SubscribeRole Of Media Matters In Don Imus Downfall
From the Wall Street Journal:
UNHORSED JOCKEY
Behind the Fall of Imus, A Digital Brush Fire
In a Blur, Watchdogs, Blogs, Email, Spur Radio Host’s Firing
By BROOKS BARNES, EMILY STEEL and SARAH MCBRIDE
April 13, 2007; Page A1At 6:14 a.m. on Wednesday, April 4, relatively few people were tuned into the “Imus in the Morning Show” when Don Imus referred to the Rutgers women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed ho’s.”
Ryan Chiachiere was. A 26-year-old researcher in Washington, D.C., for liberal watchdog organization Media Matters for America, he was assigned to monitor Mr. Imus’s program. Mr. Chiachiere clipped the video, alerted his bosses and started working on a blog post for the organization’s Web site…
On the morning of the original broadcast, there was little response to Mr. Imus’s slur. Media Matters posted the video and transcript on its Web site and sent an email blast to several hundred reporters, as it does nearly every day. The post received dozens of comments, many heated, some more than 300 words long. The next day, top news outlets didn’t mention the incident.
On Thursday, at about 3 p.m., NBC News President Steve Capus was conducting a routine planning meeting in his third-floor offices at Rockefeller Center when an assistant interrupted him to take an urgent phone call, according to a person at the meeting. On the other line: MSNBC General Manager Dan Abrams. Mr. Abrams said MSNBC executives were fielding complaints from viewers and employees who had seen a video clip of Mr. Imus’s remark on the Media Matters site, this person says.
The group is a Web-based nonprofit organization devoted to monitoring “conservative misinformation” in print, broadcast, cable, radio and Internet media outlets. It frequently complains about Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly. Although the Imus show isn’t generally considered conservative, some of its guests are…
In Chicago, Bryan Monroe, president of the National Association of Black Journalists, saw an email sent by one of his executive board members at 5:06 p.m. “FYI — do we need to address” read the subject line. It was the Media Matters post.
Mr. Monroe, editorial director of Johnson Publishing Co. in charge of Ebony and Jet magazines, wasn’t a regular reader of Media Matters or an Imus listener…
A quick Googling of Ryan Chiachiere shows you exactly the kind of people who we are dealing with. Professional DNC hacks.
Among Mr. Chiachiere’s amazing feats is his “research” exposing Tom Delay’s many crimes against humanity. Or rather, inventing them.
But as we have noted before, Media Matters is supported and even staffed by Clinton cronies. So they would make natural handmaidens for such a deed.
Certainly Media Matters has been carefully keeping score:
Imus smeared Hillary Clinton, "that buck-toothed witch, Satan"
Wed, May 24, 2006
On the May 24 edition of MSNBC’s Imus in the Morning, host Don Imus referred to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) as "Satan" 11 times, once calling her "that buck-tooted witch, Satan." During an interview with NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell, Imus even claimed that Clinton was "worse than" Osama bin Laden, but then partially retracted his statement, saying: "Well, that’s a little strong." …
Imus has repeatedly and unapologetically referred to Clinton as "Satan," most recently during the May 22, 23, and 24 editions of his radio program. During a conversation with co-host Charles McCord and executive producer Bernard McGuirk on May 22, Imus admitted that he "wouldn’t have a job based on stuff" he had said in the past, adding that, however, he had never had to apologize for insulting former President Bill Clinton and his "fat ugly wife, Satan…
But of course Hillary’s grudge against Imus goes back further than last year. It probably traces back to at the annual DC Radio and TV Correspondents Association dinner 11 years ago.
Once again we are indebted to Media Matters for the damning quotes:
Imus had barely begun his routine when words such as "indicted," "subpoena," "Go, baby," "AstroTurf in the pickup" and "pot-smoking weasel" came spilling out of his mouth. The president and first lady, seated on the dais, were forced to maintain their composure in front of three thousand spectators and the television cameras. — Page 97, "The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008" by Mark Halperin and John Harris.
(What purports to be a full transcript of Imus’s dinner remarks can be found here.)
But now that Hillary and her cohorts at Media Matters have Don Imus’s scalp, they will be further emboldened. Indeed, as we have noted, they are already moving on to their next targets.
Still, are these really the people we want serving as gatekeepers of the public airwaves?
(Thanks to She_Angst for the heads up.)
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22 Responses to “Role Of Media Matters In Don Imus Downfall”
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April 14th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
I’m not an Imus listener nor am I a sports fan. Even from a low vantage point, I can see a slow swell of dissatisfaction among the sports community about the negative effects of the appearance of black players in basketball. Now, I’m not silly enough to fail to realize that commentators, even those who wrote excellent pieces on the subject such as Ann and Pat think that there are larger cultural issues in play here. But, on a reasonable level, among reasonable people, if the Rutgers womens basketball team look like nappy headed hos, then in the vernacular of today’s hip culture of which Imus claims to be a part, Imus didn’t do anything except express an opinion that many other sports fans share. Why is Imus not being defended on that level? Convicted by their own words, Imus did nothing wrong. Are there nothing but cowed citizens out there?
April 14th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
And then there’s this, also from the Wall Street Journal:
April 14th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
And here is a sample of “Nappy Roots” lyrics:
April 14th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
SG, How many times do I have to tell you that only white males can be racists?
April 14th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
Again, I will point out how this non-scandal nearly died out but was revived JUST as the Duke Lacrosse case blew up.
EVERYONE involved in being “offended” by the Imus thing had EVERY reason to stoke the fire — to help bring the attention away from the Duke Lacrosse case being a bust.
Imagine if the Duke lacrosse case had been thrown out WITHOUT any distraction????
There would have been calls far and wide for every idiot black “crusader” and activist to apologize and they would be completely discredited.
But, if they can still prove how “relevant” they are by getting rid of “racist” Imus, then they deflect most of that.
Imus was the fall guy for the Duke lacross team. Every black activist (notice how there are no white activists) had to redeem themsevles by jumping on the throat of Don Imus — to give total distraction to the Duke outcome and how wrong they had been for an entire year.
April 14th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
According to Sharpton, blacks can use that kind of degrading racist crap because “we were the oppressed, and the white man was the oppressor”.
So, that being the case, Sharpton skated the real issue of where the term “nappy headed ho” came from in the first place. Trust me, I never heard it brought up by the white devil slave masters….ever!
Imus should have said he was simply “quoting the black man’s rage” or something to that effect, and it would have stalemated any racist accusations immediately. As it is, Imus loses his job by NBC’s pandering to racist threats from Sharpton and Jackson, but Nifong gets to skate because somehow, what he did to those boys wasnt racist or criminal, it was ok because they werent black.
See? Libs and dems arent the only two faced hypocrites out there talking their crap. My way, or the highway….that is the creed of all who take advantage of others, and call it “diversity”. Personally, I think the rap industry has done more to denigrate the black woman than any KKK member ever could…but it’s “ok”, because of course, they are black, and oppressed, and expressing their freedom of speech. Something the rest of us are hard pressed to do without threat of arrest.
April 14th, 2007 at 6:45 pm
Bread and circuses.
April 14th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
Imus’ first mistake was saying what he said.
His second was going to Al Sharpton to “make amends.”
Let’s make one thing very clear: Imus is a liberal. Because he IS a liberal, he didn’t expect that anything would happen to him. Because he IS a liberal, he thought that he’d go to “the Head Black Man” to do his penance.
There are a few problems with that mindset, though.
First is that Imus believing that nothing would happen to him for using racially tinged comments. You can talk smack about white men, Catholics, Jews, Asians, cat lovers, bad cooks…just about anyone except for blacks, mohammedans, and women. If any of those girls had been muslimes, Imus would have a fatwa out on him…and in a sense, he did anyway. He wouldn’t dare talk smack about Jesse hi-Jackson or Al “Freddie’s Fashion Mart” Sharpton…because those two have a buttload of political power and aren’t afraid to use it.
Second is the white liberal belief that there is indeed such a thing as a “Head Black Man.” Jesse and Fat-ass no more speak for the whole race than Russell Means speaks for Indians or anyone speaks for Mexicans…or John-Francois Kerry speaks for white folks. By so stupidly going to Sharpton, Imus propped up that loudmouth racist as a political voice, and granted him a legitimacy he does NOT deserve. Between hi-Jackson claiming that his “Hymietown” remarks mean nothing because they were “off the record” (he may not be the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, but Jackass isn’t stupid enough to spew his racist bile in public), and Sharpton setting out to destroy Steven Pagones (What’s the difference between Mike Nifong and Al Sharpton? 60 pounds, relaxer, skin tone and an Italian suit.), Imus and the rest of the libmedia have granted “leadership” to two of the foulest, most retrograde individuals in this country! And some of the others who are media stars, such as Charles Barron and that pile of filth from the “New Black Panther Party” are even more foul and more repellant.
Imus should have been suspended, but not so much for the content of what he said, BUT WHO HE DIRECTED IT AT. Those girls ARE NOT PUBLIC FIGURES and as such ARE NOT FAIR GAME FOR THAT KIND OF “COMMENTARY.” Imus is a bitter, nasty, foul old man…but THAT’S NOT A CRIME. Neither is stupidity. Imus was stupid. Two weeks suspended was punishment for stupidity. Being driven off the air by race-pimps like Jackson and Sharpton is NOT suitable treatment for having been an idiot,
Now the libs have smelled blood in the water. They’ve gotten Imus…but 70 stations and 300 or so thousand viewers makes him small potatoes. They want Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, Prager, Liddy and every other Conservative silent. They’ve had their ideas challenged and DEFEATED for almost 20 years…they were driven from the seat of power in 1994, forced to wander in the wilderness for twelve years (hey! try FORTY YEARS, you baboons!) and they know that as long as what they say will be challenged and is indefensible THEY WILL NEVER HOLD THAT POWER PERMANENTLY!!!
Look for the libs to want to re-emplace the “fairness doctrine,” control the internet, and find some way to shut down Conservative publications. The Constitution is toilet paper to these crypto-totalitarians (and they aren’t so crypto, when you think about it)…and the butt wiping is about to start. The Republicans want to be liked too much to fight back, so they’ll be of no help. It’s going to be up to US, the REAL Americans, to stop these fascist RATs in their tracks!
I’m up for the fight…anyone care to join me?
April 14th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
Sharps - I agree with you.
‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’ Edmund Burke
‘You can take my life, but you can’t take my FREEDOM’ - William Wallace
It is about time to stand up to these people who want to destroy America from within - because if they keep up their control and silence tactics, the radical terrorists and shi’a law lovers will just be able to walk in and take over.
It disgusts me and frightens me. I’m up for a fight.
April 14th, 2007 at 10:25 pm
Sharps - Well said.
Liberals see a golden opportunity for an all out assault on our most basic freedom - speech. The groundwork has been laid for this assault for years with the PC movement. Words that directly express what conservatives believe are either diluted or outright forbidden because some group claims to be offended.
If the libs succeed in shutting down conservative speech, we’ve lost the ability to counter their often atrocious behavior and beliefs.
Many of America’s bravest have died protecting our right to free speech from foreign enemies. It would be criminal if we don’t honor that sacrifice and end up ceding our most basic freedom internally because of race baiting pimps like HiJackson and Sharptongue.
April 14th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
Sharps has some very good points, The girls most certainly had done nothing to be belittled in such a way.
I have never paid any attention to Imus, I rank him with the likes of howard stern ( his name is undeserving of caps).
Did Imus deserve to be fired?, I leave that up to the people that pay him, Business is just that.
We all have free speech rights, Just not the right to broadcast.
If you gut a shark and throw it back in the water it will eat its own guts over and over and its buddies will help him, The left has tasted the blood of their own, They care not who they eat.
But they do know a prize when its floundering, And they will sacrifice their own to eat it.
April 15th, 2007 at 12:26 am
I’m maybe going out on a limb here, but you know what struck me most about this whole story?
Right around the time this story broke, early last week, 6 Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan were killed by a roadside bomb. That made 2 inch headlines in every -and I do mean every daily newspaper in Canada. It dominated the news and we heard their names, their units and what they left behind in terms of family. That happens every time we lose one and it’s not done for cut’n'run propaganda purposes, it’s done out of respect. That’s fairly new here, but it seems to be catching on.
The same day, our news agencies reported the loss of 7 American servicemen. They usually do report American deaths.
Then I switched over to FOX.
They mentioned the loss of 7 US servicemen as well. It was mentioned in a brief sentence that was sandwiched between reporting on this Imus character and the ongoing coverage of Anna Nichole Smith.
It was an afterthought.
I realize that the US has nearly lost more people in both theatres than Canada actually has in her entire combat arms, but aren’t they all worth more coverage than a dead whore and a living, mouthy asshole?
How many US servicemen have died since this whole Imus debate blew up? Can anyone tell me without looking it up?
The cut and run crowd will have their say no matter what. As will the race pimps and the lefty book burners and free speech suppressors. The left isn’t going to take down people like Limbaugh, Coulter or (shudder) Savage -because they draw far too large an audience. That translates into revenue.
Paying proper attention to those who have fallen won’t change that. In fact -from what I’ve seen up here- it serves to highlight the point that to cut and run is to make those deaths meaningless.
Those US soldiers died for the grateful and the ungrateful. For liberals and conservatives. For Americans and for anyone of any nation who enjoys -or would like to enjoy- freedom. As did the Canadian soldiers.
Hey, jump all over me if I’m out of line. I realize I’m comparing apples and oranges by contrasting the way the two countries cover their war dead, but it kind of bugged me.
It just struck me that your fallen soldiers are getting short-changed by your own media -even FOX.
And that’s just wrong.
April 15th, 2007 at 1:21 am
I agree with you DW.
I haven’t quite figured out what has been going on with FOX for the past several months. They have definitely been steering heavily towards a sensationalized gossip rag format, and I don’t like it. O’Reillys stupid “Body Language” segment (why not do their horoscopes while you’re at it) is a perfect example of what I’m referring to. The network has almost become unwatchable to me anymore. Thank God for blogs.
Obviously, I too am disgusted with the way that the service persons in the GWOT are disrespected every single day by the media. It really is disheartening sometimes and I cannot understand how so many people are falling for this liberal misinformation which will destroy this country if it is left unchecked. It is just truly sickening.
April 15th, 2007 at 3:00 am
DW - The reason the American media does not honor the American fallen soldiers is the same reason the BBC cancelled a 90 minute show honoring the British Victoria Cross honoree: too positive and would offend the anti-war crowd. And it is the same reason they stopped showing coverage of 9/11.
April 15th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
I’m with ya Sharps…
visit this sight
http://www.petitionspot.com/pe.....TerryMoran
April 16th, 2007 at 5:46 am
I thought Don Imus was dead until this thing happened but anyway, he’s a jerk and those Rutgers girls didn’t deserve what they got from him but if you object to what he says, don’t listen to him. What’s bad about this whole thing is that it allows portly race-baiters like Sharpton and Jackson to pose as heroes and to perpetuate the self-serving myth that America is this boiling cauldron of racial hatred when the reality is almost the complete opposite.
April 16th, 2007 at 10:49 am
I figured this one out right away…how come no one is reporting on Hilliary Clinton, making her move On the White House and that obviously the Black Caucus of the Dem Party, is backing Hillary and not Obama. You would think this would be Headlines. What did Hillary promise Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, for this political hit job on Don Imus? Don Imus’s audience were older voting Democrats, Hillary doesn’t care what Hannity and Limbaugh, say about her, their audience doesn’t vote for her anyway. Are all the mainstream media outlets so afraid of the Clintonistas? I wouldn’t call Hillary Clinton a witch but I would watch out for “Falling Houses” if I were her. Clinton is at 36% in the Polls.
http://tinyurl.com/23zfya
Laree Lee
April 16th, 2007 at 11:27 am
Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Other create a media circus over what? Something Don Imus does all the time, why now? they are “Plowing the Road” for Hillary Clinton and she doesn’t care how many “Old Cowboys” she has to take down to get to the White House….this is like a trick with mirrors, everyone is just paying attention to this one thing Don Imus said “Nappy Headed Hos” so no one is paying attention to anything else he has ever said. Who was the most Vocal Critic of the Clintons? Now Hillary Clinton NEVER asked for Don Imus to be fired that is very interesting.
April 16th, 2007 at 11:45 am
Fire Terry Moran petition for statements about the Duke Lacrosse players at http://www.petitionspot.com/pe.....Moran#sign
April 17th, 2007 at 8:00 am
American servicemen do most of the fighting that needs to be done in the world so they die regularly and as bad as it hurts to say it Americans are used to them dying as long as it’s not their son, daughter, sister, brother, husband or wife. The American people are the most impatient people in the world, they want it started now and don’t take long about finishing it. But if you win in the end they will usually forget it took so long. They don’t want to dwell on all those sad stories about US service men and women dying. Yes I know the Aussies and Brits are fighting in Iraq along with others and our population dwarfs all theirs so we have the most to send.
Imus, an idiot but he wasn’t pulled because of what he said, he lost his sponsors. He should have been fired for attacking people who couldn’t fight back, he’s always been a bully, as bad as Sharpton and Jessie are and they suck, it’s funny he got took out by those race baiting losers.
If Obama can finish a close second or win one of the first 2 Hillary is toast. Barack can’t win the general because he has no experience at anything and his middle name is Hussein. Seems like a nice guy except I don’t agree with anything he says. That ambulance chaser Edwards can’t win because he’s an ambulance chaser for one and sooner or later everyones gonna notice he’s evil. Al Gore can no longer fit in the White House doors. The one dem who’s worth a damn is Richardson and he in my honest not joking opinion can’t get the nomination.
It would be nice to see a race between Thompson or Newt and Richardson, maybe just maybe it wouldn’t become a mudfest.
April 17th, 2007 at 9:49 am
Laree Lee’s comments strike me as right on point. The only person who really stands to benefit from silencing Don Imus, or at least marginalizing him, is Hillary Clinton.
Does it not shock anyone that this happened so quickly and so completely? Imus is a giant. Here’s a guy speaking the language, most of the time, of those on the left: Imus called Bush and Cheney war criminals and he supported the immediate end of the war. And yet suddenly the left is concerned about coarseness in the public square; suddenly Don Imus is the bane of decency, propriety and good taste. Suddenly America is ripe with neo-Puritans. It’s all rather stunning.
To top it all off, virtually no one has said a thing about the OTHER thing Imus said that fateful day. You know what he said: He called the OTHER BASKETBALL TEAM, which is mostly African-American, “cute.” That this is ignored is wickedly depressing, for it shows that the neo-Puritans don’t care that this all proves Imus could not have meant his words in a racist way. Calling the national champions “cute” is not one whit racist.
At best, Imus’ remarks were sexist. At worst, they we were stupidly sexist. But the context totally dispels the idea that they were the stuff of racists. When Sid Rosenberg added his silly observation (one affirmed by Imus) that when the Rutgers team took the floor he thought they were the “Toronto Raptors,” which is an all-male team, we should all instantly get what is being said: the Rutgers team looked like they should have defeated a “cute” opponent because they looked, by comparison, like a group of NBA men. A bad, sexist and stupid joke it no doubt is. And no doubt Imus’ remarks offend people who care about others. But that the Archie Bunker of talk radio is suddenly taken literally, and suddenly banished because he has “crossed the line,” suggests more than an American flight toward civility.
Anyhow, peace to all.
We mourn for the Hokies.
BG
April 17th, 2007 at 10:42 am
I agree that this has all the earmarks of a Hillary Clinton operation. And a look at the time line bears that out.
Imus’s remarks did not seem to offend his guests (who laughed) or his audience (who did not write in).
They would most likely have gone completely unnoticed if not for Media Matters. And it even took them a few days to stir up a “groundswell” of (self) righteous anger from the usual suspects.
But Media Matters collects about $8.5 million dollars a year to do Hillary’s bidding.
When she commands they jump her paid stooges only dare to ask “how high?”
And she won’t be satisfied until she silences all her opposition on the airwaves and internet.