Media Matters' Tax-Exempt Status a Valid Concern, Not Just for the Right

I’m going to have to disagree with my friend Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, who questions whether concerns about Media Matters’ tax-exempt status are simply a partisan grudge. “I think this is a mistake,” he says. “Setting a precedent of opening tax investigations on the basis of partisan grudges is one that Republicans and their allied political organizations will regret, and probably sooner rather than later.” However, Media Matters’ actions are at issue here, not any real or imagined response to those in the form of a “grudge” of some kind.

One item worth revisiting comes from a January 2011 Fox Business item and could now prove to be even more significant. To the extent Media Matters now provides content all but directly to MSNBC and MMfA personalities appear on that network, a Fox competitor, it’s not unfair to suggest that they are attacking one tax paying business while supporting another in direct competition with it. Taxpayers should not be footing the bill for anything designed to favor one for-profit business over another, and there’s ample evidence to suggest that’s the case, given MMfA’s actions. Aside from the Daily Caller’s Media Matters source proclaiming “We were pretty much writing [MSNBC’s] primetime,” a simple Google search reveals a very high profile link between MSNBC and MMfA “senior fellow” Eric Boehlert. [Bold my emphasis]