Is Media Matters guilty of cheating on taxes?

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This is why I pointed out this is a complete farce, cause the lawyer for the defense can't be the judge as well.

Furthermore, their statements are just clips that leave out key parts that change the entire context.

Yes, also what you are quoting is a quote from a news article, not from me, so you may want to quote things correctly in the future.

So in other words mediamatters is doing the same thing that American Campaign Academy was denied non-profit tax-exempt status for, but somehow that's okay because mediamatters is bashing a place that you don't like and is siding with Democrats.

Yesterday, a federal appeals court upheld the Internal Revenue Service's decision to revoke the tax-exempt status of a church that had paid for newspaper ads against then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton in 1992.
The revocation is the first in the history of the IRS and serves as a warning from the federal judiciary that churches may not fund partisan activity. U.S. law granting tax-exempt status also forbids tax-exempt organizations from involvement in "any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office."

The Landmark Church, formerly know as the Church at Pierce Creek, in Binghamton, N.Y., requested and received tax-exempt status from the IRS in 1983. But on Oct. 30, 1992, just four days before the presidential election, the church placed full-page ads in USA Today and the Washington Times warning Christians about Clinton.

The ads' headline, "Christians Beware," was followed by a statement that Clinton's positions concerning abortion, homosexuality and the distribution of condoms to teen-agers in schools violate biblical principals.

A notice at the bottom of the ad appealed for "tax-exempt donations" to pay for placing the ad.

"The advertisements did not go unnoticed," the appeals court said. "They produced hundreds of contributions to the church from across the country and were mentioned in a New York Times article and an Anthony Lewis column which stated that the sponsors of the advertisement had almost certainly violated the Internal Revenue Code.

"The advertisements also came to the attention of the regional commissioner of the IRS," the court said, "who notified the church on Nov. 20, 1992, that he had authorized a church tax inquiry based on 'a reasonable belief ... that you may not be tax-exempt or that you may be liable for tax' due to political activities and expenditures."

The church had "two unproductive meetings between the parties," according to court documents, before its tax-exempt status was revoked in 1995.

Pastor Dan Little challenged the revocation, saying the IRS had acted without authority and had violated the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of religion, according to United Press International. The church also alleged it was being unconstitutionally singled out by the IRS for "selective prosecution."

Lawyers for the church argued that the Internal Revenue Code gave the IRS the authority to revoke tax-exempt status of a "religious organization," but not that of "a bona fide church."

A federal judge rejected the argument -- as did the appeals court panel on Friday.

"We find this argument more creative than persuasive," the panel's opinion said. "The simple answer, of course, is that whereas not every religious organization is a church, every church is a religious organization. More to the point, irrespective of whether it was required to do so, the church applied to the IRS for an advance determination of its tax-exempt status. The IRS granted that recognition and now seeks to withdraw it. (Federal law) gives the IRS this power."

The panel also rejected the church's First Amendment and selective prosecution argument. The judges conceded in their Friday opinion that the church could form a political action committee but added that the PAC would have to be separately incorporated and could not be supported by church funds.

"This decision slams the door on mixing religion and partisan politics," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which says it reported the church to the IRS. "This is a staggering defeat for Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and others who want to convert America's churches into a partisan political machine."

"This is an extraordinarily important ruling," he continued. "All over the country, Religious Right figures like Robertson, Falwell and others are trying to lure churches into jumping headfirst into politics. This decision should bring those efforts to a grinding halt."

"Robertson's attorneys have been telling churches for years that they can get involved in electioneering without worry," Lynn added. "Quite simply, this decision proves that they don't know what they are talking about. From now on, all religious leaders should look at Robertson's advice in this area with extreme skepticism."

But attorneys for the Church at Pierce Creek said the ruling sets a valuable precedent by its mention of religiously affiliated political action committees.

"While we are disappointed with the appellate court's decision

concerning the case involving the Church at Pierce Creek, we are encouraged that this court appears to provide a blueprint for churches to express their beliefs in a political context," said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice. "This is an important decision that will set the legal tone for future involvement of churches in the political arena."

According to the court's decision, the church may also reapply for tax-exempt status as long as it does not engage in campaign speech regarding a particular candidate. And, it does not have to pay taxes on donations given to the church despite the fact that its tax-exempt status had been previously revoked.

Fox News takes on Media Matters

For seven years, Fox News has pushed back against the daily scrutiny and criticism leveled at it by Media Matters, the liberal watchdog group. But after founder David Brock said in March that his group’s new strategy amounted to a “war on Fox,” the network ratcheted up its response.

In the past 10 days, Fox has run more than 30 segments calling for the nonprofit group to be stripped of its tax-exempt status. Its Fox Nation website has even provided a link to pre-completed complaint forms against Media Matters to send to the Internal Revenue Service. (See also: Can Fox quash its fiercest critic? in The Arena)

While Fox News personalities like Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly have long grumbled about Media Matters, this attack on the group has been carried out across the channel’s news and opinion programs. It has included shows like “The O’Reilly Factor,” news coverage of the complaints to the IRS and even a psychological profile of Brock, a former conservative journalist who went over to the liberal side, on “Fox & Friends” that suggested he might be “full of self-hatred” because he was adopted.

“Media Matters is not a media investigative organization,” Fox News contributor and Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer said on “Special Report With Bret Baier” last week. “It’s a war on Fox. And you’re allowed to do that in a democracy. You can be as nasty as you want. The only thing is, don’t ask for a government subsidy.”

To get tax-free status, educational nonprofits have to support their claims with facts and refrain from directly engaging in politics — though they can be as ideological as they like. Fox argues that Media Matters has veered from that educational mission and should be stripped of its special status

Its argument was first laid out in a June 22 column in the Washington Times by C. Boyden Gray, former President George H.W. Bush’s White House counsel, who cited two actions by Media Matters: its “unsupported” claims about Fox News being the voice of the Republican Party and a “sophisticated, Democratic-leaning media training boot camp” sponsored by the group that, Gray said, in essence, provided support to the Democratic Party.

“The declaration of war itself is a rhetorical device,” said Gray, a former Fox News consultant. “But when you go further and make allegations that are not substantiated, then it slips into, ‘Wow, this looks like it’s for and in support of the Democratic Party. … It’s absurd to say that Fox is the Republican Party. There’s no factual basis for that.’”

Ari Rabin-Havt, executive vice president of Media Matters, denies both allegations, pointing to the organization’s research on how Fox News, its employees and its parent companies “engaged in an unprecedented campaign in support of the Republican Party” during the 2010 election cycle.

“Our contentions about Fox News’s political operations are supported by the facts and their own actions, especially during the previous few years,” he said.

Regarding questions about the media training boot camp, profiled in a March 22 Washington Post story, Rabin-Havt said the training institute explicitly asks potential students whether they plan to run for office or work for a political campaign and declines to train them if they do.

“Our training institute trains progressive voices but not political ones,” he said. “We are not training candidates. We are not training political campaign employees.”

In both his column and his subsequent appearances on Fox News, Gray argued that the American Campaign Academy precedent provided a basis for probing Media Matters.

“It would obviously be highly discriminatory to allow tax-free donations to go to Democratic Party advocates when they are (properly) denied to Republican advocates,” he wrote.

Speaking to POLITICO, he went on to say that it was less the NRCC’s ties to the academy that violated the IRS rules than the fact that its graduates went on to work in Republican campaigns.

Even if Media Matters’s training is not explicitly designed to shape future Democratic campaign workers, he said, “I would be very surprised if you could identify trainees who end up in Republican campaigns.”

Rabin-Havt said those enrolled in the Media Matters boot camp are not being trained to participate in campaigns at all but to be media-ready progressive experts on issues like the BP oil spill.

This last point is of particular importance because of, perhaps, the most famous case in which the IRS denied tax-exempt status to a nonprofit educational organization over its political ties, which centered on the American Campaign Academy, a training institute spun off the National Republican Congressional Committee.

In 1989, a U.S. Tax Court judge upheld the IRS, saying that the academy was partisan because “its main purpose was to train campaign professionals for service in Republican entities and campaigns.” This violated part of the IRS rules requiring that nonprofit educational organizations not serve a purely private benefit.

Marcus Owens, a partner at Caplin & Drysdale and former director of the Exempt Organizations Division of the IRS, said the law is on Media Matters’s side on both counts.

On the training point, there would have to be proof of a direct tie to Democratic organizations, he said.

“If you can establish that the instructors and staff are working for the [Democratic National Committee], then you are getting closer to the American Campaign Academy,” he said. “But the fact that the students all have a certain orientation and then are going out and doing what they do with no lock step move into a political campaign, just makes it look a lot like a liberal college.”

And on the other, somewhat more vague point about whether Media Matters’s attacks on Fox violate the IRS’s rules about what tax-exempt educational organizations can say, he points to the criteria that the IRS laid out in 1986 for determining whether the method that an organization uses to come to its conclusions qualifies it as an educational entity.

First among these is that the organization not present “viewpoints or positions unsupported by facts” as “a significant portion of the organization’s communications.” Also on the list is a ban on “substantial use of inflammatory and disparaging terms” and conclusions made “on the basis of strong emotional feelings” rather than “objective evaluations.”

Owens argues that Media Matters is no different from its competitors on the right when it comes to these criteria.

“The bottom line is, as long as an organization is following a process and establishing or attempting to establish that its views have some basis in fact, then as long as it isn’t doing something like the equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded theater or encouraging people to commit crimes, then it probably is going to qualify as educational,” he said. “As a result, we have Media Matters, and we have Brent Bozell and the Media Research Center, and we have all kinds of other organizations that are doing the same thing.”

He argues that MRC’s website is not substantially different from Media Matters in that both attack media companies on what they feel is the opposite side of the ideological aisle.

“I’m afraid Fox loses this round,” Owens said.

When asked about the parallel, Bozell, president of the MRC, offered only the statement: “Media Matters stands accused of violating its tax-deductible status, and I think that fact speaks for itself.”

Owens emphasized that there is nothing in the IRS rules that prohibits tax-exempt educational nonprofits from attacking specific companies or from zeroing in on one company — as long as there is no private benefit to that company’s competitor — so Media Matters’s increasing focus on Fox News over the past few years does not trigger a violation.

Rabin-Havt argues that, in fact, the increased focus on Fox is simply an extension of Media Matters’s stated mission of educating the public about the distortions of conservative media.

“Over the past two years, if you look at the totality of our work, yes, absolutely the percentage of our work that has been devoted to Fox has risen and risen substantially,” he said. “That’s been a result of Fox being central to the conservative media infrastructure.”

Even the organization’s more aggressive stances, like its Drop Fox campaign to get advertisers to stop advertising on the network, he put within the frame of educating businesses about the media outlet they were supporting.

“Our goal is not to shut down Fox News,” he said. “Our goal is to change their behavior and to make them into a legitimate media organization.”

I quite frankly don't care what politico says on the subject, I give a lawyer's opinion on the law more credibility than I give politico.

Considering they never fired their employees that were associated with Journ'O'list, so really your source has no credibility on this subject to begin with.

Fox News isn't going to parrot the left's talking points and has singlehandedly demolished the Left's monopoly on television news, that's why the left hates Fox News.

No matter how politico tries to cover up for mediamatters, the fact is mediamatters is breaking the law, otherwise that Conservative group I mentioned should also have non-profit tax-exempt status.

You can't have it both ways pandabear, either they both should be tax-exempt nonprofits, or mediamatters is breaking the law. There is no in betweens on this one.

Here is Media Research Center

http://www.mrc.org/about/about.aspx

Also a 501(C)(3) tax-exempt organization, actively looking for what they regard as "liberal" bias in the media.

Is there any reason why Media Research Center should exist as a tax-exempt organization, but Media Matters should not?

Has media research center declared war on MSNBC specifically?

From what I can tell, Media Research Centers monitors all mainstream broadcasts for anything other than right wing bias, points out what it regards as incorrect, and puts a right-wing spin on things.

In a cursory overview, I didn't see anything on their website about MSNBC.

The Michigan Rifle & Pistol Association (MRPA) will strive to create a public sentiment for the individual possession of firearms by law-abiding citizens. The Association will also encourage training in the use of firearms for sport, as an essential contribution to national security, for personal defense, and as a bulwark of individual liberty.

It shall also be the purpose of this organization to encourage the proper organization, operation and administration of affiliated clubs; to promote and coordinate state wide activities related to the ownership and lawful use of firearms; and to cooperate with other organizations in the conservation of our wildlife resources within the State of Michigan and throughout the United States.

In order to support its purposes and objectives, the Association shall be affiliated with the National Rifle Association.

The detailed objectives of this Association include, but are not limited to:

a) The protection and defense of the inalienable constitutional right of the individual American citizen to acquire, transport, possess, carry, and transfer ownership of arms, in order that the people may exercise their right to self preservation and defense of family, person and property, as well as defend the Nation and the individual liberty of its citizens....

Declaring "war" on a station would only be damning if and only if said station was a part of a political
part organization. Ina told me Fox is not I believe him so declaring war on Fox is in no way a political contribution.

Actually, it could be regarded as harassment for starters and violating the 1st Amendment rights of Fox News. Saying you're specifically out to get someone kinda throws this into a whole other category.

@ pandabear

Your Michigan Rifle & Pistol Association argument doesn't fly, because they are simply supporting pro-second amendment causes. They have not declared a campaign targeting anyone.

I don't think you have a first amendment right not to be questioned.

There is a difference between being questioned and trying to harass someone, openly declaring war on Fox News shows that Mediamatters crossed the line. While for-profit news outlets have more leeway on this, mediamatters is tax-exempt and thus puts it under some different regulations.

Which "line" did Media Matters cross exactly?

A tax-exempt organization cannot lobby the government, and cannot work for any political candidates, etc.

A tax-exempt organization would not be permitted to harass a political party.

From what I can tell, the IRS laws would only prohibit Media Matters from harassing Fox News if Fox News were a part of a political party (such as the Republican Party).

If Fox News wanted, I don't think that there is anything that would preclude Fox News from suing Media Matters for libel.

Even if Fox News didn't have an authentic case for a libel suit, Fox News could easily bankrupt Media Matters with legal expenses defending itself from the suit.