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It's a really good question.  Countering all the misinformation that comes out of right wing media is really tough.  That's why the Media Matters team is 86 people covering the news 24-7 and responding to every point we can get to on mediamatters.org.

The conservatives have been doing this for decades.  The Leadership Institute among other training programs has been training young conservative talkers by the hundreds each year.  You're right - everyone should be listening to the news critically.  We're trying to make the progressive voices stronger so they can be heard equally. 

This is where we take exception to the portrayal of Media Matters' mission in the piece.  We are NOT solely focused on Fox.  Our mission is to correct conservative misinformation whereever it occurs, it just so happens that Fox is the largest producer.  Accordingly, PTI is not just about training pundits to go on Fox.  We want strong progressive voices on all networks.   We have booked our trainees on every major network multiple times. 

Thanks for the vote of confidence, but we're not the only organziation calling out Fox News.  Lots and lots of our progressive allies also push back on Fox's distortions every day.  We just happen to be the ones who do it all day every day. 

This is exactly what we're doing with the PTI program.  We need strong progressive voices advocating for all of our policy priorities.  The PTI program puts a huge premium on standing up for what for what you believe in and doing so in a compelling way. 

We know we aren't going to be able to convince everyone of the innaccuracy of a lot of the information coming out of the right wing, but if we can stop that misinformation from making it into mainstream news and media we feel like we have scored a major victory. 

Our alums are making appearances on every major news network every day and that is making a difference.  They are better trained and  more compelling and ready to go toe-to-toe with even the toughest conservative voices.

We actually think there's a lot you can do with visuals to be more compelling and create a more postive impression for the viewer.  As for show hosts, we focus heavily on dealing with really hard questions and difficult questioners.  We make sure our trainees are ready for them. 

Only that we're not entirely focused on being Anti-Fox.  We're focused on correcting conservative mis-information from all its sources.  If Fox would stop denying climate change for instance, we'd leave them alone on the issue.

In the interest of privacy we leave it up to our trainees to decide whether or not they want to talk about having been trained by the PTI program.  One trainee who has agreed to be public about his involvement is a great guy from Texas named Bob Cavnar.  He's been on television a ton since the oil spill last April.

You're very right about this.  Fox is especially a problem in this area.  Fox isn't a news organization anymore, its a political communications machine -- the political opinions are the point.  This is what makes our job at Media Matters very very tough.

Well we're only 86 people working here, there's only so much we can do to push back on the volume of absurdity coming out of Glenn Beck and his friends on the right. We try and pick the particular 2-3 innaccuracies that show just how out of touch Beck is with American values.  We seem to be having some success Beck's ratings are down significantly and main stream advertisers want nothing to do with him. 

There are definitely some good people and good journalists at Fox.  The problem is there is no wall between the opinion factory at Fox and the news department.  We have documented time and time again where management forces their political agenda  on the news department.  Search "Bill Sammon" on our website: mediamatters.org and you'll see exactly what we're talking about.

There are plenty of people who hold conservative views who stay faithful to facts.  We welcome honest and open debate.  Shepherd Smith often gets it right and plays pretty fairly even if we do use a  little bit of an adult-slip up of his in our training.  The problem is when people on either side aren't faithful to the facts, that's the distinction we are trying to uphold.

No one gets it right all of the time.  The problem is when a right wing organization has been shown something is innaccurate and CONTINUES to push the falsehood.  That's not journalism, that's poltics.  See: the Birther movement, climate change, death panels etc.....

As we said at the beginning of this chat we're not exclusively anti-Fox.  We've published pieces calling out  CNN, MSNBC,  the Washington Post, the New York Times, etc. on inaccurate reporting. 

Conservatism isn't the problem.  A wanton disregard for the facts is.  Its a problem for the American conservative movement that these days those things are so often correlated. 

All our trainees are on the listserve, we try and support all of them as much as possible.  

This is the reason we developed PTI, and clearly our work isn't finished. 

We are big fans of Jon Stewart and anyone who puts facts above spin.

As everyone has pointed out on this chat, there's a lot of conservative misinformation to correct so we've got to get back at it.  Thanks for the questions and the time.  Feel free to check us out at MediaMatters.org.

Here is the article that was published in today's Post.