Media Matters Prez: Talk Radio As GOP Disinformation Engine

On the Last Word Wednesday night, Jonathan Capehart had Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters, to talk about the reach of conservative media.

"I mean, it’s bigger than anything I think most people realize. Talk radio, for example, just take Sean Hannity. He's got 15 million listeners. And that's one show – and that’s just talk radio," Carusone said.

"People will focus on television, and Fox News, and Facebook, but the reality is talk radio remains the get-out-the-vote engine, the engine of disinformation – and in many ways, it has this downstream effect because there is a local component to it, it can really influence and distort the local politics, which ultimately then translates both up and nationally."

"But that is still mainstream conservative media. What's happening outside of our view?" Capehart asked.

"I think the simplest way to think about what’s happening is that the media – the right-wing media as a whole, the fever swamps, have really been the fulcrum and the pivot point here. And the rest of the Republican Party, and the right wing at-large, what they've decided to do in these last couple years that I think help explain that phenomenon that you pointed out with Tucker Carlson and Fox, is that they're organizing power on what used to be considered the fringes," Carusone said.

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