Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics

From Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity to Glenn Beck and Matt Drudge, Americans are accustomed to thinking of right-wing media as integral to contemporary conservatism. But today's well-known personalities make up the second generation of broadcasting and publishing activists. Messengers of the Ri...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Hemmer, Nicole (Author)
Format: Electronic eBook
Language:English
Published: Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press [2016]
Series:Politics and Culture in Modern America
Subjects:
Online Access:DE-1043
DE-1046
DE-858
DE-859
DE-860
DE-473
DE-739
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Summary:From Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity to Glenn Beck and Matt Drudge, Americans are accustomed to thinking of right-wing media as integral to contemporary conservatism. But today's well-known personalities make up the second generation of broadcasting and publishing activists. Messengers of the Right tells the story of the little-known first generation.Beginning in the late 1940s, activists working in media emerged as leaders of the American conservative movement. They not only started an array of enterprises—publishing houses, radio programs, magazines, book clubs, television shows—they also built the movement. They coordinated rallies, founded organizations, ran political campaigns, and mobilized voters. While these media activists disagreed profoundly on tactics and strategy, they shared a belief that political change stemmed not just from ideas but from spreading those ideas through openly ideological communications channels.In Messengers of the Right, Nicole Hemmer explains how conservative media became the institutional and organizational nexus of the conservative movement, transforming audiences into activists and activists into a reliable voting base. Hemmer also explores how the idea of liberal media bias emerged, why conservatives have been more successful at media activism than liberals, and how the right remade both the Republican Party and American news media. Messengers of the Right follows broadcaster Clarence Manion, book publisher Henry Regnery, and magazine publisher William Rusher as they evolved from frustrated outsiders in search of a platform into leaders of one of the most significant and successful political movements of the twentieth century
Item Description:Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 25. Jul 2018)
Physical Description:1 online resource 9 illus
ISBN:9780812293074
DOI:10.9783/9780812293074

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