David Brock

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David Brock : biography

02 November 1962 –

Brock announced in 2010 that he was forming a super-PAC, American Bridge, to help elect liberal Democrats, starting with the 2012 election cycle. In describing Brock’s intentions for the super-PAC, The New York Times referred to Brock as a "prominent Democratic political operative" (mirrored by The Washington Post’s characterization of him as a "former journalist-turned-political operative") and New York Magazine referred to Brock’s "hyperpartisanship."

Books

  • The Real Anita Hill: The Untold Story. Free Press, 1993. ISBN 978-0-02-904656-2
  • The Seduction of Hillary Rodham. 1996, Free Press. ISBN 978-0-684-83770-3
  • Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative. 2002, Crown Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-4000-4728-4
  • The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy. 2004, Crown. ISBN 978-1-4000-4875-5
  • Free Ride: John McCain and the Media with Paul Waldman. 2008, Anchor. ISBN 0-307-27940-5
  • The Fox Effect: How Roger Ailes Turned a Network into a Propaganda Machine with Ari Rabin-Havt. 2012, Anchor. ISBN 978-0-307-94768-0

Background

Brock was born in Washington, D.C., and was adopted by Dorothea and Raymond Brock. He has a younger sister, Regina. Brock was raised Catholic; his father held strong conservative beliefs.Stated in Brock’s Blinded by the Right

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.Brock, David. , p. 14. Random House, 2003. ISBN 1-4000-4728-5. Accessed January 30, 2011. "… when I arrived at my all-male high school, Paramus Catholic High School in Paramus, New Jersey, I was singled out and ridiculed for being different." He then attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked as a reporter and editor for The Daily Californian, the campus newspaper, sometimes expressing conservative views. He was an intern at The Wall Street Journal. He graduated from Berkeley with a B.A. in history in 1985.

In 1986 he joined the staff of the weekly conservative news magazine Insight on the News, a sister publication of The Washington Times. After a stint as a research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, in March 1992 Brock authored a sharply critical story about Clarence Thomas’s accuser, Anita Hill, in The American Spectator magazine. A little over a year later, in April 1993, Brock published a book titled The Real Anita Hill, which expanded upon previous assertions that had cast doubt on the veracity of Anita Hill’s claims of sexual harassment.

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, 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 the January 1994, issue of The American Spectator, Brock, by then on staff at the magazine, published a story about Bill Clinton’s time as governor of Arkansas that made accusations that bred Troopergate. Among other things, the story contained the first printed reference to Paula Jones, referring to a woman named "Paula" who state troopers said offered to be Clinton’s partner. Jones called Brock’s account of her encounter with Clinton "totally wrong," and she later sued Clinton for sexual harassment, a case that became entangled in the independent counsel’s investigation of the Whitewater controversy and eventually led to the impeachment of the president. The story received an award later that year from the Western Journalism Center, and was partially responsible for a rise in the 25-year-old magazine’s circulation, from around 70,000 to over 300,000 in a very short period.