Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment [Hardcover]

Kathleen Hall Jamieson (Author), Joseph N. Cappella (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 22, 2008 | ISBN-10: 0195366824 | ISBN-13: 978-0195366822

Rupert Murdoch's recent multibillion-dollar purchase of the Wall Street Journal made international news. Yet it is but one more chapter in an untold story: the rise of an integrated conservative media machine that all began with Rush Limbaugh in the 1980s.
Now Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Joseph Cappella--two of the nation's foremost experts on politics and communications--offer a searching analysis of the conservative media establishment, from talk radio to Fox News to the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. Indeed, here is the first serious account of how the conservative media arose, what it consists of, and how it operates. To show how this influential segment of the media works, the authors examine the uproar that followed when Senator Trent Lott seemed to endorse Strom Thurmond's segregationist past. Limbaugh called the remarks "utterly indefensible," but added that a "double standard" was in play. That signaled a broad counterattack by the conservative media establishment, charging the mainstream media with hypocrisy (yet using its reports when convenient), creating a knowledge base (a set of facts or allegations for partisans to draw upon), and fostering an in-group identity. By analyzing such cases, together with survey data, Jamieson and Cappella find that Limbaugh, Fox News, and the Wall Street Journal opinion pages create a self-protective enclave for conservatives, shielding them from other information sources, and promoting strongly negative associations with political opponents. Limbaugh in particular, they write, fuses the roles of party leader and opinion leader in a fashion reminiscent of the nineteenth century's partisan newspaper editors.
The rise of conservative media has fundamentally changed American politics. This thoughtful study offers the most authoritative and insightful account of this revolutionary phenomenon available today.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this heavily researched analysis of the conservative media establishment, Jamieson and Cappella (coauthors of Spiral of Cynicism) contend that Rush Limbaugh, the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal and key players at Fox News share evidence, arguments and tactical approaches in their defense of conservatism and their attack on its opponents. The authors argue that these three news outlets disseminate Reagan-era conservatism by creating a common rogues' gallery of enemies, which they fight by forming an echo chamber—a bounded, enclosed media space that has the potential to both magnify the messages delivered within it and insulate them from rebuttal, turning audiences into a balkanized cohort. The authors take pains to note that they are not arguing that the conservative media menace the country's well-being; rather, they are interested in the way changing media influence contemporary electoral politics. Their highly academic approach and chart- and citation-laden narration might be slow and difficult reading for those unfamiliar with the social sciences. However, readers seeking a carefully researched view of the changing face of news media will be rewarded for their efforts. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"Readers seeking a carefully researched view of the changing face of news media will be rewarded for their efforts."--Publishers Weekly
"Fascinating, illuminating, fun--and also a little scary. Highly recommended, even indispensable, reading for anyone who wants a clear understanding of the current relationship between the media and democratic self-government."--Cass R. Sunstein, Harvard Law School and author of Republic.com 2.0
"Echo Chamber is powerful, original and an antidote to the 'swift-boating' that poisons our democracy. It is the latest in a series of groundbreaking studies in which Kathleen Hall Jamieson has revealed the inner workings and impact of the forces that shape public opinion and political outcomes in America. Now Jamieson and Joseph Cappella brilliantly pull back the curtain on the right-wing media imperium."--Bob Shrum, author of No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial Campaigner

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (July 22, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195366824
• ISBN-13: 978-0195366822
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #221,197 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

85 of 91 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Slanted packaging, but sound content, July 21, 2008

By 

Graham R. Scott - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment (Hardcover)

The back-cover blurbs, title, chosen subject matter, cover art, and the use of scare quotes around terms like "liberal media" all contribute to an overwhelming but incorrect first impression: The book looks at first glance like a hand-wringing, liberal worryfest about how conservatives are ... well, talking. I'm a conservative, so I'll grant I'm a little sensitive to these things (just as liberals are sensitive to slander). However, I'm also a teacher and specialist in rhetoric, and quite interested in the rhetoric of opinion leaders like Limbaugh and Michael Moore.

So I read the book despite my initial cringe, and I have to say it's a sharp piece of analysis, fair to its subjects, balanced in its perspectives, and darned useful to those of us interested in studying or discussing the intersection of media, rhetoric, and politics. The authors approach the topic from the perspective of interested observers, rather than from a judgmental frame. They note at the start of their concluding chapter that they've probably disappointed both Left and Right readers, and I think that's a safe prediction. Unbalanced readers tend not to like balanced analysis. But I certainly appreciate it, as it's hard to come by, even when the authors are respected scholars. I'm sure I'll be citing this book in some of my future work.

The authors have, to my eye at least, accurately described the rhetorical strategies and effects of conservative, alternative media. The title alludes to the book's central conclusion, which is that these sorts of narrow-audience media use framing strategies that inoculate listeners and readers against alternative viewpoints, encouraging the audience to depend increasingly on the echo chamber while dismissing messages that seem to undermine the audience's philosophy. The authors, to their credit, note that liberal-leaning media have similar echo-chamber effects. (An aside: All media do, and not necessarily in ways that are political. For instance, print, Web, TV, and radio media often play this very same game with each other in the competition for a dwindling audience.)

The authors suggest that the effects of the emerging conservative echo chamber are neither all-beneficial, nor all-problematic, but rather mixed: On the one hand, echo chambers motivate people to participate in politics, and expose them to alternative viewpoints -- even if those viewpoints are refuted and framed at a disadvantage. The authors also see the rise of a conservative echo chamber as a kind of welcome correction to the previous era of mainstream media, in which all of the messages were similar. Now, at least, there are multiple voices.

On the other hand, the authors argue that echo chambers can be destructive when the opposing viewpoints they describe are ridiculed or subjected to ad hominem (personal) attacks, suggesting that these trends would be healthier if participants tried a bit harder to fight fair. Which brings me full circle: To date, a lot of the commentary and scholarly work on right-wing media has NOT played fair with the subject, leaning heavily on fallacy. So it is refreshing to see a piece of scholarly, constructive criticism that resists these moves, eschewing cocktail-party, partisan posturing in favor of learned analysis. I just wish the publisher, Oxford UP, had done the same when it packaged the book -- its cover material and blurbs are going to turn off a lot of readers who might otherwise have appreciated the text.

4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Echo Chamber - Jamison & Cappella (Oxford University Press), June 1, 2010

By 

BlogOnBooks "BlogOnBooks" (Los Angeles CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment (Paperback)

In `Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment,' authors Jamieson and Cappella take a much deeper and scientific approach to their study of the connection between Limbaugh, Fox News and the Wall Street Journal's editorial pages. Backed by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, `Echo Chamber' is an exacting and through accounting of the detailed factors (framing, name calling, collusion) employed by the `conservative opinion media' to not only broadcast their message to a narrowly chosen demographic (white, older, southerners that make up the sweet spot of the GOP), but whose agenda actually reaches right into the heart of the Republican party to do everything in their power to either anoint, or deny political success to, candidates that pass their litmus test of Reagan conservatism (anti-regulation, gun rights, small government, anti-welfare, pro-life, etc.) Examples of those who have benefitted (Bush, Palin) as well those who have been attacked, or perhaps killed, politically for not being conservative enough (McCain, Huckabee.)

The missing piece in both books is the deep dive, where the authors look way under the hood at the true germination and funding of these messaging campaigns (lobbyists), the benefactors of the message (corporations) and the true innerworkings of the skunkworks who pull the strings on all of this (Frank Luntz, Dick Armey, RNC operatives, etc.) The opportunity here is for a new Woodward and Bernstein to emerge to get beyond the surface speakers of this movement and to reveal the real shadow players in this political agenda.

In other words, it's time for a new Deep Throat.

3 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ..., January 13, 2010

By 

Franklin the Mouse (Gorham, ME USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment (Paperback)

Analyzing conservative political outlets (primarily the editorial/op ed pages of the Wall Street Journal, Fox News and Rush Limbaugh's radio show) is commendable, but Holy Moses, this is some seriously dry reading. The book should be applauded for taking the high road by truly trying to dissect and understand how these outlets function and the impact they have on listeners, viewers or readers. People looking for the authors to trash these demagogues are going to be sorely disappointed. In a bit of false advertising, the cover design's usage of harsh black-and-red attempts to connote an ominous conservative troika. Unless you are a political/media wonk or have been living deep in the recesses of the Amazon Forest for the past 25 years and have never heard of any of these people, you'll likely find this book pure drudgery. The writing does not even have a modicum of humor or pizzazz in its 250 pages. If you are an insomniac desperate for a cure, this baby may do the trick.