Rarely is the New York Times accused of supporting Republicans—much less being a cog in the vast right-wing conspiracy. That, however, is exactly what David Brock, one-time conservative journalist-turned-Clinton supporter and founder of Media Matters for America, claimed on Monday when he fielded questions from Politico’s Hadas Gold at a Georgetown University. The event’s title: “Is the Mainstream Media in Cahoots with Conservatives?”
The conversation began with the most pressing issue for Brock and his firm: Hillary Clinton’s upcoming testimony before the Select Committee on Benghazi. Brock was optimistic that Clinton would successfully handle the questions and that the page would finally be turned on both her role in the incident, as well as her private email server.
“[Hillary] has a little bit of the wind behind her sails,” Brock continued, “She has to go in and basically answer the questions.” The dynamic had changed, he noted, ever since House Majority Leader Representative Kevin McCarthy’s publicly suggested that the primary motivation for the Select Committee was to bring Hillary down. Discussion then turned to how Brock and how Media Matters would be involved in the congressional proceedings. “Media Matters has a war room,” Brock explained. “We will be looking for misinformation in the press, advancing a conservative agenda, all the way from Fox News, all the way to the New York Times.”
But why should anyone listen to a former conservative journalist now running a pro-Hillary PAC? Brock’s response began with his involvement in the conservative push to impeach Bill Clinton in the early 1990s, and the “Arkansas Project.” “I felt that I was complicit in a culture that rewarded lying,” Brock reflected. It was a “dirt-digging operation to find the silver bullet or invent it.”
In his telling, after he moved to the ideological left and founded Media Matters in 2004, Brock wanted to ensure that his work met the highest of journalistic standards. “My approach to Media Matters is that the trust would be earned in the work that I did…A reporter does not have to redo their research if they read something on our website. They can just take it straight to the bank.”
But while Brock fears the influence of a “right-wing conglomerate” and the reach of the Koch brothers, he feels that “there are distinctions” between their work and that of progressives. In his view, before Media Matters came along, the right wing operated without scrutiny, and the Heritage Foundation was “a dishonest propaganda factory.” Now, because of organizations like Media Matters, he said, both the left and right are heavily scrutinized.
Even still, “the quality is not the same,” he said. “[The left’s] super PACs are putting out factual material,” rather than focusing solely on Clinton. While Brock agreed that the press should focus on potential candidates, he felt that the coverage was biased. Asked to provide any rationale for why there might be a difference in scrutiny, Brock replied, “We never really get into motivation at Media Matters.”
Gold then pressed on the main claims of Brock’s latest book, Killing the Messenger, concerning the New York Times and its alleged involvement in the conspiracy to bring down Clinton. She also went after Brock for his reliance on anonymous sources.
“People were still in the New York Times and needed to be protected,” Brock answered.
Brock isn’t sure of the exact origin of the Old Gray Lady’s anti-Clinton bias, but he believes it lies somewhere between business interests and the Times’s controversial coverage of the Clintons in the early 1990s. “Besides Donald Trump, there is no other political figure besides the Clintons in generating click-throughs,” Brock explained. But, “the Times never really came to terms,” with their coverage of the Whitewater scandal in 1992 either. For Brock, neither of these explanations exonerates the Times: “From the get go there was some attitude at the Times.”
Gold then asked Brock to explain his declaration of “victory” over Fox News in 2013. After all, the network has higher ratings than ever, and the first Republican primary debate was the most-watched debate in history. Brock acknowledged that while he couldn’t change how Fox News operated, he hoped he could change how it was perceived in the larger media environment, a strategy he adopted in 2004 when founding Media Matters. Now, more than a decade later, Brock cited changes in Bill O’Reilly’s programming and the ouster of Glenn Beck as evidence of his success.
“If you affect Fox’s bottom line, you could change their behavior…and conventional wisdom about the network,” he said. “Fox News is now seen for what it is: a propaganda outlet.”
During the final twenty minutes of the event, Brock fielded brief questions from Gold and the audience: Does Brock have conservative friends? No. Does he like Hillary more than Bill? No. Some questions required some pondering: Which media organizations are doing a good job? “I didn’t say bad things about Politico. The Wall Street Journal is mixed . . . Morning Joe is tough if you are a Hillary fan.” Has Hillary Clinton ever done anything wrong? “She used a personal email, which she said was a mistake. But beyond that no.” She hasn’t done anything else wrong across her entire career? Again, Brock contemplated. Then, he answered, “I think there were early missteps in how they [the Clintons] approached healthcare.” Why support Hillary over other candidates for 2016? Twenty years ago when Brock was in the conservative movement covering Hillary Clinton, he saw that “Hillary had the qualities that could make her a more historically significant figure than her husband. I’ve been writing for Hillary for twenty years.”
After the event, the audience filed out past stacks of free copies of Brock’s new book provided courtesy of J. Clifford Hudson, Georgetown alumnus and member of the Ford Foundation’s board of trustees. Why would the Ford Foundation be moved to pay for free copies of Brock’s book about a dangerous nexus between political parties, shadow organizations, and the media? Well, according to Hudson, a former official in the Clinton administration and self-described funder of many of Brock’s enterprises, “some Clinton folks called and asked if I would be willing to help out this evening, make the introduction and statement of support for the book. I was more than happy to do it.”
As I left the event, I thought it was ironic that Brock was concerned with an unholy intersection of the politics and the media because moments before I reached the door a man approached me smiling, card in hand. “Are you with an organization?” he asked. “Are you planning to write about this?” If so, I was instructed, I should reach out to him or his team first. I looked down at the name and organization listed on the card. On its face in bold type read, “Correct The Record,” one of many organizations in Brock’s media empire, as well as the name and contact information of his press secretary.
At least they are efficient, I thought. They started “correcting the record” before I even made it out the door.
Alexander El-Fakir is a Public Interest Fellow at The Weekly Standard.
