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The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy Paperback – April 12, 2005

4.5 out of 5 stars 101

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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Editorial Reviews

Review

“This is the most important book of the past ten years and mandatory reading for all who want to understand American politics and history.” —Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., author of Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy

“A spirited challenge to the contemporary mediascape.” —
Publishers Weekly

“In clear prose, Brock shows convincingly how . . . the accusation of a liberal bias has been based on shabby research and nonexistent evidence.” —
Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel

About the Author

David Brock is the author of four books, including Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative, a New York Times bestselling political memoir. He is the president and CEO of Media Matters for America (www.mediamatters.org), a nonprofit media watchdog organization in Washington, D.C.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Three Rivers Press; Reprint edition (April 12, 2005)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 448 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0307236897
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0307236890
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.2 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5 x 0.75 x 8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 out of 5 stars 101

About the author

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David Brock
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David Brock is a widely published author and Democratic activist.

In 2004, Brock founded Media Matters, the nation’s premier media watchdog. Following the 2010 elections, Brock founded the Democratic SuperPAC American Bridge, which is one of the largest modern campaign war rooms ever assembled using research, tracking, and rapid response to defeat Republicans.

He is the author of five books, including his 2002 best-selling memoir, Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative. His writing appears in USA Today, CNN.com, the Huffington Post, the Daily Beast and Salon.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
101 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on November 30, 2008
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.
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Reviewed in the United States on August 30, 2005
Q. Why does Rush Limbaugh frequently insist that he is honest?

A. Because the average person would never come to that conclusion on their own.

The honesty of a commentator should be self evident. On Limbaugh, Shakespeare might say, "I think thou dost protest too much". A writer once said about Ann Coulter's book `Treason', "The distain for the reader is hard to believe, but apparently well placed". Coulter could not possibly be so blatantly dishonest with her readers and have the slightest respect for them. Rush and Ann are just two examples of the Republican `Echo Chamber' that has grown over the last three decades.

The Republican Noise machine began when conservatives discovered that the wealthy and powerful were willing to pay big bucks to have their ideas polished and disseminated. The money was/is funneled into think tanks whose raison d'être is to parrot the views of their patrons. There is a misconception that think tanks are analysis groups when in actuality they're more like marketing firms with ideas as products. You can't possibly do acceptable analysis of a problem when you're working a priori. Unlike traditional marketing, which is generally recognizable as marketing, think tanks present their products to news sources as opinion pieces and often as legitimate analysis. When a viewer reads an article on the Fox News website about Global Warming it may well be written by an individual or think tank bankrolled by Exxon Mobile. How much cheaper is it for any news organization, right leaning or not to simply accept a prepackaged propaganda piece from the Heritage Foundation or Cato Institute and present it as a legitimate news item rather than do their own investigation?

Think tank writers may be correct in their opinions or they may be wrong but the viewer is almost assuredly misled. Steven Milloy is never going to include evidence supporting Global Warming because he's paid by big oil not that you'd know that by reading his articles. The one absolute in think tanks is ideological purity. It has to be a soul crushing experience to be compressed into such narrow thinking. The result is a consistent message that gets echoed through conservative news sources until it becomes conventional wisdom even among moderates. Even subtle details like specific emotion evoking buzz words are included in the taking points. The goal is to produce an all encompassing propaganda barrage that literally leaves society less informed.

Conservatives have no tradition of respect for freedom of speech or diversity of opinion and Fox news owner Rupert Murdoch and news director Roger Ailes are quite open about there disrespect for journalism. This creates a toxic combination that renders the news, at best, biased opinion pieces, at worst government propaganda. Fox News is blatantly biased because conservatives feel no need to be balanced. If you're convinced unequivocally that you have the absolute right answers and the right cause why bother giving equal or even marginal credence to other ideas. As the writer points out Fox news, as the prototype for future news casting, is literally destroying journalism which surely puts a smile on Murdoch's face.

This is a terrific book packed with tons of information. It's certainly not a feel good book but it is enlightening and I highly recommend it.
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