DON'T MISS THIS NEW BOOK...
The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy
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From Publishers Weekly...
<<...The author, once notorious as a conservative attack-journalist trashing the likes of Anita Hill and the Clintons, repudiated his past in the confessional Blinded by the Right. In this blistering j'accuse, Brock mounts a less gossipy and more systematic assault on the right-wing media juggernaut of think tanks, publishers, talk radio shows, Web sites and cable networks. He treats it as a disciplined political movement, inspired by Communist subversion techniques, bankrolled by a handful of right-wing zillionaires through corporate and foundation spigots, tightly yoked to the Republican policy agenda and masterminded by arch-conservative Grover Norquist at weekly strategy meetings. By Brock's account, it constitutes a seamless propaganda machine conveying dubious scholarship, Republican talking points and antiliberal smear campaigns from think tanks and Internet rumor mills to the FOX News and talk radio echo chambers and thence through a network of conservative pundits into the quality press. Meanwhile, Brock charges, the mainstream media, cowed by spurious charges of "liberal bias," have abandoned their role as objective arbiters of truth in favor of an uncritical airing of partisan ideology in the name of "balance." The result, he says, is a public discourse in which the line between fact and opinion is blurred, poorly funded liberal voices get shouted down, "no issue can be honestly debated and no election can be fairly decided." Brock's critique echoes that of other liberal media critics like Eric Alterman and Al Franken, and cannot be accused of nonpartisanship. He is dismissive of the conservative nostrums whose purveyors he pillories, and his biting takedowns of Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and their ilk show he hasn't lost his taste for blood. But Brock's incisive, well-supported analysis and his street cred as an apostate from the conservative press make this a spirited challenge to the contemporary mediascape...>>
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An Insider's View Of The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, June 5, 2004
Reviewer: John D. Cofield from Woodstock, Georgia USA
David Brock knows whereof he speaks, having been a highly paid member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Fortunately for the country, he has changed his ways and is now seeking to make amends for the damage he and his former cohorts have done. The Republican Noise Machine, like its predecessor Blinded By The Right, gives names, dates, and places in stunning detail of the ways in which the Right Wing has seized control of a significant portion of the media resources of our nation. Using their access to the airwaves to spew propaganda, the Right Wing has sought to set the political agenda of this country as effectively as Goebbels managed the Third Reich's news organs. To a frightening extent, they have succeeded so well that truly "fair and balanced" reporting is threatened. Brock gives example after example of how dissenting points of view are drowned out or squeezed to the sidelines, how the party line is set by the powerful and transmitted verbatim to the faithful, and how ruthlessly opposition is squelched. The true victims,besides the truth itself, are the honest, honorable citizens who are misled and manipulated.
Fortunately, Brock and a few other brave souls have taken on the job of exposing this power hungry, hypocritical media machine. With daylight, it is to be hoped, the shadows threatening us will withdraw. |
