever issued corrections or anything.
The laughable part is that now that Media Matters brought down Imus, who was anything but conservative, they have put up this post on their website, showing that they clearly aren't interested in misinformation or "hate speech." They are interested in stifling any and all conservatives who say things they dislike.
But as Media Matters for America has extensively documented, bigotry and hate speech targeting, among other characteristics, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and ethnicity continue to permeate the airwaves through personalities such as Glenn Beck, Neal Boortz, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage, Michael Smerconish, and John Gibson.
If Media Matters were really concerned with bigotry and hate speech, why not start by perusing Pandagon and Daily KOS? At Pandagon, Amanda doesn't want to talk about the Duke lacrosse players falsely accused of rape (I guess because she can't bash white men as much since these guys were innocent) and at KOS, you have Markos saying women bloggers should just put up with threats of violence because, gee, everybody gets some whacky e-mails.
Media Matters could also spend some of its hours recording what the nuts on Air America say, but I guess since there's only four people listening, they aren't very concerned about that hate speech.
No, we can't expect Media Matters to actually be concerned about hate speech, given that so much of what they write either defends hate speech (as long as it comes from the left) or borders on the trivial (such as the story they had about advertisers not wanting to advertise on Air America shows). No, that would detract from the point...which is to silence conservatives.
UPDATE: Michael Smerconish answers the Media Matters calls against him.
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