"Vetting:" Media Matters Memo Proposed Hiring Investigators to Dig Dirt on FoxNews Employees

They didn't go forward with the plan (as far as we know).

I imagine only because people in the leftwing media -- who would be the next targets, of retaliatory digging from the right -- warned them off.

But this is where their heads are at.

“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.”

What Frisch proceeded to suggest, however, went well beyond what legitimate presidential campaigns attempt. “We should hire private investigators to look into the personal lives of Fox News anchors, hosts, reporters, prominent contributors, senior network and corporate staff,” he wrote.

...

The memo goes on to suggest new and unusual ways to harass Fox News: “detailed opposition research” on the network’s staff and executives, attacks against Fox News employees on Facebook and other social media, mailing anti-Fox News literature to their homes and placing “yard signs and outdoor advertising in their neighborhoods.”

At one point, Frisch suggests putting “a mole inside of” the network.

The cloak-and-dagger tactics seemed to make Frisch jumpy. “Fox is likely to retaliate,” he wrote. Media Matters should find “ways to protect the privacy of our employees and the security of our office.”

I like that after endorsing the notion that no one at Fox should have privacy, he follows up with a caution that Media Matters will of course have to take steps to protect its own workers' privacy.

posted by Ace at 04:59 PM

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