Talk Radio’s America

How an Industry Took Over a Political Party That Took Over the United States

By: Brian Rosenwald

Narrated by: Christopher Grove

Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

The cocreator of the Washington Post's Made by History blog reveals how the rise of conservative talk radio gave us a Republican Party incapable of governing and paved the way for Donald Trump.

Radio hosts form a deep bond with their audience, which gives them enormous political power. Unlike elected representatives, however, they must entertain their audience or watch their ratings fall. Talk radio boosted the Republican agenda in the 1990s, but two decades later, escalation in the battle for the airwaves pushed hosts toward ever more conservative, outrageous, and hyperbolic content.

Donald Trump borrowed conservative radio hosts' playbook and gave Republican base voters the kind of pugnacious candidate they had been demanding for decades. By 2016, a political force no one intended to create had completely transformed American politics.

©2019 The President and Fellows of Harvard College (P)2019 Tantor

great book

This book gave me a great insight into right wing radio but still Show that this country have a long way to go

informative and fair

informative and fair, but unlike the talk radio hosts being discussed, the narrator was very monotone and boring. still with the listen.

Important background for our polarized times

Before Facebook memes and InfoWars, Breitbart and Fox News, Talk Radio was the King of conservative media.

In “Talk Radio’s America”, Brian Rosenwald offers a well-researched and enlightening account of how conservative talk radio rose to power and led a growing segment of voters ever further to the right, demonstrably changing how our government functions, bucking traditions and ideals of bipartisanship and frankly scientific rationalization along the way.

In fairness, I do believe that all media (mainstream & otherwise) had its biases back in the late 80s and has its biases now. I do believe that there was an echo chamber created by leading journalists in newspapers and the nightly news and their coverage was slanted in some way. They are not blameless as media shifted away from covering and providing the various perspectives of a large swath of Americans throughout the country. Causes for Polarization: Exhibit A. Over time, of course these frustrated Americans were in the market for new voices to share their ideology.

However, the very real mainstream media biases became amped up and exaggerated so much by talk radio hosts over 30 years that the result is a complete delegitimization of all fact-based media that wasn’t in line with an individual’s political philosophy. It’s now all just “Fake News” to many and I don’t know how they will be convinced otherwise, despite it being in their best interests for their health and livelihood as COVID makes quite clear.

Titan hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Laura Ingraham, and more are culpable for their audience’s complete distrust of journalism. I believe they are also responsible for defeating pragmatic governance. These same held the vice that squeezed out any compromising moderate Republicans (RINOs as they call them: “Republicans In Name Only”), and amplified further right-leaning, extreme, and hyperbolic voices.

Time and again these voices on the AM dial threw the influence they had over their avid listeners onto the candidate that passed their conservative purity test, even if it cost them the seat to a Democrat. As a result, we are left with far right-leaning Republican legislators who would never make a deal with a far left-leaning Democrat legislator (and vice versa). Of course, the body politic suffers for this as legislation becomes more and more difficult to enact.

“Governance typically requires compromise and nuance, especially during divided government (which existed for twenty of twenty-eight years in the talk radio era). Deal cutting, however, is tantamount to surrender in the black and white world of talk radio. “ (Rosenwald)

Even among Republicans, talk radio and related conservative media stymied any governance because no consensus could be found between the House and Senate caucuses as republican legislators were too afraid that if they compromised, they’d be called ‘weak’ by their local hosts (with no actual skin in the game) and face a primary challenge from an even more radical partisan. 

Frankly, all of this makes sense now anyway since the Republican Party pays its bills these days on being the grievance opposition party, not the party that knows how to govern. For an example, look at Trump focusing on the civil unrest, while trying to make people forget about the COVID pandemic that we haven’t overcome. Trump is running to “Make America Great Again Again” even though it’s Donald Trump’s America right now and he’s the president “whether he knows it or not”.

Every day for the last 32 years, Americans tune in to hosts like Rush Limbaugh as he states and justifies their own thoughts out loud, while often mischaracterizing the opposing idea or policy. People think of these entertainers as journalists even though Limbaugh repeatedly amplifies conspiracy theories to this day. Just because someone says “Folks, here’s the thing” to you as you’re driving in your car and you agree with him politically, doesn’t mean he’s telling you the truth. 
One example of the Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient’s irresponsibility is when Rush said in February that the coronavirus is “the common cold, folks”. I have been told that Rush tells his listeners not to listen to the news since it’s too depressing… “just listen to Rush!”. Causes for Polarization: here’s exhibit B.

Naturally, now we have the Talk Radio President in Donald Trump. A populist brand-name individual with more of a “style” than ideology who cares more about ratings than the rule of law and who traffics conspiracy theories as long as the propagators like him (such as the those who buy into QAnon, a theory that includes such ramblings as: Hillary Clinton, George Soros, and of course, Tom Hanks {and more!} are in a satan-worshipping, cannibalistic child sex-trafficking ring that only Donald Trump can stop). Trump won’t discourage any of these conspiracy theories, but if there is news out there that he doesn’t like, he will decry it is a lie of the mainstream media, an industry that has had its credibility tarnished over the years by most of those same voices on talk radio.

Anyway, this book is fascinating. I highly encourage you give it a listen!

Excellent history of our national demise

It’s a sad story how corporate profit harnessed the latent racism and fascism within country to a major political party into a pack of slavering confederate nazi American goonoisie which now seeks the violent destruction of the Republic led by their Orange Pustule Putin chattel Crook Rapist overlord. And they still call themselves ‘conservative’