The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy

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.

David Brock knows whereof he speaks, having left in disgust the depraved thought ghetto erroneously known as Bush compassionate conservatism. The eruption of displeasure in the form of reviews downgrading his book without any refuting comments is evidence of the feathers he has ruffled.Brock existed in an ozone of hatred working for Reverend Moon's Washington Times and Richard Mellon Scaife's The American Spectator, and was part of the evidence manufacturing campaign to discredit and hopefully impeach Bill Clinton. He eventually felt ashamed of what he had become and courageously turned his back on the right wing hate machine.After turning his back on rightist hate Brock took one more courageous step forward, using his writing skills and knowledge of a vicious movement to expose it in print. "Blinded by the Right" was his first effort. Now that the hate is out there for all to see thanks to Brock's first effort at exposing rightist hypocrisy, revealing that they are not the compassionate religionists they claim to be, his next step is to reveal how the hate machine operates.Brock's revelations prove eloquently the statement made by Hillary Clinton that was ridiculed at the time, that a well nurtured, highly organized right wing conspiracy exists. It begins with the mega dollars of Scaife and Moon, who finance not only partisan right wing journals, but orchestrate propaganda proclaiming that the major media are leftist-dominated. Bill O'Reilly has stated with a straight face that Faux News is objective, and that what appears as right wing to leftist zealots is really only balanced coverage. Anyone who believes that might as well believe that Sean Hannity is a socialist.Through dollar might and skilled repetition, the right has been able to take lies manufactured from the Drudge Report and send them to the most watched and read media channels. All this is done in the interest of letting the news be read and heard, all under the disguise of objectivity and fair commentary.Brock takes you beyond the facade and provides the raw facts. He knows these people, is willing to tell what he knows, and the right cringes. The right's only response is to huff and puff, stating that he is producing trash. He has too much ammunition for them. To know them is to expose them. Having been exposed, they are revealed, in the manner of Bush and fellow emperor Cheney, as wearing no clothes.

Let's nip this in the bud. David Rhodes has never read Brock's book but is simply attempting 'dirty tricks' for which the radical right wing is famous. See his host of other reviews, raves for Ann Coulter, etc. Phony balonies like Mr Rhodes are of course very much the subject of Brock's book -- and his outing of them, although part of a much larger and more comprehensive story, makes interesting reading. Buy this book and you will understand why right wing thugs like Mr Rhodes lurk on these message boards trying to subvert an open forum. It is all part of The Republican Noise Machine -- and their days are coming to an end.

I got an advance copy of this book, having been an observer of Mr Brock's trajectory over the years. He has done an amazing service in this orderly, calm and utterly devastating history of the rise of the radical right's propaganda machine and its subversion of our nation's media. Brock begins at the beginning, with a treatise by a woman named Efron arguing that the GOP and business interests need their own distinct media. Efron gets Nixon's attention, Nixon tries to put Efron's plan into action, Nixon runs into the Watergate buzzsaw. But the seed is planted, back in the 1970's, and then cultivated by GOP activists like William Simon, financed heavily by Richard Mellon Scaife, Olin, Coors dynstasties etc. (who Brock calls the four sisters). Until the whole thing flowers: all of a sudden a huge battery of propaganda houses like Heritage and American Enterprise, funded by oil companies and GOP financiers, are churning out a counter history of the American experience. ANything counter to GOP orthodoxy is branded 'liberal'; Murdoch and Sun Myung Moon's media empires swiftly join the cause, whose committed purpose is to subdue America's independent media and convert it into service of corporate interests generally and GOP political figures specifically.Throughout this book, which will be the standard text in colleges and for historians, Brock's tone is calm and steady and he lets the facts speak for themselves (very unlikehis earlier books, which are overly polemical -- duh). The research here is encyclopedic. (In a book about media, virtually every quote is on the record). It is amazing to this reviewer how our media could have been so thoroughly corrupted. How our politicians could have so haplessly junked the Fairness Doctrine which would have smothered the entire Fox News Propaganda Machine in its cradle. It is amazing to me that a small and toxic band of right wing ideologues, (nevertheless armed with billions of dollars of their patrons' money) could so effectively intimidate and cow the so-called guardians of our democracy. Is the triumph of the radical right wing the fault of the Neo-cons, or is it our fault, for our complacency and our timidity?