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For Immediate Release
November, 17 2009, 09:28am EDT
Contact:
Brandon Hersh (202) 471-3205,bhersh@mediamatters.org
Right-Wing Book Watch: Palin Goes Rogue with the Facts
Progressive Book Club and Media Matters Launch New Project to Separate Fact from Fiction
WASHINGTON
Today Progressive Book Club and Media
Matters for America announces the launch of Right-Wing Book
Watch (RightWingBookWatch.com)
- a new joint project that will monitor the release of conservative books and provide
detailed fact checks, research and thematic rebuttals from progressive experts.
First in the project's sights is
former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's
memoir Going Rogue: An American Life, which hits bookshelves across
the country today.
Despite enormous advances in
technology, books continue to serve as the primary means to legitimize
political and policy ideas. Under the guise of "non-fiction," conservatives use
books to force misinformation into the media and the public discourse.
These books can be devastating to
good policy and decent political discourse - as illustrated by such notorious
examples as The Bell Curve, which misused data to resuscitate
racialist ideas about intelligence, and Unfit for Command, the
"Swift Boat" fraud that smeared Senator John Kerry.
All too often these kinds of works,
riddled with fictitious claims supported by sloppy research, go unchecked. Or
their falsehoods are broadcast without contradiction until it is too late. The
same could have been true of Palin's new memoir - until now.
Since obtaining a copy of Going
Rogue days in advance of its public release, Right-Wing Book Watch
has posted and disseminated more than a dozen Fact Checks, all of which can be
found here, with still more to come including a review of the memoir by Max
Blumenthal, an
award-winning journalist and author of the recently released book, Republican Gomorrah: Inside The Movement
That Shattered The Party.
https://rightwingbookwatch.com/
Palin is just one of the many
conservative authors Right-Wing Book Watch will be keeping an eye on in
the weeks and months to come. Like so many other conservative authors, Palin
has consistently shown a willful disregard for simple facts - even when it
comes to her own life story.
"Conservative books are the
life's blood of the right-wing media attack machine. For decades the right has
used works of supposed 'non-fiction' to advance misinformation and outright
lies on every issue imaginable" said David Brock, founder and CEO of Media
Matters. "This new partnership will bring the progressive movement's
ability to hold conservative authors and the publishing world accountable to a
whole new level."
"The right-wing has used books, talk radio, cable television and the
internet to disseminate and legitimize their ideas with no regard for the truth
or damage to our country," said Governor Howard Dean, chairman of The
Progressive Book Club. "For too long
their misuse of information has gone unchecked and
unchallenged. Progressives now have a powerful tool to use in taking
the right head on as we work to repair the damage of conservative rule and move
America forward."
ABOUT PROGRESSIVE BOOK CLUB
The Progressive Book Club finds and promotes important authors, ideas and new voices.
Part e-bookseller and part online magazine, the club offers a unique
opportunity to buy new books and support important causes with every purchase.
PBC has created a 21st-century platform that enables people to learn, connect
and engage on the issues they care about most -- while keeping progressive
ideas at the center of the national debate.
Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.
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