Rosen to Horowitz on Colorado Media Matters : "[T]heir hope here is to intimidate people like me"

On his radio show, Mike Rosen responded to Colorado Media Matters' work, announcing that "Media Matters has just opened up a Colorado office called Colorado Media Matters" and speculating that “their hope here is to intimidate people like me.” David Horowitz, whom Rosen was interviewing, stated that “this is a concerted campaign to control American government at every level by the radical left.”

During an August 15 interview with right-wing activist David Horowitz, Newsradio 850 KOA host Mike Rosen responded to Colorado Media Matters' work, announcing that "Media Matters has just opened up a Colorado office called Colorado Media Matters" and speculating that “their hope here is to intimidate people like me.” Rosen then claimed, “I'm awfully careful about my facts.” Referring to a Colorado Media Matters item debunking his June 9 Rocky Mountain News column, Rosen said, "[T]he best Media Matters could do was to say that my comments were misleading."

Addressing Rosen, Horowitz attacked Colorado Media Matters, Media Matters for America, and Media Matters for America President and CEO David Brock. Regarding Colorado Media Matters, Horowitz warned: “What you're telling me is that they are not content to have a website that deals, for example, with the national -- you know, with The Washington Post and The New York Times ... and Fox News Channel.” Horowitz predicted: “They are going to go into every state. If they are in Colorado, you know their plans are to go everywhere. ... [T]his is a concerted campaign to control American government at every level by the radical left, because these people are radicals.” Earlier, Horowitz had referred to Media Matters for America as a “smear site” and accused Brock of “smear[ing]” Republicans.

Horowitz, who is the co-founder and president of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, co-wrote The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party (Nelson Current, August 2006), which purports to expose the “influential and powerful Americans secretly stirring up disunion and disloyalty in the shifting shadows of the Democratic Party.” Media Matters for America recently exposed numerous doctored quotes and false or misleading portrayals of events and statements in The Shadow Party.

Apparently referring to a June 23 Colorado Media Matters item, Rosen told Horowitz: "[T]hey had something the other day where I had written a column in the Rocky Mountain News about global warming, and I offered specific quotes from a number of qualified scientists and climatologists and meteorologists who were dissenters, people like [Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor of meteorology] Richard Lindzen. And I gave the names and cited those who are respected in the community who happen to disagree with the bandwagon consensus right now."

Rosen added: "[T]he best Media Matters could do was to say that my comments were misleading. That's the kind of silly words that they use."

Indeed, Colorado Media Matters demonstrated (here, here, and here) that Rosen's June 9 News column (also published in The Gazette of Colorado Springs) contained several “misleading” statements.

From the August 15 broadcast of Newsradio 850 KOA's The Mike Rosen Show:

ROSEN: Tell us about Media Matters for America.

HOROWITZ: Well, Media Matters is a [George] Soros creation. It's a -- anybody who's in the --

ROSEN: Actually, didn't he launder the money through the Center for American Progress?

HOROWITZ: Yes, exactly. Well, the Center for American Progress, we should tell people, is run by John Podesta who was Clinton's chief of staff. It's the big think tank for the Shadow Party. And their offices -- they let them use their offices, but they raised the money for them. Soros put in the money. And they appointed David Brock, whose claim to fame is that he was -- he's a liar. He said -- this is by his own admission. He wrote a --

ROSEN: He wrote a book about Anita Hill.

HOROWITZ: He wrote a book about Anita Hill. And he wrote articles about Clinton's affairs in Arkansas.

ROSEN: And that's when he was a conservative writing for The American Spectator.

HOROWITZ: That's right. Then his book on [then-first lady] Hillary [Rodham Clinton] bombed. And he turned around 180 degrees and started, you know, and said that everything he had said was a lie. And now he has proceeded to do -- and smears. And he claimed to be disgusted with what he called Republican politics, which is all about smears -- sensationalism and smears.

ROSEN: So, he went from --

HOROWITZ: So, he turned that now on his old friends, the conservatives.

ROSEN: He turned from the right to the left. And another contributing factor may have been that it was disclosed that David Brock was gay, and David Brock felt that Republicans were unfriendly to gays.

HOROWITZ: Which is another lie.

ROSEN: Yes.

HOROWITZ: Because he was outed by Frank Rich of The New York Times, a famous lefty, and he was defended by conservatives. And that shows you how low David Brock is -- that he would then attack people who had defended him for being gay and accuse them of homophobia.

ROSEN: So, David Brock runs this outfit called Media Matters. They have a national website, and they seek to neutralize what conservatives say -- conservative commentators and anybody who might write some --

HOROWITZ: It's a smear site. They make things up and they -- they ran already a 7,000-word attack on this book.

ROSEN: Now, Media Matters has just --

HOROWITZ: Because in the book, we point out that Soros, when he was a very young man, collaborated with the Nazis -- even though he is a Jew. His real name is Schwartz. And they didn't like that, and they said we had -- our claim was unsourced, which is false. Soros was interviewed on [CBS News show] 60 Minutes by [correspondent] Steve Kroft and said exactly that -- that he had this protector who was in the fascist regime in Hungary, and he went around with him, and they confiscated Jews' property prior to them going to the ovens. And Croft said: “Do you have no feelings of guilt?” He said, “No.”

ROSEN: Media Matters has just opened up a Colorado office called Colorado Media Matters, and their hope here is to intimidate people like me. Excuse me while I yawn. I'm awfully careful about my facts. The best they can come with -- they had something the other day where I had written a column in the Rocky Mountain News about global warming, and I offered specific quotes from a number of qualified scientists and climatologists and meteorologists who were dissenters, people like Richard Lindzen. And I gave the names and cited those who are respected in the community who happen to disagree with the bandwagon consensus right now. And the best Media Matters could do was to say that my comments were misleading. That's the kind of silly words that they use.

HOROWITZ: Well, yeah, every other word they have is false or misleading. They have attacked me so much. I have written stuff -- but what you're telling me is -- shows how dangerous the Shadow Party is. What you're telling me is that they are not content to have a website that deals, for example, with the national -- you know, with The Washington Post and The New York Times --

ROSEN: Uh huh.

HOROWITZ: -- and Fox News Channel. They are going to go into every state. If they are in Colorado, you know their plans are to go everywhere. And what that is, it's their -- this is a concerted campaign to control American government at every level by the radical left, because these people are radicals.