Nobody knows how to manipulate the media better than David Brock.
As a former "right-wing hit man" (his words), he skewered Anita Hill -- first in a 22,000-word American Spectator (October 1992) article and then in a best-selling book, The Real Anita Hill, described by Anthony Lewis as "Sleaze With Footnotes." He even "put a lie in print," as he recounts in Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative, when he tore apart Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson's 1994 book, Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, in the Spectator, shredding material in their book he knew was true.
That's why, he says, he's unusually qualified to do the job he has now: heading up a Web site that ferrets out misinformation and exposes the lies and deceptions of the right-wing media.
It's been a strange journey. After experiencing a "spiritual and moral conversion" in the late 1990s, as he said at a National Press Club luncheon on May 3, he broke with his conservative colleagues and tried to start a new life. Like an AA member, he even wrote notes of apology to people he had harmed -- including Anita Hill and Bill Clinton (in an open letter published by Esquire in April 1998) -- in an effort to come clean with his past.
"He basically risked everything to turn his life around," says Joe Conason, who became friends with Brock after interviewing him for The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton, which Conason co-authored with Gene Lyons. "Things have turned out well for him, but there was no guarantee of that."
Brock, 41, has a new book coming out, The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy. And he's working hard to build a "progressive infrastructure" in this country, starting with his Web site. Billed as a "progressive research and information center," Media Matters for America, a not-for-profit, has a staff of researchers who monitor, analyze, and correct "conservative misinformation" that appears in the media.
Not everybody believes he can pull it off. As Cox News Service's Scott Shepard said at the National Press Club luncheon, "The idea of David Brock heading a truth squad is preposterous."
Despite the suspicions that surround him, Brock has managed to convince quite a few people that he can be trusted. Luckily for him, they include wealthy philanthropists like Peter Lewis and Esprit co-founder Susie Tompkins Buell, as well as the folks behind moveon.org. They've contributed to his cause, helping him raise over $2 million for the project.
On the day it started operations, Media Matters ran stories like "FOX's Chavez called Kerry a 'communist apologist' -- and then lied about it;" "Limbaugh accused liberals of hating the military;" and "WorldNetDaily's Kohn: 'evidence' suggests Kerry having an affair with New York Times reporter." The articles are matter-of-fact, even-handed, and non-inflammatory -- the kind of material you might actually read and think about. They're a stark contrast to the rants of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and the other conservative media types Brock is trying to combat.
"One might fight fire with fire. Or one might fight fire with water," Brock says, explaining that his researchers examine transcripts and stories from The Rush Limbaugh Show, FOX News Watch, MSNBC, The Washington Times, and other programs and publications, by evaluating their "facts, accuracy, and credibility."
He plans to add a component to the web site that will promote media activism, he says, encouraging people to write letters and send email to news organizations when they think the coverage is biased. Brock knows he can't stop Fox News from churning out inaccurate stories. ("Fox is now serving a market function -- it's feeding the beast," says Geoffrey Garin, president of Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group, which conducted a poll for Media Matters, "a beast they helped create.") But he believes CNN, NBC, ABC, The Washington Post, and other media organizations will be less likely to pick up their stories and run with them if the public is hounding mainstream journalists and editors. This is what conservatives excel at, says Brock.
"One of the things that conservatives have done is to energize the base around media activism," he explains. "They're complaining about what they perceive as a media bias."
As a result, he says, some "90 percent of the complaints" to the media have been coming from the right. It may have had an effect. Today, nine of the top 14 newspaper columnists are conservatives, according to an Editor & Publisher survey quoted by Media Matters. Twenty out of 27 talk radio hosts are conservative, according to radio research firm Arbitron. And Limbaugh "is increasingly being seen as a mainstream figure," says Brock.
The shift in the media hasn't gone unnoticed, though, according to the results of the poll conducted for Media Matters. "By 46 percent to 31 percent, respondents said that conservatives have more influence in the media today than liberals," says Garin.
Break it down along political lines, and you find most conservatives (51 percent) think liberals dominate the media. And most liberals (58 percent) think the opposite. No surprise there. But, according to the poll, 46 percent of moderate voters also think conservatives have more power in the media; only 27 percent of them think liberals dominate the media. And 43 percent of independents think conservatives hold sway, as opposed to 29 percent who think liberals do.
The goal of Media Matters, as Brock sees it, is to change the balance.
"In my book [Blinded by the Right], I revealed how this misinformation -- deliberately bought and paid for by covert political forces -- enveloped the media and poisoned public discourse," he says. "Now I'm creating an organization to stop this flow."
But there are plenty of liberals who are wary of Brock. Even Conason was skeptical about him at first, although Brock eventually won him over. "He's very knowledgable; he has an incredible memory. And the things he told me were true," Conason says.
"The statute of limitations on his admitted trespasses may have run out," says Conason. In any case, Brock "has been opposing the right with more energy and more creativity than most of the people on the left who still complain about him."
Tara McKelvey is a senior editor at the Prospect.
