The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy By David BrockScared4America strongly advocates reading, researching, and critical thinking. David Brock over at Media Matters for America use to be one of the rightwing mouthpieces. Today, however, Mr. Brock is an advocate for the truth. The truth, according to Nazi Propaganda Minister Joesph Goebbels “ is the greatest enemy of the State.” In other words, if the truth is the only antidote to the Republican big lies. It's like throwing a bucket of cold water on the Wicked Witch in the Land of Oz. The truth melts the big lie.
The big lie is spun an propagated through the media. The lie becomes perceived as true, while the truth is threatened by the fiction. The big lie theory, according to Joseph Goebbels simply states, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Guess what, the big lie works. It worked in Nazi Germany, it worked during the Red Scare of 1919 in the USA, it worked during the run-up to the war in Iraq. Plain and simple the big lie works, until the cold bucket of truth water exposes the big lie for what it is.
David Brock's website Media Matters and his books Blinded by the Right and the Republican Noise Machine offer a a cold bucket of truth to the rightwingnut windbags of propaganda and fear mongering.
In David Brock's article entitled “The Mighty Windbags,” published in Salon Magazine in 2004, he describes the “powerful propaganda organs of the Republican Party.” Brock asserts that “the important sectors of the political media -- most of cable TV news, the majority of popular op-ed columns, almost all of talk radio, a substantial chunk of the book market, and many of the most highly trafficked Web sites -- reflect more closely the political and journalistic values of the Washington Times than those of the New York Times.” The “journalistic values” of the Washington Times, according to Brock, are “governed by a calculatedly unfair political bias [rightwing] and that its journalistic ethics were close to nil.”
Scared4America likens this politically motivated bias and the lack of journalistic integrity to that of Edward Bernays or Joseph Goebbels propaganda.
David Brock wrote, ... People ask me, a former insider, how the Republican Right has won political and ideological power with such seeming ease and why Democrats, despite winning the most votes in the last three presidential elections, seem to be caught in a downward spiral, still able to win at the ballot box but steadily losing the battle for hearts and minds. While it is not the only answer, my answer is: It's the media, stupid.
When I say this, in a more respectful way, to folks outside the right wing, I usually get either of two responses. Those who receive their news from the New York Times and National Public Radio give me blank stares. They are living in a rarefied media culture -- one that prizes accuracy, fairness, and civility -- that is no longer representative of the media as a whole. Those who have heard snippets of Rush Limbaugh's radio show, have caught a glimpse of Bill O'Reilly's temper tantrums on the FOX News Channel, or occasionally peruse the editorials in the Wall Street Journal think I'm a Cassandra. They view this media as self-discrediting and therefore irrelevant. They are living in a vacuum of denial.Those who understand what I mean are either members of the media itself, have read media-criticism books or Internet sites devoted to the subject, or are in the political trenches every day dealing with the media. The gap between those who recognize right-wing media power for what it is and those who don't is wide and deep, as if they inhabit parallel universes. The gap is dangerous to democracy and needs to be closed.
We at Scared4America say, pay attention and stay alert to the lies and media deceptions.
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