A gripping read and an excellent reference work | The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It...

You'll never see the media the same way again after reading this. | The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy | David Brock

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	• The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy David Brock Three Rivers Press, 2005 - 448 pages average customer review:based on 87 reviews view larger image
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An Important and Fascinating Book

David Brock provides example after example of how the right wingers created a ruthless propaganda machine designed to catapult them into power and keep them there. He speaks with authority on the subject, given his previous "membership" in the machine, involvement with the projects designed to destroy Anita Hill and Bill Clinton, and close contact with key players in the right wing punditocracy, and the foundations that bankroll them.

What makes this book so good and important is that it is no mere screed; rather, it is heavily documented with example after example,and carefully cites sources. It is also highly readable. Brock is a strong, persuasive writer, which was no doubt one of the reasons he so quickly reached prominence in right wing circles. Now he uses his gifts to expose the rather nefarious methods of those for whom he once worked.

This book will be reviled by Republicans and right wingers, who are becoming more and more indistinct, and is an important, eye-opening resource for the rest of us.

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A gripping read and an excellent reference work

First, the downsides: Brock's book is lengthy, dense, and involves a huge cast of characters which is sometimes difficult to keep straight.

Aside from this, his book is brilliant--a gripping and horrifying read, meticulously researched (unlike, say, Ann Coulter's screeds), and an excellent reference resource.

Brock's site, Mediamatters.org, is a bastion of journalistic integrity; this book goes a step futher, putting neocon hogwash into historical perspective.

For anyone who still believes the "liberal media" lie, this book will act as a harsh antiseptic.

A hell of a good read.

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You'll never see the media the same way again after reading this.

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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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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