FBN vs. Media Matters…

Politico’s Keach Hagey writes about FBN’s investigation into Media Matters…

Fox Business published a 2,500-word investigation into the legitimacy of Media Matters’ tax-exempt status yesterday, promising it was the first in a three-part series. The piece comes on the heels of more than three dozen segments into Media Matters’s tax status on Fox News.

Media Matters founder David Brock told POLITICO’s Ben Smith that the media watchdog was preparing for “war” and “guerrilla warfare and sabotage” against Fox News in March, and ever since, Fox has highlighted these words as evidence that Media Matters had drifted from the educational mission that justifies its tax-exempt status as a nonprofit organization.

But as I reported last month, so far there is no indication that Media Matters broke IRS rules, either by presenting “viewpoints or positions unsupported by facts,” as IRS rules put it or by crossing over from ideological into partisan activity. As Marcus Owens, a partner at Caplin & Drysdale and former director of the Exempt Organizations Division of the IRS, put it: “I’m afraid Fox loses this round.”