{"id":1885,"date":"2008-01-02T12:21:24","date_gmt":"2008-01-02T17:21:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1885"},"modified":"2015-04-27T12:20:53","modified_gmt":"2015-04-27T17:20:53","slug":"just-to-be-perfectly-clear-on-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1885","title":{"rendered":"Just To Be Perfectly Clear On Things"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Paul Schmelzer took understandable, mild umbrage<\/a> over the “Shootie” award I gave the Minnesota Monitor yesterday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He might not be entirely <\/em>wrong.\u00a0 But we’ll get back to that.<\/p>\n

Let’s go waaaay back to the spring of ’06.<\/p>\n

Back before <\/em>the Minnesota Monitor even started publishing, I got a tip from a source that said the “Center for Independent Media”, a group that “rented” office space from the George Soros-funded Media Matters for America, was going to be funding “grassroots citizen media” outlets, and was looking for reliably liberal bloggers to write for them.\u00a0 So – going back to the summer\/fall of 2006 – I and quite a number of center-right bloggers, in the interest of clarity, started asking the Monitor and its management (at that time, Robin “Rew” Marty of Powerliberal) where the money came from – who, indeed, were <\/em>the “liberals with deep pockets<\/a>” that were fronting the Monitor writers’ “stipends”?<\/p>\n

For the better part of a year,\u00a0“we” asked, and asked, and asked again.\u00a0 The Monitor, when it responded at all, said that, appearances aside, the Hungarian-born currency speculator and leftymedia sugardaddy had nothing, nothing <\/em>to do with the Center for Independent Media or the Minnesota Monitor.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We asked the Monitor’s editor; I emailed the Center for Independent Media and asked directly.\u00a0 The CIM didn’t respond at all.\u00a0 Robin Marty went further<\/a>:<\/p>\n

To clarify, the Center for Independent Media is not receiving funding from Media Matters.\u00a0 The only financial arrangement they have is to rent office space.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Cleverly, carefully worded.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Except “Media Matters” wasn’t the crux of the debate; money from George Soros was.\u00a0 Robin’s response was that if one didn’t see an armored car labelled “Soros International”\u00a0\u00a0unloading bags of currency labelled “Media Matters” at the CIM offices, it didn’t count!\u00a0<\/p>\n

Never mind that many – especially Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci at Kool Aid Report<\/a> and this blog’s regular commenter Master of None<\/a> – did the digging and found the links.\u00a0 The Monitor’s party line, and the line from its supporters, remained unchanged.<\/p>\n

And so – given that the definition of “insanity” is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results each time<\/em>, we moved on, mostly; we took shots at the obloquy and apparent disingenuity of the denials, but figured there were bigger fish to fry.\u00a0 The Monitor’s critics assumed the site was a “Soros” (among many others) front; its supporters stomped their feet and demanded to see the photos of that armored car and those bags of money.<\/p>\n

And then, Eric Black went and admitted it all<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, I have been unstinting in my regard for Paul Schmelzer and his work<\/a> at the Monitor.\u00a0 In a region that’s become accustomed to the likes of Brian Lambert as a media “reporter”,\u00a0Schmelzer has done a great job; he’s head and possibly shoulders\u00a0above the pack at the Monitor (in some cases, toss in knees or ankles).\u00a0 He took over as editor in August.\u00a0 I think he’s done a decent job – and I freely admit in deference to Schmelzer and <\/em>his predecessor, Robin Marty, that I could certainly not run a big group-blog like the Monitor.<\/p>\n

Schmelzer has noted – in private email to me and in this comment thread<\/a> in the Monitor, that nobody since August has asked him about the Monitor’s funding, and that he’s being up-front about it.<\/p>\n

Which, to be fair to\u00a0Schmelzer, is true; most of us had given up and settled into our beliefs, pro and con, on the subject.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So Schmelzer is correct in that he is being open about the Monitor and CIM’s funding<\/a>, albeit under intense questioning from Tom Swift (see the comment section).<\/p>\n

But there is <\/em>plenty of history here.\u00a0 Kudos to Schmelzer for being up-front about it – but, to be fair (to us), it’s not like it didn’t take well over a year of trying, accompanied by a lot <\/em>of rhetorical abuse and tittering from the Monitor and its defenders, to get to this point.<\/p>\n

Does it matter?\u00a0 On the one hand, not really.\u00a0 I mean, I don’t begrudge the Monitor’s staff their paychecks; if you love to do something (and blogging is rarely more than a labor of love), it can be mighty nice to see some payback.\u00a0 And if George Soros or any other fatcats with deep pockets want to spend their kids’ inheritance on propaganda organs – well, it’s their money!\u00a0 I know I’d jump on a check from Richard Mellon Scaife or the Heritage Foundation with both feet.\u00a0 I’d also disclose, completely and immediately<\/a>, the fact that I had gotten the check, rather than tapdancing and misdirecting and denying the source of my support – I’d just as soon let the reader accurately and completely <\/em>know, and let them assign or deduct credibility accordingly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Just as most of us have done with the Monitor.<\/p>\n

It’s not that complicated.\u00a0 Or shouldn’t have been, at least.<\/p>\n

\u00a0PS:\u00a0 My wise old grandpa always told me “don’t listen to lectures about “embarassment” from people who seem unable to feel it themselves”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Words to live by!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Paul Schmelzer took understandable, mild umbrage over the “Shootie” award I gave the Minnesota Monitor yesterday.\u00a0 He might not be entirely wrong.\u00a0 But we’ll get back to that. Let’s go waaaay back to the spring of ’06. Back before the Minnesota Monitor even started publishing, I got a tip from a source that said the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[326,31,4],"tags":[333],"class_list":["post-1885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-alt-media","category-blogs","category-media","tag-brian-lambert"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1885"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53014,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1885\/revisions\/53014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}