"Eventually the story would spill over into the regular media"
About this Quote
“Eventually” is doing the dirty work here: it smuggles inevitability into what might otherwise look like a messy, contingent fight for attention. David Brock isn’t describing a neutral migration of facts from one ecosystem to another. He’s sketching a strategy and a power map. The phrase “spill over” frames the story like a liquid under pressure, something that can’t be contained once it reaches a certain volume. That metaphor flatters the storyteller: the narrative is cast as inherently newsworthy, so persistent that the gatekeepers can only delay, not deny.
The tell is “regular media.” Brock’s wording assumes a hierarchy where legitimacy still flows from mainstream outlets, even if the initial ignition happens elsewhere - partisan newsletters, advocacy networks, early digital channels, opposition research pipelines. “Regular” isn’t just descriptive; it’s a subtle appeal to authority, a way of saying the story will be ratified by the institutions that confer “real” status. That betrays a very specific late-20th/early-21st century media logic: alternative outlets can start the fire, but the evening news (or its modern equivalents) is where the blaze becomes history.
The subtext is patient aggression. If you can seed a narrative, keep it circulating, and create enough secondary signals - chatter, repetition, incremental “new” angles - the mainstream will eventually cover it, sometimes to avoid looking out of touch. Brock’s line captures how agenda-setting often works: not as a single scoop, but as pressure, timing, and the quiet confidence that the system can be made to follow.
The tell is “regular media.” Brock’s wording assumes a hierarchy where legitimacy still flows from mainstream outlets, even if the initial ignition happens elsewhere - partisan newsletters, advocacy networks, early digital channels, opposition research pipelines. “Regular” isn’t just descriptive; it’s a subtle appeal to authority, a way of saying the story will be ratified by the institutions that confer “real” status. That betrays a very specific late-20th/early-21st century media logic: alternative outlets can start the fire, but the evening news (or its modern equivalents) is where the blaze becomes history.
The subtext is patient aggression. If you can seed a narrative, keep it circulating, and create enough secondary signals - chatter, repetition, incremental “new” angles - the mainstream will eventually cover it, sometimes to avoid looking out of touch. Brock’s line captures how agenda-setting often works: not as a single scoop, but as pressure, timing, and the quiet confidence that the system can be made to follow.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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