is really the fact that Media Matters and their new friends at LGF didn’t have enough oomph to keep Pam Geller off of MSNBC altogether.
Although with ratings so low that I could likely outdraw him at Chris Matthews clearly can’t afford to upset what is left of his viewer base, maybe we should call him “Softballs”.
All that being said this is where a mistake like this hurts in the long run. Why let the other side have a gimme?
Update: Stacy expands and elaborates
And notice how this works: If Fox covers a story that other networks ignore, the attack is directed at the network. However, if MSNBC books a guest (Geller) to discuss a story that it had otherwise ignored (the Ground Zero mosque), Media Matters screams bloody murder that this one guest is unacceptable.
Media Matters is attempting to exercise the power of an arbiter, to arrogate to itself the authority to decide which stories are newsworthy and which sources are credible, and it does so through intimidation. The message to news producers and editors couldn’t be clearer: Give serious coverage to a story we don’t like, and we’ll unleash these attacks against you.
Remember Liz Mair’s theory that David Weigel’s Journolist e-mails were made public because Weigel had dared to dispute the Left’s narrative that portrayed Rand Paul as a racist. Weigel wasn’t toeing the line. He hadn’t cooperated in the Meme-O’-th’-Day agenda and, by speaking out, had helped kill the meme that Democrats were employing to tremendous advantage. Was that why he became the Luca Brasi of MSM reporters?
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