DOOCY: Why is Media Matters out to destroy Fox News and some others?
CARLSON: Well, for two reasons. First, for ideological reasons. Media matters is a left-wing organization, wants to see a left-wing monopoly on media. He could, its donors give a lot of money in order to hit Fox. We've got a week-long series going on. We have internal memos that we're going to be releasing later in the week that put a little finer point on this, but the bottom line is Media Matters has decided it can make the most money by attacking Fox and has.
DOOCY: Keep in mind, folks, this is a tax-exempt organization. And let's talk a little bit about what they're doing. In your report today, you say that Media Matters, it does appear, coordinates with the White House. That's -- that's big.
CARLSON: Yes. It is big and it's proved. In June of 2010, David Brock, the founder and head of Media Matters went to the White House and met with Valerie Jarrett, perhaps the president's closest advisor. Anita Dunn, the former White House communications director. Since then, the Media Matters organization has had a weekly conference call with the White House. There's also a weekly meeting of progressive groups that is in some sense orchestrated by the White House. Almost always a White House representative at that meeting and if you follow statements by Media Matters, they mirror statements by the White House about Fox, for instance, and vice versa. There's no question there's close coordinations.
DOOCY: Okay. Also, there seems to be close coordination with the mainstream media and what you say is Media Matters, which I think is going to spend $20 million this year trying to influence media, apparently whatever Media Matters gives a couple of mainstream media outlets, they print it! Greg Sargent you say at the Washington Post, Ben Smith when he was at Politico and MSNBC, Media Matters is right in their primetime.
CARLSON: That's a verbatim quote from a Media Matters staffer. "We pretty much write their primetime. We call Phil Griffin, the head of MSNBC, he takes our call." We knew there was coordination between Media Matters and a lot of news organizations. We were shocked by the degree of that coordination. You got to say, whatever else you say about the group, Media Matters has been awfully effective in getting its message out. There are a lot of liberal reporters out there, a lot of willing hands, eager to do the bidding of Media Matters, it turns out.
DOOCY: Meanwhile, the guy at the top, David Brock who makes a lot of money doing this, you describe him as viciously mean, unstable. You talk about mental illness. This guy, he's paranoid. He's got a couple of bodyguards with him all the time, because he's positive that he is the target of an assassination attempt.
CARLSON: Yes. That there are right-wing, unseen right-wing assassins lurking in the shadows trying to knock him off. We open the story with a scene where he's smoking a cigarette on the roof of his building in downtown Washington, a very safe place, and his two bodyguards rush up and whisk him downstairs for fear of snipers. His personal assistant carried a handgun to various events including in Washington, D.C., where that's completely illegal. He carried a concealed Glock with no permit, because David Brock needed the protection in the view of David Brock so yes, we have many people who work for David Brock telling us that the atmosphere there is paranoid. And I don't think that's too strong of a word.