David Brock is buzzing again: and the gadfly's main target is rush (and Bush, of course).(Media)

SUSIE TOMPKINS BUELL was very, very impressed with David Brock. A California businesswoman who co-founded the fashion giant Esprit and went on to become a major donor to Democratic causes, Buell was in Washington last fall attending a meeting of friends and supporters of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton when she met Brock, the self-described former "right-wing hit man." Buell listened as Brock, now a defector to "progressive" causes, presented plans for Media Matters for America, his new Internet-based project to monitor and criticize conservative media. In a short time, she was sold.

"It just made so much sense to me," Buell recalls. "All this garbage that's coming out of the Right is like the worst contamination of this country.... He brought so much understanding of what goes on over there. He's very articulate, and very, very bright."

After Brock's presentation, Buell introduced herself and offered to hold a fundraiser for him at her home in San Francisco. Brock accepted, and at that gathering Buell introduced him to other potential contributors, whose donations would become part of the more than $2 million Brock has so far raised for Media Matters.

Launched in early May, the organization says its purpose is to keep an eye on "conservative misinformation" in the American media. "Conservative misinformation," according to the group's mission statement, is defined as "news or commentary presented in the media that is not accurate, reliable, or credible, and that forwards the conservative agenda." While in its first few weeks of operation Media Matters published attacks on the usual targets--Fox News, for example--Brock seems to be devoting particular energy to what he calls an "aggressive ad campaign" against radio host Rush Limbaugh.

In addition to a series of critiques on the group's website, Brock has produced a television commercial attacking Limbaugh for comments he made about the Abu Ghraib prison-abuse scandal. Media Matters spent $100,000 to air the spot on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and a few other television outlets. Brock also commissioned Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin to conduct a survey on a variety of media issues, including perceptions of Limbaugh. Among other things, Garin found that a majority of those surveyed believe Limbaugh often presents views that are biased, "rather than impartial and balanced." Garin also found that a large part of Limbaugh's audience is politically conservative.

Conservatives--anyone, actually--might question whether such insights are worth whatever Brock paid for them, but the poll, together with Brock's anti-Limbaugh television ad campaign, suggests that Media Matters is much more than a traditional media watchdog group. Indeed, it is probably more accurate to view Media Matters as part of the constellation of groups--the so-called "527" organizations, the voter-turnout group America Coming Together, John Podesta's liberal think tank the Center for American Progress, MoveOn.org, liberal talk radio, and others--that have come together on the left in the last year or so, all aimed at electing a Democratic president this November.

Certainly some of Brock's donors see it that way. Leo Hindery Jr., a cable-television executive who contributes to Democratic causes, says he sees Media Matters as part of a coordinated action on the left. "I thought this was a piece of the puzzle," Hindery says. "There are people like Mike Lux [a Democratic consultant who runs an important ad agency], who are into the strategy point of view, there's Podesta, who's into the think tank/intellectual side, and I think the third part of the triangle is David's initiative."