Дэвид Брок: Саяси кеңесші және журналистік жолы

American political consultant and author

David Brock is an American liberal political consultant, author, and commentator who founded the media watchdog group Media Matters for America. Brock began his career as a right wing investigative reporter during the 1990s. He wrote the book The Real Anita Hill and the Troopergate story, which led to Paula Jones filing a lawsuit against Bill Clinton. In the late 1990s, he switched political sides, aligning himself with the Democratic Party and in particular with Bill and Hillary Clinton. In 2004, he founded Media Matters for America, a non profit organization which describes itself as a "progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing and correcting conservative misinformation in the U. S. media". He has since also founded super PACs called American Bridge 21st Century and Correct the Record, has become a board member of the super PAC Priorities USA Action and has been elected chairman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). Brock left Media Matters in November 2022. After leaving Media Matters, he founded Facts First USA, a 501(c)(4) group designed to counter Republican led congressional investigations.

David Brock was born in Hackensack, New Jersey and was adopted by Dorothea and Raymond Brock. He has a younger sister, Regina, who was also adopted. Brock was raised Catholic. His father, whom Brock has described as "a Pat Buchanan conservative", was a marketing executive. Brock grew up in Wood Ridge, New Jersey, where he went to Our Lady of the Assumption School, and later attended Paramus Catholic High School in Paramus, New Jersey. During his sophomore year of high school, Brock's family moved to the Dallas, Texas, area where Brock attended Newman Smith High School. Brock became editor of his high school newspaper, which he says he "fashioned into a crusading liberal weekly in the middle of the Reaganite Sunbelt". Brock attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked as a reporter and editor for The Daily Californian, the campus newspaper. Brock arrived at college as a liberal Democrat, but at Berkeley he was "repelled by the culture of doctrinaire leftism" and turned to the political right. The book became a best seller. It was later attacked in a book review in The New Yorker by Jane Mayer, a reporter for The New Yorker, and Jill Abramson, who was at that time a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. The two later expanded their article into the book Strange Justice, which cast Anita Hill in a much more sympathetic light. It, too, was a best seller. Brock replied to their book with a book review of his own in The American Spectator. In that review, he asserted that Mayer and Abramson had no evidence to claim that Clarence Thomas was a habitual user of pornography. Later, in his book Blinded by the Right, he wrote, "When I wrote those words, I knew they were false. I put a lie in print."

In a January 1994 The American Spectator story about Bill Clinton's time as governor of Arkansas, Brock, by then on staff at the magazine, made accusations that bred Troopergate. Brock later recanted much of what he had written about Clinton and Jones.

After the success of The Real Anita Hill, Simon & Schuster's then conservative focused Free Press subsidiary paid Brock a large advance to write a book about Hillary Clinton. The expectation was that it would be a takedown in the style of his writings on Anita Hill and Bill Clinton. The project, however, took a different turn, and the resulting book, The Seduction of Hillary Rodham, proved to be largely sympathetic to Mrs. Clinton. Given the large advance and tight one year deadline by Free Press, Brock was under tremendous pressure to produce another bestseller. However, the book contained no major scoops. In Blinded by the Right (2002), Brock said that he had reached a turning point: he had thoroughly examined charges against the Clintons, could not find any evidence of wrongdoing and did not want to make any more misleading claims. Brock further said that his former friends in right wing politics shunned him because Seduction did not adequately attack the Clintons. National Review proposed another theory: since "no liberal source in the world would talk to Brock", he could not collect the kind of information he was after. National Review also suggested that while writing the book, Brock had been "seduced" by Sidney Blumenthal, a champion and friend of the Clinton circle. When the book came out, it was widely criticized for not breaking any new ground. John Balzar, reviewing the book in the Los Angeles Times, called it "[e]xhaustive to the point of exhaustion" and "predictably critical but unexpectedly measured, at least in comparison to what Beltway gossips anticipated". James B. Stewart, reviewing the book in The New York Times, said that Brock had "tried to do his subject justice in the broadest sense" but added that "[a]t times he goes too far", often "echo[ing] her apologists" and "dismiss[ing] or rationaliz[ing] the sometimes powerful evidence that Hillary Rodham Clinton has lied  by invoking a relativism rooted in Republican precedents."

The Nation has described Brock as a "conservative journalistic assassin turned progressive empire builder" Discouraged at the reaction his Hillary Clinton biography received, he said, "I  want out. David Brock the Road Warrior of the Right is dead." Four months later, The American Spectator declined to renew his employment contract, under which he was being paid over $300,000 per year. Writing again for Esquire in April 1998, Brock apologized to Clinton for his yellow journalism about Troopergate. In 2001, Brock accused one of his former sources, Terry Wooten, of leaking FBI files for use in his book about Anita Hill. Brock defended his betrayal of a confidential source by saying, "I've concluded that what I was involved in wasn't journalism, it was a political operation, and I was part of it. So I don't think the normal rules of journalism would apply to what I was doing". Wooten denies the accusation.

Brock's book Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex Conservative was published in 2002. In this book, an "outgrowth" of Confessions of a Right Wing Hit Man, Brock charted what the Daily Beast called his "remarkable metamorphosis to ardent acolyte from sworn enemy of Bill and Hillary Clinton." Christopher Hitchens, in The Nation, called Brock's book "an exercise in self love, disguised as an exercise in self abnegation", and declared that Brock was failing to state the truth. These and other critics noted that Brock, while claiming to feel remorse for his attacks on the Clintons and professing to have put personal assaults behind him, now seemed as eager to go after targets on the right as he had once gone after targets on the left. Hitchens responded with disgust, for example, to Brock's "coarse attack" in the book on Juanita Broaddrick, who had accused Bill Clinton of rape, but denied the rape under oath. Hitchens was particularly harsh, stating that Brock "inserts a completely gratuitous slander against a decent woman, all of whose independent assertions have survived meticulous fact checking". Many readers on the left, however, greeted the book with enthusiasm, and eagerly welcomed Brock. This was especially true of the Clintons. Shortly after the book's publication, Bill Clinton phoned Brock at home and praised it lavishly. Later, according to Politico, "Brock was invited to the former president's Harlem office where he was shocked to discover Clinton had purchased dozens of copies — and stuffed them into a big cabinet". Clinton, it turned out, was mailing them to friends across the country. Clinton "insisted" that Brock contact his speaking agent and give talks around the country attacking conservatives. According to The Nation, Democratic donors "loved Brock's conversion story, particularly since he'd been inside the machine they hoped to replicate." Also in 2004, he featured briefly in the BBC series The Power of Nightmares, where he stated that the Arkansas Project engaged in political terrorism.

In 2004, Brock founded the progressive media watchdog group Media Matters for America (MMA) which describes itself as being "dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U. S. media." Media Matters is known for its aggressive criticism of conservative journalists and media outlets, including its "War on Fox News". The New York Times, in a 2008 profile, called MMA "a highly partisan research organization" and quoted Democratic operative James Carville as saying that MMA was "more effective than any single entity" on the left. Pollster Frank Luntz called MMA "one of the most destructive organizations associated with American politics today." In a 2011 interview with Politico, Brock vowed to wage "guerrilla warfare and sabotage" against Fox News. When Brock proposed the idea of Media Matters, Hillary Clinton invited him to the Clintons' Chappaqua home to pitch the idea to potential donors. The committee was reportedly interested in Sidney Blumenthal's paid work for Brock's nonprofits, and in the question of "whether Blumenthal and Brock did anything improper as they helped Clinton manage the political fallout from the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, while she was secretary of State." In 2011, Brock founded the PAC, which seeks "to track every utterance of every major GOP candidate". The Los Angeles Times described him as having "reinvented the art of opposition research". The group's work reportedly "did so much damage to Republicans in the 2012 elections" that they sought to replicate Brock's efforts. and New York magazine referred to Brock's "hyperpartisanship". The group has more than 80 staffers. In September 2015, Brock and Correct the Record produced a piece on Bernie Sanders, linking him to Hugo Chávez and British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. In February 2015, Brock abruptly resigned his position with the super PAC. In his resignation letter, he accused Priorities officials of conducting "an orchestrated political hit job" against MMA and American Bridge. The New York Times had run an article questioning his groups' fundraising practices, and he charged that "current and former Priorities officials were behind this specious and malicious attack on the integrity of these critical organizations." His resignation "set off panic among influential Democrats", because his other groups' research "provides the foundation for the multimillion dollar advertising campaigns created with Priorities cash" and because "key Priorities donors have long standing personal ties with him." Brock was persuaded to return to Priorities later in 2015.

Brock also founded and runs the American Democracy Legal Fund, a nonprofit that has been accused of existing solely to create "a steady stream of lawsuits accusing Republicans of ethics and campaign finance violations." The institute finances journalists "investigating rightwing activities". Brock was elected as CREW's board president after laying out a broad plan to turn the organization into a more muscular and partisan organization. Politico described this as "a major power play that aligns liberal muscle more fully behind the Democratic Party — and Hillary Clinton" and said that Brock had set forth a plan "to turn the group into a more muscular — and likely partisan — attack dog."

In his 2015 book Killing the Messenger: The Right Wing Plot to Derail Hillary Clinton and Hijack Your Government, Brock described "how the Clintons quickly switched from prey to patrons, setting him on his current path as a fundraiser and progressive provocateur." In the book, Brock accused The New York Times of being a "megaphone for conservative propaganda" directed inordinately at Clinton. The Daily Beast described the book as "partly a sanitized summary of Brock's already exhaustively chronicled personal history, partly an attack on the journalism establishment, and partly a call to arms on behalf of his favorite presidential candidate." In October 2015, Brock gave a presentation at Georgetown University entitled "Is the Mainstream Media in Cahoots with Conservatives? ".

In 2015, Brock formed an investment venture, True Blue Media, to purchase an 80 percent stake in Blue Nation Review, an online news website. Blue Nation Review was later re branded as Shareblue.

The Los Angeles Times has described Brock as "integral to Hillary's run" for the presidency in 2016. Politico reported in January 2016 that Brock was preparing a new advertisement that would call on presidential candidate Bernie Sanders "to release his medical records before the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 1." Brock was subjected to a storm of criticism for this plan, and only hours after Politico's report, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta scolded Brock on Twitter. Later in January, Brock responded to a Sanders campaign ad by telling the Associated Press: "From this ad, it seems black lives don't matter much to Bernie Sanders", Sanders aides responded by accusing Brock of "mudslinging". Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs said in a statement: "Bernie Sanders, as everyone knows, has one of the strongest civil rights records in Congress. He doesn't need lectures on civil rights and racial issues from David Brock, the head of a Hillary Clinton Super Pac." Briggs added: "Twenty five years ago it was Brock – a mud slinging, right wing extremist – who tried to destroy Anita Hill, a distinguished African American law professor. He later was forced to apologize for his lies about her. Today, he is lying about Sen Sanders. It's bad enough that Hillary Clinton is raising millions in special interest money in her Super Pacs. It is worse that she would hire a mudslinger like David Brock." At a campaign event in Iowa in late January 2016, Bernie Sanders denied any plans to "bus in out of state college students to caucus for him", charging that this was a lie and attributing it to Brock. On February 8, 2016, after the near tie in the Iowa caucuses between Clinton and Sanders, Brock told Politico that "Senator Sanders is trying to live in the purity bubble, and it needs to be burst." He described Sanders's efforts to link Clinton to Wall Street as an "artful smear", and, in a reference to the Democratic National Committee's passing of data to the Sanders campaign the previous December, said that Clinton "would've been hounded out of the race if her staff had done what his did, in stealing data and misleading the press about it, then raising money off it." Clinton's campaign, Brock insisted, "has stayed remarkably positive in the face of a relentlessly negative campaign from Sanders." As for Sanders's platform, Brock maintained that "a unanimous chorus of serious progressive commentators  find almost nothing of any substantive value in his so called policies."

The New York Times reported in December 2017 that a group founded by Brock had spent $200,000 in an unsuccessful effort to bring forward accusations of sexual misconduct against Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential race. He was reportedly considering doing the same to congressional Republicans. Brock made a six figure payout to Grey in order to avoid his former partner going public with accusations of corruption regarding Brock and Media Matters. Brock initially paid, then sued afterward for what he now termed "blackmail". Grey filed a lawsuit against Brock in January 2011, and Brock countersued Grey in March 2011.

Paul Ryan, a lawyer at the Campaign Legal Center, considered complaining about Brock to the Federal Election Commission and Justice Department, charging that he was "creating new ways to undermine campaign regulation." Observing in 2015 that Brock had admitted to mudslinging before, The Daily Beast noted a difficulty in dispatching fears he would do it again. Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks criticized Brock's negative coverage of the Bernie Sanders 2016 Presidential Campaign, specifically the alleged invention of the "Bernie Bro" controversy. Uygur said that Brock's January 10, 2017 open letter of apology to Sanders and his voters was disingenuous because it was motivated by a desire to raise money from wealthy Democratic donors and to foster a perception of himself as being a member of the U. S. progressive movement.