Messengers of the Right

Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics

Bibliographic Data

ID4155287
AuthorsMichelle Nickerson (Loyola University Chicago, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume104
Issue2
Pages538-539
Publication date2017-09-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of American History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/jahist/jax265
OpenAlexW2748357733
LanguageEN
Citations received13

Nicole Hemmer's Messengers of the Right documents the tenacious battle by conservative newsmen and opinion makers to topple the dominance of liberal journalists in the war for influence in American politics. Starting in the 1940s, broadcasters and writers not only worked in concert to develop a respectable and vibrant conservative press but they also played a significant role in making the American Right a dominant force in national politics by 1980. Hemmer argues that “media activists,” as she calls them, wielded political influence by reconciling the interests of ideological purists with those of grassroots populists. Hemmer's book is structured in four parts that follow her “messengers” from their position as media outsiders during the liberal New Deal and postwar eras to the decades of abundance after 1980, when the consolidation of the conservative news industry made talk radio and Fox News into powerful political institutions. Room 2233 of the Lincoln Building in New York was the initial meeting spot in 1953 of “some of the brightest lights of the conservative movement,” who observed that the American right needed a “counterintelligence unit,” in the words of the publisher Henry Regnery, to combat the dominance of liberals in the press, higher education, and government (p. 28). That meeting turned what had been a scattered group of conservative periodicals into a more directed, zealous, and cooperative operation

Battle · Dominance (genetics · Grassroots · Ideology · Media studies · Newspaper · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · American Political and Social Dynamics · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law

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