The Mighty Windbags

Salon.com has published an excerpt from former right-wing journalist David Brock's new book, The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy. In an accompanying interview, Brock talks about how the conservative media "sets a climate and helps set parameters and helps form impressions. ... One significant problem is that people are in denial about the impact of conservatives in the press. They dismiss something as one story and don't think it will snowball. Liberals don't think these people matter; they think they're crackpots. They may well be crackpots, but they matter. There may be a slow learning curve about understanding that."