New Details in Media Matters Investigation: Organization Allegedly Hired Private Investigators to Monitor Targets

The Daily Caller investigative report on Media Matters for America looks to be a major ongoing story throughout the week. An original report released Sunday alleges that the controversial organization is helmed by paranoid, illegal drug-users, and has been in direct and influential contact with the White House communications team and several major left-wing media outlets. The piece cites unnamed former staffers and individual sources with knowledge of the progressive watchdog's inner-workings. Late Monday, The DC released their next installment, which cites emails between top Media Matters bosses discussing the launch of a "Fox Fund" with the mission to attack the Fox News Channel as the new primary target for the progressive movement since George W. Bush's exit.

“We must take Fox News head-on in a well funded, presidential-style campaign to discredit and embarrass the network, making it illegitimate in the eyes of news consumers," Karl Frisch said in a 2008 email to other top Media Matters employees. The DC reports that Frisch went on to write:

“We should hire private investigators to look into the personal lives of Fox News anchors, hosts, reporters, prominent contributors, senior network and corporate staff."

The vehement below-the-belt attack is particularly stunning considering that Media Matters for America is a tax-exempt organization. The DC reports Frisch went on to call for “an elaborate shareholder campaign” against News Corporation, the parent company of Fox News: “This can take many forms, from a front group of shareholders, to passing resolutions at shareholder meetings or massive demonstrations are [sic] shareholder meetings."

A self-admitted liberal Harvard professor told the DC that the story could be the possible tip of the ice burg to a larger scandal that has potential to derail the once highly-regarded Obama reelection campaign:

“'Well I think if swing voters in the pro-Israel community had any idea how extreme Media Matters was on issues of Israel and supporters of Israel, they would regard Media Matters as another, you know, Rev. Wright,' Dershowitz told The Daily Caller.

'And for many, many in the pro-Israel community, it would be a game changer.'

Dershowitz went so far as to suggest that Media Matters’s rhetoric on Israel, particularly from Media Matters Action Network senior fellow M.J. Rosenberg, is similar to what one would find on a neo-Nazi website.

'When I started reading their stuff it sounded like the kind of stuff you see on neo-Nazi websites,' Dershowitz said. 'Or on Hezbollah-supporter websites. It is so extremist. The thing that shocked me is that anybody regarded it as mainstream.'”

Alan Dershowitz is a law professor at Harvard. Rev. Wright refers to the scandal surrounding Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, where Barack Obama used to attend services. Past sermons and speeches by Rev. Wright containing anti-American and anti-Semitic sentiments were brought to light during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Tucker Carlson appeared on Fox News Monday to discuss the report Monday: