If anyone knows how to deconstruct and identify the mendacity of the right wing’s attacks, it’s David Brock. After all, he used to play a critical role in creating, shaping, and distributing these attacks in the first place.
Brock already did a valuable public service with the publication of his book, Blinded by the Right, and now Brock is taking this service to the next level with a new project and website, Media Matters. As the New York Times noted today:
Now Mr. Brock is starting a new endeavor built to combat the very sector of journalism that spawned him, with support from the same sorts of people (Democrats) about whom he once wrote so critically.
With more than $2 million in donations from wealthy liberals, Mr. Brock will start a new Internet site this week that he says will monitor the conservative media and correct erroneous assertions in real time.
The site, called Media Matters, was devised as part of a larger media apparatus being built by liberals to combat what they say is the overwhelming influence of conservative commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly.
Mr. Brock’s project was developed with help from the newly formed Center for American Progress, the policy group headed by John D. Podesta, the former Clinton chief of staff. And Mr. Brock said he hoped it could help provide fodder for fledgling liberal radio talk shows being started across the country, including those of the comedians Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo.
For Mr. Brock, 41, the project is yet another considerable step in his public evolution from conservative muckraker to liberal activist. That evolution began after Mr. Brock began publicly apologizing in the late 1990’s for reporting that brutally criticized Anita F. Hill and a report that Arkansas state troopers had helped Bill Clinton procure paramours when he was the governor of Arkansas, the veracity of which he is no longer sure.
Mr. Brock has also said that he knowingly lied in an article he wrote for The American Spectator in 1992 that raised doubts about the credibility of Ms. Hill. The article formed the basis for a later book about Ms. Hill, whose charges of harassment almost derailed Clarence Thomas’s appointment to the Supreme Court.
I know plenty of Dems who will never trust (and never forgive) Brock and that’s fine. At a minimum, it seems to me that this project will be an important addition to the political dialog and help Brock earn some added credibility.
If successful, Brock’s Media Matters could help offer a counterweight to conservative media critics like those at the Media Research Center, whose press releases usually appear in the Washington Times as news stories.
I do have one small question, however. Brock picked up $2 million in contributions for this project? Note to wealthy liberals everywhere: I’ll help do the same thing for far less money!