Does the mass media matter? That might be a funny question for a communications director to be asking, but in this age of exploding media choices, it is a critical question.

The answer in my mind is that, yes, for the time being the mass media does matter. (Although I did note with much interest a recent New York Times article suggesting that the ubiquitous 30-second television commercial may soon become an endangered species.)

For now, though, the mass media does matter and that's why I appreciate the service provided by Media Matters, a non-profit "dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media."

It isn't that Media Matters is looking for "conservative misinformation" that makes it so valuable. I wish the media itself did a better job of monitoring for misinformation, but with so much damn information out there, I understand how difficult it can be for anyone – reporter, editor or normal news consumer – to figure out the truth.

So I personally welcome any monitoring for misinformation whether it is liberal misinformation, moderate misinformation or conservative misinformation. Another service that Media Matters provides is to send folks like myself items of possible interest. Today's email dealt with a report by Fox News' Brit Hume that Media Matters says misrepresented a study on the link between solar activity and global warming.

Fox News' Brit Hume cited "new research by University of Washington mathematicians [that] shows a correlation between high solar activity and periods of global warming" as evidence to support his claim that "[global warming] skeptics are increasingly certain that the scare is vastly overblown." But an August 9 New Scientist article on the mathematicians' research warned that "[c]limate-change skeptics may seize on the findings as evidence that the sun's variability can explain global warming -- but [the report's co-author] mathematician Ka-Kit Tung says quite the contrary is true." The New Scientist reported that Tung says his finding, in the New Scientist's words, "adds to the evidence that mainstream climate models are right about the likely extent of future human-generated warming."

Thanks, Media Matters. Since the mass media still matters, monitoring is critical. And Hume has been busted. Royally.