Action Alert: Feelin' the Hate

Media Matters is pretty young as an organization, but they've accomplished some good stuff in terms of calling for accountability in the media. They've managed to get retractions and apologies from major news outlets after catching them spreading misleading, inaccurate or biased material, earned the undying hostility of Bill O'Reilly, and probably increased antacid consumption among hacky ombudsmen by a fair degree.

I'm not sure what impact there could be from their latest petition, which calls for cable news stations to stop giving airtime to people who use that forum to call for the imprisonment or assassination of their political opponents. The right-wing response is predetermined-- subversive liberals are trying to ban free speech. In their tersely-worded proposition, however, Media Matters states that their real goal is to demand that the channels offer real debate instead of exhortations to bigotry and violence. After all, saying you think that the New York Times staff should be electrocuted or blown to bits isn't news, information, or political debate.

So take a minute of your time and sign on. I'm pretty interested to see just how many signatures Media Matters can collect on this one. I think they'll break 100,000 pretty easily. It's gone up by over 200 just in in the time it took me to write this-- with no shortage of "red-staters."