The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy Review
David Brock has written a detailed and brilliant expose of a multi-decade long assault on journalistic ethics and objectivity for political reasons by certain elements of the GOP. Brock is in a position to know (having worked as right-wing hack for decades himself). Brock's writing is direct and his research thorough. He presents his argument relentlessly. He follows the money, names all the names, and reveals his sources. Once you see and understand the way that news reporting is being manipulated in the media you'll never look at the news the same way again. Brock has taught me to recognize the sources and tone of phony manipulated news and now I see it everywhere. I can't recommend this book more highly for any educated person.
Essentially the Republican noise machine was creates as a deliberate strategy to promote conservative views and talking points in the mainstream media (television, newspapers, radio etc...) The strategy features three main strategies: 1) foster the illusion that the mainstream media has a liberal bias, 2) create a phony academic body of entities (primarily think tanks, but also funded university programs) to manufacture "scholarship" that promotes the right-wing talking points so that they appear objective, 3) leverage the perception of liberal bias in the media to demand "equal time" for presentation of the laundered right-wing media talking points as news.
The roots of the right-wing noise machine start back in the days of Goldwater. The civil rights movement succeeded in part because of the public outrage following television news coverage of civil rights protests and backlash. Nixon's new republican coalition of South and West was based in part by frustrated southern racist feeling stymied by a de-facto media position of racial tolerance. Later, the Vietnam war's outcome was partially determined by public protest in the US and the media coverage of the war and the anti-war protests. Brock traces the roots of the strategy for the noise machine in detail - both the writing that defined the strategy and the individuals and entities which funded and created the various organizations that were created to carry out the work. It's not conspiracy theory because the whole thing is mostly out in the open. It's easy to check the facts and I've done so. I'm totally convinced.
The fruits of the right-wing noise machine aren't simply the echo chamber of right wing radio and Fox TV shows that pick up stories and then quote each other to up the air time and give the appearance of validity. It's also been a relentless moving of the main body of mainstream media further to the right. This has led to a host of consequences ranging from millions of taxpayer dollars being wasted on right-wing anti-Clinton witch hunts in the Whitewater and Vince Foster cases to the fact that much of the coverage of the Bush administration in the first term and half consisted of basically reprinting the press releases without critical evaluation. Brock gives dozens (perhaps hundreds) of examples.
There are times when the wealth of information in this book get in the way of the narrative. However, this wealth becomes valuable if you choose to really get into it. Brock has built an irrefutable argument. Those who dismiss it are either specifically partisan, or haven't read it. All this data is rigorously end noted. You can chase every bit of it down yourself. Brock's thesis seemed pretty outrageous to me at first - so I double checked him. I found him spot on. That's when I started delving more deeply into what I was reading in the media myself and I started discovering the bias for myself first hand (for example there were allegations in the recent election coverage that Acorn was involved in the explosion of bad debt that caused the recent economic collapse and that Obama was involved in that - reported in the NY Post. It was all specious and it turned out to be sourced from a "consumer group" that had just been created by a man who was on the board of the libertarian Cato Institute. All this isn't in the book - but an example of how this book taught me to think critically and I've been able to independently verify the noise machine's existence and tactics myself).
This is very good stuff indeed. If you want to know Brock's story, I recommend his memoir "Blinded by the Right" which fully details his earlier career writing right wing hit books like "The Real Anita Hill". This book is radically different from that. This is Brock wearing his investigative journalist hat. This book is a synthesis from other sources - there's very little original reporting here. It's a brilliant synthesis that ties it all together. The conclusions sound outrageous (and indeed they are) - but the outrage is real.
The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy Overview
Bestselling author David Brock documents the most important political development of the last thirty years: How the Republican Right has won political power and hijacked public discourse in the United States.
Over the last several decades, the GOP has built a powerful media machine—newspapers and magazines, think tanks, talk radio networks, op-ed columnists, the FOX News Channel, Christian Right broadcasting, book publishers, and high-traffic Internet sites—to sell conservatism to the public and discredit its opponents. David Brock’s penetrating analysis of news stories, from the disputed 2000 presidential election to the war in Iraq to the political battles of 2004, reveals that this booming right-wing media market is largely based on bigotry, ignorance, and emotional manipulation closely tied to America’s long-standing cultural divisions and the buying power of anti-intellectual traditionalists. Writing with verve and deep insight, Brock reaches far beyond typical bromides about media bias to produce an invaluable account of the rise of right-wing media and its political consequences.
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Customer Reviews
It's the Gospel, Baby! - Baron Cruelty -
This book did not open my eyes for the first time. What it did do is confirm many of my suspicions. Once upon a time, I used to love watching Hannity and Colms, as well as O'Reilly; I even listened to Limbaugh and loved him. Back to what I was saying. It is frightening how much power the media has over our lives today. Even scarier is that the super rich use that media to--for lack of a better word--brainwash every last one of us into supporting their interests, instead of our own. You don't believe me, there is video footage of the most famous media owner in the world Rupert Murdoch proving most of what this book covers--look it up on youtube. Anyways. Read the book with an open mind then use the scientific method and research what David Brock has written. It's important that everyone does or we will end up a nation with the equivalent of Stockholm Syndrome. Network, Cable and print News are not our friends, none of them are; they are the equivalent of the Fox in the Hen house. Wake up America, we are living in Airstrip One and most of us don't even know it. Lastly, proof that David Brock is honest and right... George W. Bush in 2004 election. Why were people more interested in Michael Jackson's molestation case on the lead up to the election? And why do most people not have a clue about the "Downing Street Memo" an official British document that proves that Bush had his mind made up in 2002, to invade Iraq? Because the media ignored it, media owned and run by Republicans and their Rich conservative buddies.
AN IMPORTANT BOOK TO READ AGAIN, IN THE OBAMA AGE - Miguel Tuason - USA
There was a time in this country when there was no distinction needed between left or right media. There was a time in this country when people were allowed simply to think for themselves. The media was the media. Their objectivity had been a given.
Except for one instance in his long career (when he let slip his opinion about the Vietnam War), the late Mr. Cronkite's reporting was never characterized as "biased." Back then, America hadn't yet been conditioned to be suspicious of media reporting during his time.
After Watergate, especially, everything began to change.
The neocons or "right wing elites", sensing a progressive movement (which was happening organically, globally), organized to discredit media and paint them as "liberal" in order to paint the country as more conservative than it actually was.
Discounting the profession's inherent aspiration to objectivity, they exposed voting habits of media... and used very false methodology to create the illusion that the media was a lot more liberal than the rest of the nation...
... In the end... From the late 1970s, the right wing "elites" were able to toss the media into the "center of political conflict in the US" [The Republican Noise Machine, by David Brock].
It's really sad and pathetic, actually, that media today is nothing more than a place where like-minded people go (left or right) to be told things with which they already know they'll agree.
And the divide grows wider.
It is time to read or re-read this 2004 book by David Brock.
Don't you mean the "Left Wing Media"? - Alexander Curtis -
This book is a sham. It is directly focused on the Republican side with no coverage over the Left-wing media--which is everywhere. Did the right-wing media go after Obama's or Clinton's children? Hell no. But did that stop the LEFT-WING MEDIA AND HOLLYWOOD from going after Sarah Palin and her children in a most detestable manner? Absolutely not! But, oh yea its us Republicans that are bad--shame, shame. What a joke. What did Hollywood do this last election? They won an election. Now, we have a Socialist President who is destroying the very principles our country was founded on. Anyone who believes that the tactics by the Democrats and their left-wing agenda are just, are just idiots. Note to Hollywood and all you Left-wing Democrats, thanks for your part in the dismantling of the United States, which won't be united much longer!
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