Mainstreaming the Fringe

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, June 18, 2009

CONTACT
Jessica Levin (202) 772-8162
jlevin@mediamatters.org

Media Matters hosted discussion on the consequences of providing a national platform to violent, anti-government rhetoric

Washington, D.C. -- Today, Media Matters for America held a panel discussion on the growing culture of extremist, anti-government, and violent rhetoric in conservative media. Media Matters Senior Fellow Eric Boehlert, who has written extensively on the subject, hosted leaders from the Southern Poverty Law Center, America's Voice, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the National Council of La Raza, and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights to examine how the mainstreaming of extremism impacts our security, politics, and culture.

"The conservative media are giving a national platform to what was previously relegated to the right-wing fringe," said Boehlert. "Mainstreaming this rhetoric sends the message that violent behavior is acceptable, if not welcome. We all need to learn from the recent tragedies in Kansas and Washington, D.C., that this type of hate has no place on the airwaves."

Watch highlights from the panel:

BACKGROUND

Report: Emerging culture of paranoia

http://mediamatters.org/research/200904130024

Summary: Conservative media have directed their violent, doomsday, and anti-intellectual rhetoric at progressives in power, and specifically at President Obama, whom fake populists in conservative media depict as a threat to their audience's very way of life.

Boehlert: O'Reilly and Fox News will have more right-wing vigilantism to explain

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200906090004

Excerpt: If Fox News is going to continue to traffic in hateful rhetoric, then folks at Fox News, as well as their apologists in the GOP Noise Machine, are going to have to come up with better talking points to spin away the atmosphere of vigilantism fomented by that rhetoric. They need a better line of defense because the one they trotted out in the wake of the right-wing assassination of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller was wholly unconvincing.

Boehlert: Fox News' militia media: mainstreaming the fringe

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200904160001

Excerpt: Imagine if Fox News had been on the air back on February 28, 1993, just months into the new Democratic president's first term, when agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives attempted to serve warrants on David Koresh's Branch Davidian compound. Agents arrived because federal authorities got a tip that Koresh and his followers were stockpiling weapons.

Boehlert: Glenn Beck and the rise of Fox News' militia media

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200904070009

Excerpt: After a night of drinking followed by an early morning argument with his mother, with whom he shared an apartment, 22-year-old Richard Poplawski put on a bulletproof vest, grabbed his guns, including an AK-47 rifle, and waited for the police to respond to the domestic disturbance call his mother had placed. When two officers arrived at the front door, Poplawski shot them both in the head, then killed another officer who had tried to rescue his colleagues.

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