David Brock: Conservatives 'Willing to Lie' to Influence Media

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David Brock: Conservatives 'Willing to Lie' to Influence Media

 

 

 

 

David Brock: Conservatives 'Willing to Lie' to Influence Media

By Marc Morano

CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer

February 15, 2005

 

Washington, D.C. (CNSNews.com) - David Brock, a former investigative

reporter for conservative publications before flipping his political

ideology and writing a book titled, " Blinded by the Right, " said

Monday that the best way for liberals to expose the current

conservative influence in the media is to show how conservatives are

" simply willing to lie. "

 

Brock is currently the president and CEO of Media Matters for America,

a liberal media watchdog that takes on some of the biggest names in

conservative media. In authoring the 2002 book, " Blinded by the Right,

The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative, " Brock not only distanced

himself from the conservative movement, he disclosed his homosexuality.

 

Monday, he noted examples of how the " professional " or " mainstream

media " are influenced by conservative talk radio, the Internet and

think tanks. That influence, Brock said, will diminish as the

conservative " lies " are exposed.

 

" The conservatives seem to be particularly vulnerable because the

quality of their research is particularly low. There is typically

self-interested money behind it and of course they are simply willing

to lie, " Brock told a group of interns at a luncheon at the Center for

American Progress headquarters in Washington D.C.

 

Brock urged the young media activists to challenge what he views as

the conservative media bias.

 

" I think that all of that has to be confronted in a systemic way. If

you shine light on propaganda over time, it does cease to have an

effect, " Brock said. " Their words can be used against them. The fact

that the claims that they make are often dubious can also be brought

up in a very effective way, " he added.

 

Brock told the interns that conservatives " bully " the media.

 

" We have seen the mainstream media increasingly accommodating

conservatism and this is not an accident. This is the result of

coordinated and financed effort by the right wing to pressure, push

and bully the media to do that, " Brock said. " The media today is a

political issue. I believe it is conservatives that have politicized

it, " he added.

 

Brock identified what he considered the dominant conservative media

outlets.

 

" It includes newspapers like the Washington Times and the New York

Post, it includes the Fox News Channel, it includes talk radio and

several highly trafficked Internet sites, " Brock said.

 

He and fellow panelist Judd Legum, a writer for The Progress Report

and ThinkProgress.org cited Cybercast News Service, Newsmax.com and

WorldNetDaily.com as examples of the most influential websites.

 

'False and wrong article'

 

To illustrate how the conservative media generates a news story, Brock

referred to his old employer, The Washington Times and how the

newspaper has evolved.

 

" In 1986, the Washington Times only reached those 100,000 rs.

Today what we have is a situation where a false and wrong article in

the Washington Times is read by Rush Limbaugh on the air. It reaches

20 million people. The author of that article can go on " The O'Reilly

Factor " and reach another 5-10 million people. Matt Drudge can post

that article on his Internet site and reach another 6 million people, "

Brock explained.

 

" So the capacity and the reach for conservatives to communicate their

messages, their propaganda and their attacks [have] really increased

exponentially over that time, " he said.

 

Brock also emphasized that the " right wing media " has an impact far

beyond its conservative base.

 

" We ought not to dismiss the impact of specifically and explicitly

right wing media. If you look at the demographics of the reach of a

place like the Fox News Channel or talk radio, they are not simply

speaking to the converted or the choir, " Brock said.

 

" They are reaching middle of the road, independent voters and of

course there is a huge echo effect of that right wing media into the

mainstream media, so that even people who are not consuming right wing

media are affected by its messaging and I think it's long overdue that

we recognize that reality as well, " he added.

 

Brock explained how conservatives can generate the news they desire.

" Things can develop on rather obscure conservative websites that you

may never even have heard of and then given a life, " Brock said.

 

Fox News Channel " uses these conservative websites as kind of tip

sheets to fill their content, their time on the air. The wall between

that type of media and the mainstream media is just so porous today

that you often see that it seeps through, " he added.

 

'We are not there yet'

 

Brock lamented that conservatives have much more firepower in

dispersing their ideas than do liberals.

 

" There is a conservative group called the Media Research Center (the

parent organization of Cybercast News Service) which is run by a guy

named Brent Bozell that does the kind of media watch-dogging and

monitoring from the conservative side that we do. The difference is

that Rush Limbaugh reads their material verbatim on the air, " Brock said.

 

" Now I go on (liberal Air America Radio) Al Franken's show once a week

-- every Wednesday -- which is a great means for us to be able to

disseminate our material, but the fact is Limbaugh is still reaching

20 million people and we are not there yet. But I am encouraged,' he

explained.

 

Brock also said that the " mainstream media " is not really on the side

of liberals, as many conservatives contend. " As far as the mainstream

media is concerned, know that it is not on your side as much as the

conservatives will like to claim that the media is liberal, " he said.

 

" My view is that the conservatives have been able to work, both with

media and against the media at the same time and that is something

that has really not been perfected on the progressive side, " he explained.

 

Conservatives have created a " structural imbalance " in the media

because of their organized efforts " proactively pitching (their point

of view) to the media, " according to Brock.

 

" The result of this is as anybody who watches, not just Fox, but CNN

or MSNBC -- there is a structural imbalance across all of those

political talk shows, where there is a severe under-representation of

progressives, and part of that is the fault of progressives, " he claimed.

 

Brock offered NBC's " Meet the Press " as an example of how progressives

are under-represented.

 

" The lack of balance is just so apparent if you look at your

composition of your typical Meet the Press roundtables, where they

have [syndicated columnist] Bob Novak, a conservative ideologue

debating John Harwood, a reporter from The Wall Street Journal and

that's the debate, " Brock said.

 

" Who goes in and sees [Meet the Press anchor] Tim Russert and says,

'Here is what you have done for the last 52 weeks and it's

unacceptable.' That is the kind of aggressive approach that

[conservatives] take and I do think they are being more bold about it

lately, " he added.

 

Conservatives also use their media power to push more than ideology,

according to Brock. " Part of the conservative game plan is simply to

confuse people, so that they are not necessarily trying to win these

arguments on a factual level, " Brock said.

 

Brock cited the Vietnam War record of Democratic presidential nominee

John Kerry and the opposition to his campaign mounted by the Swift

Boat Veterans for Truth as an example of how conservatives seek to

confuse Americans.

 

" If at the end of the day, the average consumer of news isn't sure

what to think (about Kerry's Vietnam War record), [conservatives] have

made progress because they have planted seeds of doubt that weren't

there before and so it's very difficult to confront that kind of

thing, " Brock said.

 

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