Posted 6:37 PM by Scoobie Davis

Who's Afraid of Media Matters for America?
On The O'Reilly Factor tonight, the "Unresolved Problems Segment" was titled, "Political smear sites abound." I got a little excited. I was sure host Bill O'Reilly was going to expose NewsMax (click here, here, and here) for what it is. Darn, that's right. O'Reilly himself is a NewsMax columnist.

Then I found out that one of the guests for the segment was Jed Babbin of the American Spectator magazine. Then I thought, "Cool, O'Reilly's going to rake him over the coals for the Spectator's part in the shameful Arkansas Project and other dirty tricks campaigns (e.g., this). Alas, that wasn't the case. O'Reilly didn't bring up these episodes to Babbin.

Nope, the main "smear site" O'Reilly took on was Media Matters for America, which far from being a smear site, monitors the hard right's media operatives and smear merchants. Bill O'Reilly has received a great deal of well-deserved scrutiny from the site. For instance, Media Matters caught O'Reilly fibbing about his voter registration form. They have that man's number.

O'Reilly commented that several unnamed people were afraid to appear on the show lest Media Matters will write about them and they'll get deluged with e-mails. What wussies.

UPDATE: Media Matters has a report on O'Reilly's segment.