Busting big fat liars

David Brock talks about why the media seems embarrassed to report on Bush's failures, why TV pundit shows are stacked to the right -- and his new media watchdog group.

By Eric Boehlert

May 11, 2004 | In his 2003 book, "Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative," former self-described "right-wing hit man" David Brock chronicled his flight of disillusionment from the conservative movement. Now, with his new book, "The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy," about to be published and the launching of his Web-based research and information center, Media Matters for America, Brock sees himself engaged in a 24/7 political war of images and ideas. It's a war, as Brock details in his new book, that conservatives have been waging, often brilliantly and effectively, for more than 30 years.

The right-wing media warfare naturally is most visible during presidential election years. "I've been saying for six months, no matter who was running for office this year, the right has a system in place to caricature that person," says Brock. "This is what I realized after 2000 -- that what happened to the Clintons during the '90s really had very little to do with the Clintons because the same thing happened to Gore in 2000. And then it happened to [Sen. Tom] Daschle when the Senate changed hands in 2001, and it happened to the mourners of [the late Sen.] Paul Wellstone in 2002. It goes on and on." After witnessing how this Republican "noise machine" again worked so well in shaping the caustic and undermining press coverage of Al Gore's presidential campaign in 2000, Brock is trying to awaken the public from slumber about these techniques.

Media Matters is a "not-for-profit progressive ... center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media." In its first few days of operation, the site caught conservative columnist and Fox News contributor Linda Chavez calling John Kerry "a communist apologist" and then denying it when she was asked about the accusation on television. (Pressed on Al Franken's Air America radio show days later, Chavez conceded she "misspoke.")

Catching Rush Limbaugh or contributors to Fox News spreading misinformation may sound like "shooting fish in a barrel," but Brock says the right-wing noise machine's effect on the mainstream press poses a large danger to rational debate and coverage of issues. Too often, he says, what the right concocts ends up -- often within hours -- percolating in mainstream press outlets, which, rather than debunk the Republican spin, uncritically adopt it as their own. "If the mainstream media were doing their job, Media Matters would not have to exist," Brock told Salon.

At what point did you decide you wanted do something beyond the book, like the Media Matters Web site?

Shortly after publishing "Blinded by the Right," I got involved in conversations with a lot of different progressive leaders, and there was an ongoing conversation about what responses to the right might be fashioned in terms of building institutions. I really believe that a permanent response is required that goes beyond campaigns -- that a communications infrastructure needed to be built. I met with people and tried to educate them about my experience and the two basic things I learned.

And what are those?

One is communications and the other is strategic philanthropy, which is how the right wing funds all of its enterprises.

So then I started working on "The Republican Noise Machine" in the fall of 2002, and a few things occurred to me. I had done extensive research on the conservative organizations that police and monitor the media, tracing back to the establishment of Accuracy in Media in 1969. I concluded that monitoring was a foundation piece of the entire conservative communications apparatus. Those groups had monopolized the conversation about the media so that all one ever hears is "liberal bias, liberal bias, liberal bias." There hadn't really been an institution with research capacity to engage that issue from the left. I certainly read Eric Alterman's book ["What Liberal Media?"] and Al Franken's book ["Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them"], and I realized there was an active conversation going on and maybe the time was right.

You were able to raise $2 million for Media Matters. Was that easier than you thought or harder than you thought? What was the environment when you were looking for backers?

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