On the July 17 broadcast of his Newsradio 850 KOA show, host Mike Rosen likened Michael Moore's documentary Sicko, about the U.S. health care system, to Nazi propaganda, asserting, “If you admire propaganda of the Goebbels variety, of the Riefenstahl variety, then this ... is well-done propaganda, as long as we recognize it as that.” Later in the broadcast he asked guest David Horowitz, "[W]ould Leni Riefenstahl be proud of this film?"

From the July 17 broadcast of Newsradio 850 KOA's The Mike Rosen Show:

ROSEN: We already have scheduled to start off the program this morning a critique of Michael Moore's latest agitprop film, Sicko.

[...]

ROSEN: If you admire propaganda of the Goebbels variety, of the Riefenstahl variety, then this is, this, this is well-done propaganda, as long as we recognize it as that. I imagine a lot of people however, who will take this film to heart, won't recognize it as propaganda.

[...]

HOROWITZ: Morning, Mike. Thank you for making me sit through a two-and-a-half-hour communist propaganda film --

ROSEN: By the way, let me --

HOROWITZ: -- vintage 1930s. I mean, this, this, this film is totalitarian in its method and in its message. I -- I actually -- I am grateful, 'cause I would not have believed that such crude, communist claptrap, where the lies are, you know, painted across the screen all the time. You, you know you're only getting one side of the story. For example, you see that when he goes to the health care systems he loves in France and England, he interviews white, middle-class people. You wouldn't know that there are millions of, of Muslims rioting in the streets in France, burning cars and so forth. Only the upper-middle class gets interviewed. When he, when he's in America, it's union members, you know, working-class people, inner-city blacks, and he actually has one skid row patient. So, so America is seen right up from skid row, whereas when you go to England, you're talking to people who live in $200,000 -- or make $200,000 a year.

ROSEN: When you, when you say propaganda, would Leni Riefenstahl be proud of this film?

HOROWITZ: Yeah -- well, you know, I didn't want to load the, stack the cards too, too heavily by saying, “Sure, Nazi propaganda is the same thing.”

Rosen's comments referenced Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany's propaganda minister, and Leni Riefenstahl, director of the 1935 Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will -- and continued a pattern whereby right-wing radio hosts have likened progressive documentaries to Nazi propaganda. For example, on the March 22 broadcast of his Fox News Radio 600 KCOL Ride Home with The James Gang show, host and KCOL program director Scott James likened former Vice President Al Gore's self-described "mass persuasion campaign" on global warming to Nazi propaganda efforts.

Other conservative critics of the Gore documentary An Inconvenient Truth have used similar rhetoric in an attempt to discredit the film, as Media Matters for America has documented. For example, CNN Headline News host Glenn Beck on his April 30 nationally syndicated radio show said that Gore is using “the same tactic” to fight global warming that Adolf Hitler used to vilify Jews in Nazi Germany. On June 7, 2006, Beck compared Gore's campaign to raise awareness of global warming to the Nazis, dismissing many of the film's conclusions and stating, “It's like Hitler.” Sterling Burnett, senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, on the May 23, 2006, edition of Fox News' Dayside called the film “propaganda” and added, “You don't go see Joseph Goebbels' films to see the truth about Nazi Germany. You don't want to go see Al Gore's film to see the truth about global warming.”