In a December 2 column, Rocky Mountain News media critic and Independence Institute research director Dave Kopel omitted key facts in criticizing Colorado Media Matters.

In an item published on November 20, Colorado Media Matters noted that Dan Caplis, co-host of The Caplis & Silverman Show on 630 KHOW-AM, had praised Fox News for being “a great news organization” that “has so much increased credibility” while ignoring the recent public disclosure of an internal Fox memo that cast doubts on the company's fairness and credibility. The day after the November 7 election, Fox News' senior vice president for news editorial John Moody allegedly distributed a memo instructing his staff to “be on the lookout for any statements from the Iraqi insurgents, who must be thrilled at the prospect of a Dem-controlled congress.” The memo also referred to U.S. Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) -- who will be House majority leader when Congress convenes next month -- as “a political hack.” As Colorado Media Matters noted, this instruction showed “that the network's news coverage instructions reflected hostility toward Democrats.”

The November 15 broadcast of MSNBC's Scarborough Country explored the controversy over Moody's November 8 memo, the authenticity of which Fox acknowledged in an official statement read by host Joe Scarborough:

But first, Memogate hits FOX News Channel. Critics are howling tonight after “The Huffington Post” Web site obtained this internal memo written by FOX News Vice President John Moody.

Now, part of the memo says, quote, “Let's be on the lookout for any statements from the Iraqi insurgents who must be thrilled at the prospect of a Democratic-controlled Congress.”

We called FOX News today to get their reaction to the leaked memo. They said in a statement, quote, “FOX News Senior Vice President John Moody stands by his editorial note.”

As Scarborough's guest Matthew Felling of the Center for Media and Public Affairs noted, Moody's memo reflected not journalism but “advocacy and activism”:

When he is saying, “Hey, be on the lookout, because we really would love a story about how the terrorists are dancing in the streets because the Democrats won,” that's not journalism. It's advocacy and activism. And it's really uncomfortable. And it just confirms a lot of peoples' suspicions.

But in describing the story about the memo, Kopel omitted Moody's stated opinion in the memo that “Iraqi insurgents [] must be thrilled at the prospect of a Dem-controlled congress.” Instead, Kopel referred to November 10 reporting that Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the Democrats' victory in the elections “the defeat of Bush's hawkish policies in the world” and “an obvious victory for the Iranian nation.” Kopel then misleadingly stated that Moody had “told reporters to be on the lookout for similar statements from Iraqi insurgents”:

The Friday after the election, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, happily described the Democratic takeover of Congress as a victory for Iran; the alleged Fox News memo from the day after the election told reporters to be on the lookout for similar statements from Iraqi insurgents.

Kopel also omitted other context noted by Colorado Media Matters, including that in praising Fox News, Caplis downplayed his own connection to the Fox News Channel; Caplis and co-host Craig Silverman have appeared as guests numerous times on such Fox News Channel shows as The O'Reilly Factor.

Later in the column, Kopel criticized a November 27 Colorado Media Matters item because it “failed to note” that data cited by the National Priorities Project (NPP) showed “that poor people (family incomes under $25,000) join the Army at less than 60 percent of the average American rate; the very poor (under $15,000) join at less than 30 percent of the national rate.” However, as Colorado Media Matters noted, the actual NPP report's finding stated this conclusion:

[A]nalysis of military recruiting shows that the wealthier neighborhoods became even more under-represented in the Army in 2005 while low- and middle-income neighborhoods became more over-represented compared to 2004.

From Kopel's column in the December 2 edition of the News, “Columnist is out of his depth”:

Colorado Media Matters sometimes does a good job in correcting factual errors by its ideological adversaries. In a Tuesday post on its Web site, for example, CMM pointed out a mistake in an Independence Institute Op-Ed. The Op-Ed had claimed that 62 percent of women in a poll had said that abortion is “murder.” As CMM correctly explained, 62 percent of women had said that abortion is “wrong,” but only 51 percent called it “murder.”

Fortunately for Coloradans, the actual number of significant factual errors in the major Colorado media in an average week is very low; and since CMM is interested only in conservative errors, there aren't enough genuine errors to keep CMM's dozen-person staff of critics busy.

Accordingly, a lot of CMM stories involve complaints about what someone else in the media should have said. For example, a recent CMM Web site headline criticized radio talk-show host Dan Caplis for briefly praising the Fox network, yet “ignoring [an] alleged memo undercutting [the] network's claim of being 'fair and balanced.' ” As if a radio host is at fault for failing to bring up the contents of a memo which even CMM admits is nothing more than “alleged.”

The Friday after the election, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, happily described the Democratic takeover of Congress as a victory for Iran; the alleged Fox News memo from the day after the election told reporters to be on the lookout for similar statements from Iraqi insurgents.

[...]

Another thing that CMM “failed to note” was that the data from the National Priorities Project actually supported the News editorial's point that poor people are grossly underrepresented in the military. The NPP data show that poor people (family incomes under $25,000) join the Army at less than 60 percent of the average American rate; the very poor (under $15,000) join at less than 30 percent of the national rate (www.nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_content &task=view&id=230).