Committee for Media Integrity

David Horowitz's Committee for Media Integrity ("COMINT") was a right-wing pressure group that attempted to move public television to the right by advocating the de-funding of public television (PBS). It also sought to stigmatize as biased and censor programming it does not approve of. [1]

COMINT, founded in 1988, eventually came under the aegis of Horowitz' umbrella organization for his side projects, the Center for the Study of Popular Culture. Throughout its existence, COMINT has been overshadowed by better funded right-wing media pressure groups such as Reed Irvine's Accuracy in Media and Brent Bozell's Media Research Center.

COMINT appears to have been discontinued around 2002 and there is no mention of COMINT on the Center for the Study of Popular Culture's website.

David Brock, in his book The Republican Noise Machine, said:

"In 1988, while advising the contras at the behest of Reagan State Department official and future Iran-contra scandal figure, Elliott Abrams, Horowitz founded the Committee on Media Integrity (COMINT) to monitor PBS programming.

"One of the first subjects COMINT tackled was a PBS Frontline episode on the Iran-contra affair that Horowitz found displeasing. After Horowitz made a stink, PBS aired a pro-contra broadcast Nicaragua Was Our Home, funded by a Moonie group called CAUSA, which raised money for the contras after Congress terminated funding" (p. 104).

David Horowitz later wrote a scathing response to David Brock regarding the purpose of COMINT.

The organization COMINT at one time published a newletter, also called Comint, which applied pressure to PBS programs deemed to be "liberal" in nature. A lawsuit by Horowitz against a former business partner showed how Horowitz used this pressure to obtain funding from public television sources to develop corrective right leaning programs.

SourceWatch Resources

• The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy (2004 book)
• David Brock

External links

• David Horowitz, How Unreliable Is David Brock?, FrontPageMag.com, June 25, 2004.
• Stanley Young, Switch hit - former leftists Peter Collier and David Horowitz are now far-right journalists, Los Angeles magazine, December 1993.
• Karen Everhart, Lawsuit tells how PBS bought into right-wing series, Current magazine, August 5, 2002.