Media Matters Daily Summary

Here are today's news items from Media Matters for America, click on the title or 'read more' to read the entirety of each story. Huckabee used Fox News show to collect email addresses for his PAC, recruit volunteers for GOP-backed candidates On two Fox News shows in October, Fox News host Mike Huckabee directed viewers to "go to balancecutsave.com," urging them to sign a petition telling Congress to "balance the budget," "cut their spending," and "save American families"; however, balancecutsave.com redirects visitors to Huckabee's political action committee, which financially supports Republican candidates and also pays Huckabee's daughter's salary. Subsequently, Huck PAC apparently emailed petition signers -- who were required to provide an email address in order to sign the "balancecutsave" petition -- a "newsletter" urging political action on behalf of Republican-backed candidates Bob McDonnell, David Harmer, and Doug Hoffman. Read More Fox's Wallace says "real price tag" of House bill is $1.05 trillion, ignores that this cost is more than offset On Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace stated that "the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says the real price tag [of the House health care reform bill] is $1.05 trillion." However, when accounting for the bill's savings and revenue provisions, the CBO analysis concluded that enacting the bill "would result in a net reduction in federal budget deficits of $104 billion" over 10 years. Read More Howard Kurtz's bogus conflict-of-interest defense In his Sunday column, Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander addressed what he described as Post media critic Howard Kurtz's "inescapable conflict" of interest "that is at odds with Post rules" -- Kurtz's side job as host of Reliable Sources on CNN, one of the media companies he is assigned to cover for the Post. Kurtz's conflicts of interest are, indeed, inescapable. Worse, it often seems Kurtz doesn't even try to escape them. Read More Misinformation pandemic: Conservative media use H1N1 to oppose health care reform Since President Obama declared the H1N1 pandemic a national emergency on October 24, conservative media figures have accused the Obama administration of attempting to, in the words of Rush Limbaugh, "create panic and chaos" in order to "sell health care." These charges ignore the prevalence of the disease, which, along with the consequent need to "enable U.S. health care facilities to implement emergency operations plans," were factors Obama specifically cited when he declared the national emergency. Read More BigGovernment baselessly -- and predictably -- accuses progressives of trying to "steal" NJ gubernatorial race Continuing the conservative media's pattern of baselessly accusing progressives of using illegal means to win elections, Andrew Breitbart's website BigGovernment.com suggested that New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine's re-election campaign and its allies are planning to "rig" or "steal" the upcoming election. BigGovernment.com offered no evidence to support that claim, instead offering allegations including that "state democrats are paying for robo calls supporting Independent Chris Daggett" and citing "the sudden appearance of ACORN on the scene." Read More Wash. Examiner forwards misleading cost-per-job stimulus math Echoing GOP claims, The Washington Examiner stated: "Even if we take at face value the White House claim that it created or saved [650,000] jobs with approximately $150 billion of the economic stimulus money, a little simple math shows the taxpayers aren't getting any bargains here: $150 billion divided by 650,000 jobs equals $230,000 per job saved or created." However, as the Associated Press noted, this "math is satisfyingly simple but highly misleading," because it does not capture the full impact of the stimulus. Read More John Fund fabricates evidence of voter fraud in NJ Appearing on Fox News' Glenn Beck, John Fund claimed that Hispanic voters in Camden, New Jersey, are being told that there is "a new way for you to vote, la nueva forma de votar" -- an anecdote Fund suggested was evidence of voter fraud in the state's 2009 gubernatorial election. In fact -- as Fund himself wrote in a Wall Street Journal column published hours earlier -- that incident actually occurred in Philadelphia in 1993. Read More Conservative candidates stump on Fox during lead-up to elections In the two weeks leading up to their November 3 elections, Conservative Party congressional candidate Doug Hoffman, New Jersey Republican gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie, and Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell appeared on Fox News and its personalities' radio shows at least 16 times for live interviews lasting a total of 114 minutes 36 seconds. Read More You can help support our work; become a volunteer media monitor, or donate to Media Matters for America.