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Media Madness: Donald Trump, the Press, and the War over the Truth
According to the media, Donald Trump could never become president. Now many are on a mission to prove he shouldn’t be president. The Trump administration and the press are at war—and as in any war, the first casualty has been truth. Bestselling author Howard Kurtz, host of Fox News’s Media Buzz and former Washington Post columnist, offers a stunning exposé of how supposedly objective journalists, alarmed by Trump’s success, have moved into the opposing camp. Kurtz’s exclusive, in-depth, behind-the-scenes interviews with reporters, anchors, and insiders within the Trump White House reveal the unprecedented hostility between the media and the president they cover.In Media Madness, you’ll Why White House strategist Steve Bannon told Trump he is in danger of being impeached How the love-hate relationship between the president and Morning Joe hosts—Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski—turned entirely to hate How Kellyanne Conway felt betrayed by journalists who befriended her—and how she fought backHow elite, mainstream news reporters—named and quoted—openly express their blatant contempt for Trump How Bannon tried to block short-lived Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci—and why Trump soured on himHow Ivanka and Jared Kushner aren’t the liberals the pundits want them to be—and why Trump tried to discourage them from joining the White House Why Trump believes some journalists harbor hatred for him—and how some liberals despise his voters How Trump is a far more pragmatic politician than the press often acknowledges (and how the press dismisses his flip-flops when he flops their way) What Trump got wrong about Charlottesville—and how Steve Bannon predicted the debacle How the media consistently overreached on the Russian “collusion” scandal Why Trump actually likes journalists, secretly meets with them, and allows the press unprecedented access Why Reince Priebus couldn’t do his job—and the real reason he left the White House How Sean Spicer privately berated journalists for bad reporting—and why he and Kellyanne Conway were relentlessly attacked by the mediaNever before has there been such an eye-opening, shocking look at what the White House and the media think about each other. It’s not pretty. But it also makes for the most important political book of the year.
283 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 29, 2018
127 people are currently reading
258 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 74 reviews
abandoned
February 4, 2018Ugh, I was not paying attention to who the author was or that he was a Fox News guy, or I woudn't have bothered. Read maybe 1-2 chapters and threw in the towel and returned to the library.
February 5, 2018
This book is for people interested in media on media, the future of media, and politics, so it is outside the usual mystery/thriller vein. As with anything political, readers will find this subject of interest, or not. I am not trying to persuade either way.
Kurtz has exhaustively reported--and from many inside White House sources--the competing narratives of President Trump's first year in office. He is not a Trump partisan--he is a partisan only of access, transparency and First-Amendment rights--but he is understandably dismayed that Trump's election caused so many journalists to abandon fact-based reporting in favor of speculation, advocacy, omission, and non-sourced opinion. During the R primaries, Kurtz was the first to report on one crucial difference in candidate Trump--how willing he was to make himself available to the media compared to other candidates.
Kurtz also has a television show and reading this book feels like binge-watching the last 12 months of it, e.g. kind of wearing. Nonetheless, I respect how in the midst of journalists-turning-advocates out of personal belief, Kurtz continues the hard, dogged work of straight reporting.
Kurtz has exhaustively reported--and from many inside White House sources--the competing narratives of President Trump's first year in office. He is not a Trump partisan--he is a partisan only of access, transparency and First-Amendment rights--but he is understandably dismayed that Trump's election caused so many journalists to abandon fact-based reporting in favor of speculation, advocacy, omission, and non-sourced opinion. During the R primaries, Kurtz was the first to report on one crucial difference in candidate Trump--how willing he was to make himself available to the media compared to other candidates.
Kurtz also has a television show and reading this book feels like binge-watching the last 12 months of it, e.g. kind of wearing. Nonetheless, I respect how in the midst of journalists-turning-advocates out of personal belief, Kurtz continues the hard, dogged work of straight reporting.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 30, 2018
There is a story to be told about how the media created the soulless ego machine known as the current president, but this is not it. I got about 25% of the way through it and could no longer take Kurtz's myopia masquerading as "balance." If in reality a Baboon, let's say, is driving a car, it is not media bias to call that driver a Baboon. Kurtz spent too long at the Fox News water cooler. Save your money and your reading time for the real story.
January 30, 2018
Unbelievable...it is not an attack when he brings it on himself
This whitewash was an inexcusable attempt by a noted media observer. The press didn’t put the words in Trumps mouth or dictate his actions. The hundred of lies are easily documented by simply listening. This became unreadable. I was on Trumps “Side” until his racist hate filled , childish actions drove me away. I had relatives who grew up in Nazi Germany. They are scared. They’ve seen this....Their words, not mine..Fascism starts by causing internal strife, scapegoating and attacking free press...
This whitewash was an inexcusable attempt by a noted media observer. The press didn’t put the words in Trumps mouth or dictate his actions. The hundred of lies are easily documented by simply listening. This became unreadable. I was on Trumps “Side” until his racist hate filled , childish actions drove me away. I had relatives who grew up in Nazi Germany. They are scared. They’ve seen this....Their words, not mine..Fascism starts by causing internal strife, scapegoating and attacking free press...
lookedinto-decidedagainst
January 22, 2018
September 20, 2020
It's no exaggeration to say that these days, America can't agree on reality.
Just today, The Daily Show did a piece on a Texas Trump voter golf course owner whose career may be shut
down because Trump's border wall will go right through his property. When pressed by the correspondent over why he voted for someone who threatens his livelihood, the owner said he thought the wall was metaphorical, and that, if he had to do it all over again, he'd still vote for Trump. Jesus.
And this week, The Independent reported that this was the first year ships could cross the Arctic without worrying about crashing into any major ice bodies because of global warming. The irony was not lost on the science community, with one scientist remarking that ships easily crossing the Arctic to deliver fossil fuels was " like a heavy smoker using his tracheotomy to smoke two cigarettes at once.” But this irony was lost on EPA director Scott Pruitt, who seems to have moved away from "global warming is fake," to "global warming will be awesome!" Jeeesus.
Shawn Otto makes a strong case that Postmodernism, with its subjective notions of empiricism, authority and facts themselves, has so saturated the media and our public perception of things that now, truth is simply just someone's point of view, which can be easily challenged. Because the media loves a good dogfight, and sells conflict, senastionalism and glitter over hard facts and nuanced commentary, news consumers shop for their news like they shop for McDonalds cheeseburgers, allowing not only Trump but others of his political, media and entertainment ilk to thrive. It's hard to dismiss such a notion when scrolling through the news these days. It's even harder to dismiss when you read a book like Media Madness, a steaming pile of cow manure served up to us by Howard Kurtz, in the guise of bemused veteran reporter who can't quite understand why so many in the Beltway are in such a tizzy about President Donald Trump. It's a bad book, but it's bad in its own peculiar way.
Kurtz, without being explicit about it, takes the whole truth-is-a-point-of-view schtick and applies it to the back-and-forth between Trump and the mainstream (and often the not-so-mainstream) media. His thesis in a nutshell is that, yes, the Don will often say or do something nuts, or wrong, or problematic, or wrong, or incorrect, or...just...wrong, which then gives the media an excuse to "go after him," which is not their job. They're supposed to be reporting on the crazy, not commenting upon it.
Anyone of sound mind and disposition would find plenty to condemn about the media, but Kurtz is on another planet here. Let's take some of his central points one by one:
1) The press is unfair to Donald Trump. Over and over again, Kurtz gives the blow by blow that erupts between the newspapers and cable TV punditry when issues like Charlottesville, shootings, hurricanes and, yes, insane Trumptweets happen, and he has a curious approach to describing it. When Trump didn't come out to condemn Roy Moore's alleged sexual predator behavior in the 1980s during his campaign but couldn't wait to criticize Al Franken's simulated groping of a sleeping woman in 2006, Kurtz writes, "That served as an engraved invitation to the press to accuse the president of selective morality." When Trump complains about the Department of Justice not investigating Hillary Clinton and her "crooked" "dishonesty" during the election, that "allowed the press to depict Trump as fostering a banana republic." And when Trump went on the air during the campaign to take questions that anyone, surely, would anticipate being difficult, given his propensity for unfounded claims and unfettered racism and sexism, what he's really doing, according to Kurtz, is "expos(ing) himself to constant questioning, even when negative stories were in the air."
Neat trick, this. Trump does X, X is crazy, media reports on and asks about X, which is an attack. Therefore, the media is unfair. This is how Kurtz is able to deliver the thoughts of White House confederates like Kellyann Conway, who, in his narrative, muses that the media is "grossly unfair" because they "use Trump's language" to "impugn his character." As if a president's words were completely immaterial.
2) Trump and the media have conflicting truth This is Otto's point yet again. "Truth," as David Mitchell's Sonmi-451 reminds us in Cloud Atlas, is singular; its versions are mistruths. If something is true for me, it's got to be true for everyone; otherwise it's not a truth. Right?
Not according to Kurtz. When Trump claims 5 million illegal immigrants voted for Clinton without a shred of evidence, that's just a "Trump hunch" instead of out-and-out rubbish. Likewise, Kurtz sniffs at the New York Times headline proclaiming it a "lie" (quotes his)? How can Kurtz tell us that CNN's Jake Tapper "believed" the truth doesn't have two sides--that's a fact. And after delivering these, and multiple accounts of Trump's tweets and claims related in this book, most to naught, about Obama wiretapping and fraudulent voting and Democrat/Russia collusions, how can Kurtz write that Trump and the media "were each clinging to their own version of the truth"? There is no version, as Sonmi said. There's just the truth. So if you conclude Trump is lying (or incorrect, if you prefer), how do you equate the media with those lies when they simply report on what he says and does, and then call it what it is--a lie?
Even when boxed into a corner by his own facts, Kurtz bends and twists reality with all the dexterity of a human pretzel. he quotes Trump's tweet complaining about how the Senate Intel Committee needed to investigate "the Fake News Networks," dismisses it as Trump "clearly venting" and then laments that "the mere suggestion that the government should investigate the press showed how low things had sunk." Right. Things "had sunk," not "Trump sunk things."
Kurtz, incidentally, is on firmer ground when he's careful to qualify claims about the overblown media narrative about Trump and his foibles. The charges about Russia, most evenheaded analysts point out, don't add up to collusion so much as carelessness and complacency, and yes, there are people like Kathy Griffith and her severed Trump head, or Anderson Cooper and his comment to Jeffrey Lord about Trump "taking a dump" on his desk and approving. Vulgar, bad taste, agreed. But the idea that stunts like that represent the corpus of the media coverage Trump has been getting is absurd. It's impossible to cover this kind of insanity and not react to it, however professionally. The idea of "balance" and "evenhandedness" is meaningless when you're on the sinking ship, calling out where the hole in the hull is. That Harvard study that cited overwhelming negative coverage of Trump's first 100 days, for example--Kurtz points to it predictably enough, but misses an essential point. When white supremacists protest and kill a counter protestor, and Trump says "both sides" are equally to blame, as the Washington Post's Erik Wemple pointed out, "How to engineer a positive spin on that progression?"
Moreover, not all of Kurtz's evidence of this media hatred rings true to me. He claims that Charles Blow called Trump a cretin and said "I honestly hate this man," but if he said it on the record, I can't find it anywhere.
3) Give Trump credit where credit is due This is the hardest to swallow. When Kurtz seeks to speak positively about the 45th, he reveals just how hard that is for even a supporter unwilling to wear racism, privilege or xenophobia on their sleeve to do. After Charlottesville, for example, when Trump tweeted his nauseating remark about how it was "sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart" because of the taking down of Confederate monuments, Kurtz deemed this "reasonable." (For that alone, Kurtz, get bent.) And when Trump threatens to axe NAFTA via executive order (despite previous tweets condemning Executive orders as overreach), only to have Canadian Prime Minister Gary Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto frenziedly call him the next day, that's clever politicking done by a real estate deal maker. (What he supposedly got out of those calls, we don't know, because Kurtz insinuates that even getting them at all was a major victory. Whatever.) Likewise, when Trump told an adoring crowd, shortly after his repugnant Charlottesville comments, "If you want to discover the source of the division in our country, look no further than the fake news and the crooked media," Kurtz calls that "media Jiu-Jitsu," flipping blame to his accusers and away from himself. Funny. To me, it looks like Pee Wee Herman cracking "I know you are but what am I?"
I knew very little about Howard Kurtz before I read this book, and I don't know much more about him now. But based on his reporting, I'll go ahead and call it: he's a shill, a hack, a reporter with one or two worthwhile observations about the fervent packdog journalism the Fourth Estate engages in on the Trump administration buried in a morass of deflections, skewed accounts and so much out-and-out bullshit that the fact that the Newseum is hosting him to talk about these events makes me queasy. The Trump administration has generated enough embarassing news stories already. Now it's generating cringe-worthy "insider accounts" cloaking media criticism in a partisan hairshirt. Fox News reporter Jeanine Pirro is apparently mulling over doing a book response to Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury , which I can't see as being much different than this one. Three more years of books like this? There is no God.
Just today, The Daily Show did a piece on a Texas Trump voter golf course owner whose career may be shut
down because Trump's border wall will go right through his property. When pressed by the correspondent over why he voted for someone who threatens his livelihood, the owner said he thought the wall was metaphorical, and that, if he had to do it all over again, he'd still vote for Trump. Jesus.
And this week, The Independent reported that this was the first year ships could cross the Arctic without worrying about crashing into any major ice bodies because of global warming. The irony was not lost on the science community, with one scientist remarking that ships easily crossing the Arctic to deliver fossil fuels was " like a heavy smoker using his tracheotomy to smoke two cigarettes at once.” But this irony was lost on EPA director Scott Pruitt, who seems to have moved away from "global warming is fake," to "global warming will be awesome!" Jeeesus.
Shawn Otto makes a strong case that Postmodernism, with its subjective notions of empiricism, authority and facts themselves, has so saturated the media and our public perception of things that now, truth is simply just someone's point of view, which can be easily challenged. Because the media loves a good dogfight, and sells conflict, senastionalism and glitter over hard facts and nuanced commentary, news consumers shop for their news like they shop for McDonalds cheeseburgers, allowing not only Trump but others of his political, media and entertainment ilk to thrive. It's hard to dismiss such a notion when scrolling through the news these days. It's even harder to dismiss when you read a book like Media Madness, a steaming pile of cow manure served up to us by Howard Kurtz, in the guise of bemused veteran reporter who can't quite understand why so many in the Beltway are in such a tizzy about President Donald Trump. It's a bad book, but it's bad in its own peculiar way.
Kurtz, without being explicit about it, takes the whole truth-is-a-point-of-view schtick and applies it to the back-and-forth between Trump and the mainstream (and often the not-so-mainstream) media. His thesis in a nutshell is that, yes, the Don will often say or do something nuts, or wrong, or problematic, or wrong, or incorrect, or...just...wrong, which then gives the media an excuse to "go after him," which is not their job. They're supposed to be reporting on the crazy, not commenting upon it.
Anyone of sound mind and disposition would find plenty to condemn about the media, but Kurtz is on another planet here. Let's take some of his central points one by one:
1) The press is unfair to Donald Trump. Over and over again, Kurtz gives the blow by blow that erupts between the newspapers and cable TV punditry when issues like Charlottesville, shootings, hurricanes and, yes, insane Trumptweets happen, and he has a curious approach to describing it. When Trump didn't come out to condemn Roy Moore's alleged sexual predator behavior in the 1980s during his campaign but couldn't wait to criticize Al Franken's simulated groping of a sleeping woman in 2006, Kurtz writes, "That served as an engraved invitation to the press to accuse the president of selective morality." When Trump complains about the Department of Justice not investigating Hillary Clinton and her "crooked" "dishonesty" during the election, that "allowed the press to depict Trump as fostering a banana republic." And when Trump went on the air during the campaign to take questions that anyone, surely, would anticipate being difficult, given his propensity for unfounded claims and unfettered racism and sexism, what he's really doing, according to Kurtz, is "expos(ing) himself to constant questioning, even when negative stories were in the air."
Neat trick, this. Trump does X, X is crazy, media reports on and asks about X, which is an attack. Therefore, the media is unfair. This is how Kurtz is able to deliver the thoughts of White House confederates like Kellyann Conway, who, in his narrative, muses that the media is "grossly unfair" because they "use Trump's language" to "impugn his character." As if a president's words were completely immaterial.
2) Trump and the media have conflicting truth This is Otto's point yet again. "Truth," as David Mitchell's Sonmi-451 reminds us in Cloud Atlas, is singular; its versions are mistruths. If something is true for me, it's got to be true for everyone; otherwise it's not a truth. Right?
Not according to Kurtz. When Trump claims 5 million illegal immigrants voted for Clinton without a shred of evidence, that's just a "Trump hunch" instead of out-and-out rubbish. Likewise, Kurtz sniffs at the New York Times headline proclaiming it a "lie" (quotes his)? How can Kurtz tell us that CNN's Jake Tapper "believed" the truth doesn't have two sides--that's a fact. And after delivering these, and multiple accounts of Trump's tweets and claims related in this book, most to naught, about Obama wiretapping and fraudulent voting and Democrat/Russia collusions, how can Kurtz write that Trump and the media "were each clinging to their own version of the truth"? There is no version, as Sonmi said. There's just the truth. So if you conclude Trump is lying (or incorrect, if you prefer), how do you equate the media with those lies when they simply report on what he says and does, and then call it what it is--a lie?
Even when boxed into a corner by his own facts, Kurtz bends and twists reality with all the dexterity of a human pretzel. he quotes Trump's tweet complaining about how the Senate Intel Committee needed to investigate "the Fake News Networks," dismisses it as Trump "clearly venting" and then laments that "the mere suggestion that the government should investigate the press showed how low things had sunk." Right. Things "had sunk," not "Trump sunk things."
Kurtz, incidentally, is on firmer ground when he's careful to qualify claims about the overblown media narrative about Trump and his foibles. The charges about Russia, most evenheaded analysts point out, don't add up to collusion so much as carelessness and complacency, and yes, there are people like Kathy Griffith and her severed Trump head, or Anderson Cooper and his comment to Jeffrey Lord about Trump "taking a dump" on his desk and approving. Vulgar, bad taste, agreed. But the idea that stunts like that represent the corpus of the media coverage Trump has been getting is absurd. It's impossible to cover this kind of insanity and not react to it, however professionally. The idea of "balance" and "evenhandedness" is meaningless when you're on the sinking ship, calling out where the hole in the hull is. That Harvard study that cited overwhelming negative coverage of Trump's first 100 days, for example--Kurtz points to it predictably enough, but misses an essential point. When white supremacists protest and kill a counter protestor, and Trump says "both sides" are equally to blame, as the Washington Post's Erik Wemple pointed out, "How to engineer a positive spin on that progression?"
Moreover, not all of Kurtz's evidence of this media hatred rings true to me. He claims that Charles Blow called Trump a cretin and said "I honestly hate this man," but if he said it on the record, I can't find it anywhere.
3) Give Trump credit where credit is due This is the hardest to swallow. When Kurtz seeks to speak positively about the 45th, he reveals just how hard that is for even a supporter unwilling to wear racism, privilege or xenophobia on their sleeve to do. After Charlottesville, for example, when Trump tweeted his nauseating remark about how it was "sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart" because of the taking down of Confederate monuments, Kurtz deemed this "reasonable." (For that alone, Kurtz, get bent.) And when Trump threatens to axe NAFTA via executive order (despite previous tweets condemning Executive orders as overreach), only to have Canadian Prime Minister Gary Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto frenziedly call him the next day, that's clever politicking done by a real estate deal maker. (What he supposedly got out of those calls, we don't know, because Kurtz insinuates that even getting them at all was a major victory. Whatever.) Likewise, when Trump told an adoring crowd, shortly after his repugnant Charlottesville comments, "If you want to discover the source of the division in our country, look no further than the fake news and the crooked media," Kurtz calls that "media Jiu-Jitsu," flipping blame to his accusers and away from himself. Funny. To me, it looks like Pee Wee Herman cracking "I know you are but what am I?"
I knew very little about Howard Kurtz before I read this book, and I don't know much more about him now. But based on his reporting, I'll go ahead and call it: he's a shill, a hack, a reporter with one or two worthwhile observations about the fervent packdog journalism the Fourth Estate engages in on the Trump administration buried in a morass of deflections, skewed accounts and so much out-and-out bullshit that the fact that the Newseum is hosting him to talk about these events makes me queasy. The Trump administration has generated enough embarassing news stories already. Now it's generating cringe-worthy "insider accounts" cloaking media criticism in a partisan hairshirt. Fox News reporter Jeanine Pirro is apparently mulling over doing a book response to Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury , which I can't see as being much different than this one. Three more years of books like this? There is no God.
March 22, 2018
Hack or hustler humanization of Donald Trump while he still holds office. As revelations come out disproving Kurtz his revenue must be tanking.
Kurtz attempts to normalize dangerous behavior. He works for Fox News. The only value I siphoned out of this garbage is to remember that Trump is a human being. Dehumanization leads to trouble. Always. I have to be diligent.
MSM
Kurtz claims media is responsible for Trump’s inability to get stuff done, when, in fact, media amplifies his message. Trump wants the love of the coastal elites, including MSM, but can’t get it. He resorts to negative press. Any attention is better than being ignored. And ignored he is not.
“Conway had argued … that the media were paying too much attention to his tweets at the expense of his policies, but these tweets were hard to ignore.”
Trump set the tone for his Administration. He lowered the bar to the ground. The MSM were indeed perplexed on how to cover this creature.
Trump tweet: “Why isn’t our Senate Intel looking into Fake News Networks in OUR country to see why so much of our news is just made up---FAKE!” Kurtz commentary: “He was clearly venting, but the mere suggestion that the government should investigate the press showed how low things had sunk.” The president does not get the “vent” by calling for the fourth estate to be investigated by the federal government. He doesn’t get to call truth he doesn’t like “FAKE.”
Truth
“The media take everything literally, and Trump pitches his arguments at a gut level. It is asymmetrical warfare.” “… journalists took Trump’s words all to literally.”
“[Jake] Tapper fervently believed there weren’t two sides when it came to the truth; there was only the truth.” WTF?
“A growing number of journalists were calling Trump a liar….” He is demonstrably just that. Black is white, 2+2=5 daily!
Apparent sources for the book who get the kid gloves
Kellyanne Conway
“A fascinating mixture of charm and ambition, of barbed humor and steely message discipline….” Somehow I missed this version of Conway! She’s a crony phony.
Shaun Spicer
Aaaaw. In over his head.
Steve Bannon
Eminence Grise
Jared Kushner
“He hadn’t put the meetings on his security forms because he thought ‘foreign contacts’ meant relationships, not individual meetings.” Pure BS. Is this low IQ or mendacity? Both.
Russia
Belittles Trump-Russia. Nothingburger.
North Korea
On Trump meeting Kim Jong Un with “fire and fury” The MSM, which greatly preferred quiet diplomacy, immediately depicted Trump as brining the country to the brink of nuclear confrontation….” Ha! Now Trump want talks. He didn’t realize NK has long wanted talks for prestige. I saw a Fox News montage on Twitter recently showing their heads spewing against Obama for suggesting he would be open to talks. Then you see the heads praising Trump for his genius breakthrough calling for talks with no preconditions. One head (Hannity) was even the same bloviator against talks then for them.
Obama
“Imagine for a moment that any of these stories and columns had been written during the last administration. Imagine anchors, comedians, has-beens, and ordinary folks drawing a gusher of positive press for calling Obama a traitor, liar, fabricator, and someone reminiscent of Hitler and Pharaoh, and chastising him for presiding over and Easter egg hunt. Those critics would have been diagnosed with Obama Derangement Syndrome. But in the Trump era, it was a sure-fire ticket to good press.” This statement is deranged. Imagine Obama paying hush money to a porn actress, having 3 wives, different baby mommas and bragging about grabbing women by the pussy! Kurtz is high?
Watergate
“Never mind Cox was investigating real crimes while the Russia allegations remained murky.” WTF is Kurtz smoking?!? Not leaked to public = murky? Those connections will come to light. Heard of Felix Sater?
Sexual Misconduct
As the press “dug up” sexual misconduct charges against powerful men who were not the president, “”There was cultural explosion that, for once, had nothing to do with the White House.” Really??? I think #metoo has a lot to do with the primary WH occupant.
Kurtz seems to belittle the sexual misconduct allegations against Trump. Yeah, that guy who had a lawyer pay $130,000 in hush money to a porn actress. Tonight Anderson Cooper of the “Fake News Network” will interview another Trump conquest who is feeling less encumbered by her NDA. I know these 2 examples of consensual sex (but not the kind you don’t have to pay for) but, hey, if he can grab women by the pussy, who is to say the misconduct allegations are ridiculous? Kurtz gets everything wrong. Oh, I forgot, that’s not Trump’s voice on the Access Hollywood tape!
Fun observations
Confine Trump and he explodes eventually.
“Trump was acting like a NY real estate guy—making unrealistic demands, pulling back, issuing threats, making the other side think you might do something crazy—all in the service of gaining negotiating leverage.” Kurtz seems to be justifying Trump’s modus operandi. Does Trump know he’s doing this, or is this just his low-level operating mode?
“His staff had a name for when Trump utterly ignored their collective advice: defiance disorder.” What’s the unprintable version? Fucking moron?
Kurtz attempts to normalize dangerous behavior. He works for Fox News. The only value I siphoned out of this garbage is to remember that Trump is a human being. Dehumanization leads to trouble. Always. I have to be diligent.
MSM
Kurtz claims media is responsible for Trump’s inability to get stuff done, when, in fact, media amplifies his message. Trump wants the love of the coastal elites, including MSM, but can’t get it. He resorts to negative press. Any attention is better than being ignored. And ignored he is not.
“Conway had argued … that the media were paying too much attention to his tweets at the expense of his policies, but these tweets were hard to ignore.”
Trump set the tone for his Administration. He lowered the bar to the ground. The MSM were indeed perplexed on how to cover this creature.
Trump tweet: “Why isn’t our Senate Intel looking into Fake News Networks in OUR country to see why so much of our news is just made up---FAKE!” Kurtz commentary: “He was clearly venting, but the mere suggestion that the government should investigate the press showed how low things had sunk.” The president does not get the “vent” by calling for the fourth estate to be investigated by the federal government. He doesn’t get to call truth he doesn’t like “FAKE.”
Truth
“The media take everything literally, and Trump pitches his arguments at a gut level. It is asymmetrical warfare.” “… journalists took Trump’s words all to literally.”
“[Jake] Tapper fervently believed there weren’t two sides when it came to the truth; there was only the truth.” WTF?
“A growing number of journalists were calling Trump a liar….” He is demonstrably just that. Black is white, 2+2=5 daily!
Apparent sources for the book who get the kid gloves
Kellyanne Conway
“A fascinating mixture of charm and ambition, of barbed humor and steely message discipline….” Somehow I missed this version of Conway! She’s a crony phony.
Shaun Spicer
Aaaaw. In over his head.
Steve Bannon
Eminence Grise
Jared Kushner
“He hadn’t put the meetings on his security forms because he thought ‘foreign contacts’ meant relationships, not individual meetings.” Pure BS. Is this low IQ or mendacity? Both.
Russia
Belittles Trump-Russia. Nothingburger.
North Korea
On Trump meeting Kim Jong Un with “fire and fury” The MSM, which greatly preferred quiet diplomacy, immediately depicted Trump as brining the country to the brink of nuclear confrontation….” Ha! Now Trump want talks. He didn’t realize NK has long wanted talks for prestige. I saw a Fox News montage on Twitter recently showing their heads spewing against Obama for suggesting he would be open to talks. Then you see the heads praising Trump for his genius breakthrough calling for talks with no preconditions. One head (Hannity) was even the same bloviator against talks then for them.
Obama
“Imagine for a moment that any of these stories and columns had been written during the last administration. Imagine anchors, comedians, has-beens, and ordinary folks drawing a gusher of positive press for calling Obama a traitor, liar, fabricator, and someone reminiscent of Hitler and Pharaoh, and chastising him for presiding over and Easter egg hunt. Those critics would have been diagnosed with Obama Derangement Syndrome. But in the Trump era, it was a sure-fire ticket to good press.” This statement is deranged. Imagine Obama paying hush money to a porn actress, having 3 wives, different baby mommas and bragging about grabbing women by the pussy! Kurtz is high?
Watergate
“Never mind Cox was investigating real crimes while the Russia allegations remained murky.” WTF is Kurtz smoking?!? Not leaked to public = murky? Those connections will come to light. Heard of Felix Sater?
Sexual Misconduct
As the press “dug up” sexual misconduct charges against powerful men who were not the president, “”There was cultural explosion that, for once, had nothing to do with the White House.” Really??? I think #metoo has a lot to do with the primary WH occupant.
Kurtz seems to belittle the sexual misconduct allegations against Trump. Yeah, that guy who had a lawyer pay $130,000 in hush money to a porn actress. Tonight Anderson Cooper of the “Fake News Network” will interview another Trump conquest who is feeling less encumbered by her NDA. I know these 2 examples of consensual sex (but not the kind you don’t have to pay for) but, hey, if he can grab women by the pussy, who is to say the misconduct allegations are ridiculous? Kurtz gets everything wrong. Oh, I forgot, that’s not Trump’s voice on the Access Hollywood tape!
Fun observations
Confine Trump and he explodes eventually.
“Trump was acting like a NY real estate guy—making unrealistic demands, pulling back, issuing threats, making the other side think you might do something crazy—all in the service of gaining negotiating leverage.” Kurtz seems to be justifying Trump’s modus operandi. Does Trump know he’s doing this, or is this just his low-level operating mode?
“His staff had a name for when Trump utterly ignored their collective advice: defiance disorder.” What’s the unprintable version? Fucking moron?
February 7, 2018
Fox News commentator Howard Kurtz begins his new book, Media Madness, conceding that "Donald Trump is staking his presidency, as he did his election, on nothing less than destroying the credibility of the news media . . ." And then he proceeds to devote nearly all of the book's 256 pages attempting to prove that the media is doing Trump's job for him, undermining its own credibility. In other words, this book is just about what you might expect to come from any but the most rabidly reactionary Fox News host.
A questionable claim to be neutral
Kurtz goes to considerable lengths to make the case that he does not support President Trump. He professes to be neutral. He frequently cites Trump's egregious lies, insults, and grossly exaggerated claims. But his case is weak. Again and again, Kurtz makes clear that he regards the media's reports on those lies, insults, and claims to be inappropriate. The implication is that, since Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, he should be immune from any but the most restrained and polite criticism. Yet Kurtz insists that the coverage of the president represents "the most catastrophic media failure in a generation."
Donald Trump's over-the-top behavior
Unfortunately, Donald Trump's over-the-top behavior is so far from what any thinking person has a right to expect from the occupant of the Oval Office that I am amazed some of the coverage has been as mild as it is. When, in more than two centuries since the founding of the republic, have we had a president who:
shamelessly used his office to promote his own private business interests;
repeatedly insulted private citizens in the grossest possible way;
broadcast his own unfiltered and uninformed thoughts to the public at large;
demonstrated a near-total lack of knowledge about public policy;
insisted on personal loyalty from officials whose job it is to uphold the law, not support the president;
attacked the FBI, the CIA, and the Justice Department, not just once but again and again;
openly campaigned to shut down an officially-sanctioned investigation into him and the people around him; and
undermined decades of bipartisan foreign policy by cozying up to the criminal regime that controls Russia.
Given these facts, it hardly seems legitimate for Trump's leading media spokesperson to cry, "We get no forbearance. We get nothing! We get no respect! We get no deference!" I'd always thought respect needed to be earned. And Kurtz writes, almost approvingly, that Trump "didn't carefully weigh his words as other politicians did." But how can this be a good thing in the President of the United States?
From a Fox News host: chaos and dysfunction in the White House
Media Madness is better written and less hysterical than Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury. Yet the two books paint very similar pictures of how the White House operates. Here, the term "madness" seems appropriate. Back-biting and leaks to the press are a daily occurrence. Trump's tweets and his frequent direct calls to reporters frequently contradict set policy or statements by his communications staff. And in off-the-cuff remarks or unscripted outbursts in press interviews, Trump undercuts his staff and his own high-level appointees.
Clearly, much of the content of Media Madness comes from the two White House staff members who are most familiar to the media: Presidential Counsellor Kellyanne Conway and former Press Secretary Sean Spicer. Spicer comes across as pathetic, stumbling over words and forever finding himself contradicted by the boss. After Trump repeatedly insisted that Barack Obama had bugged Trump Tower, "Spicer had to keep deflecting questions about whether Trump should admit he was wrong and apologize to Obama." If there is a hero in this story, it's Conway. "She wasn't the one saying that major media organizations were 'fake news.' She wasn't out there talking about the 'dishonest media.' She wasn't the person who had called the press the 'opposition party.' That was all Trump and Bannon. But she took the heat."
Kurtz's book was not well received
I am far from alone in my negative view of Kurtz's book. In The Guardian (January 29, 2018), Lloyd Green's review, "Fox News host Kurtz stacks deck in favor of Trump," concludes that the book "succeeds as another window on the dysfunction that characterizes Trump’s White House. As a critique of the media, it comes up short." And Margaret Sullivan's review of the book for the Washington Post is headlined, "Fox News host’s hyperbolic take on the ‘war’ between Trump and the press." Sullivan rejects Kurtz's thesis that "war" in underway between the media and the president. She terms the relationship "codependency." As Trump himself insists, he's a "ratings machine." Kurtz seems to think that the news media should just ignore Trump's more outrageous outbursts!
I'll close this review with a confession: I read only somewhat more than half of this book before giving up in disgust. My blood pressure was rising dangerously. This is the ONLY one of the nearly 1,000 reviews I've written for this blog without reading the book to the end. If you've gotten to this point in this review, I think you'll understand.
A questionable claim to be neutral
Kurtz goes to considerable lengths to make the case that he does not support President Trump. He professes to be neutral. He frequently cites Trump's egregious lies, insults, and grossly exaggerated claims. But his case is weak. Again and again, Kurtz makes clear that he regards the media's reports on those lies, insults, and claims to be inappropriate. The implication is that, since Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, he should be immune from any but the most restrained and polite criticism. Yet Kurtz insists that the coverage of the president represents "the most catastrophic media failure in a generation."
Donald Trump's over-the-top behavior
Unfortunately, Donald Trump's over-the-top behavior is so far from what any thinking person has a right to expect from the occupant of the Oval Office that I am amazed some of the coverage has been as mild as it is. When, in more than two centuries since the founding of the republic, have we had a president who:
shamelessly used his office to promote his own private business interests;
repeatedly insulted private citizens in the grossest possible way;
broadcast his own unfiltered and uninformed thoughts to the public at large;
demonstrated a near-total lack of knowledge about public policy;
insisted on personal loyalty from officials whose job it is to uphold the law, not support the president;
attacked the FBI, the CIA, and the Justice Department, not just once but again and again;
openly campaigned to shut down an officially-sanctioned investigation into him and the people around him; and
undermined decades of bipartisan foreign policy by cozying up to the criminal regime that controls Russia.
Given these facts, it hardly seems legitimate for Trump's leading media spokesperson to cry, "We get no forbearance. We get nothing! We get no respect! We get no deference!" I'd always thought respect needed to be earned. And Kurtz writes, almost approvingly, that Trump "didn't carefully weigh his words as other politicians did." But how can this be a good thing in the President of the United States?
From a Fox News host: chaos and dysfunction in the White House
Media Madness is better written and less hysterical than Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury. Yet the two books paint very similar pictures of how the White House operates. Here, the term "madness" seems appropriate. Back-biting and leaks to the press are a daily occurrence. Trump's tweets and his frequent direct calls to reporters frequently contradict set policy or statements by his communications staff. And in off-the-cuff remarks or unscripted outbursts in press interviews, Trump undercuts his staff and his own high-level appointees.
Clearly, much of the content of Media Madness comes from the two White House staff members who are most familiar to the media: Presidential Counsellor Kellyanne Conway and former Press Secretary Sean Spicer. Spicer comes across as pathetic, stumbling over words and forever finding himself contradicted by the boss. After Trump repeatedly insisted that Barack Obama had bugged Trump Tower, "Spicer had to keep deflecting questions about whether Trump should admit he was wrong and apologize to Obama." If there is a hero in this story, it's Conway. "She wasn't the one saying that major media organizations were 'fake news.' She wasn't out there talking about the 'dishonest media.' She wasn't the person who had called the press the 'opposition party.' That was all Trump and Bannon. But she took the heat."
Kurtz's book was not well received
I am far from alone in my negative view of Kurtz's book. In The Guardian (January 29, 2018), Lloyd Green's review, "Fox News host Kurtz stacks deck in favor of Trump," concludes that the book "succeeds as another window on the dysfunction that characterizes Trump’s White House. As a critique of the media, it comes up short." And Margaret Sullivan's review of the book for the Washington Post is headlined, "Fox News host’s hyperbolic take on the ‘war’ between Trump and the press." Sullivan rejects Kurtz's thesis that "war" in underway between the media and the president. She terms the relationship "codependency." As Trump himself insists, he's a "ratings machine." Kurtz seems to think that the news media should just ignore Trump's more outrageous outbursts!
I'll close this review with a confession: I read only somewhat more than half of this book before giving up in disgust. My blood pressure was rising dangerously. This is the ONLY one of the nearly 1,000 reviews I've written for this blog without reading the book to the end. If you've gotten to this point in this review, I think you'll understand.
June 3, 2018
Very neutral book. He hits President Trump when he needs to and he hits the biased media constantly! Very interesting book and a look into some of the staff changes at the White House. I would recommend it for a neutral view of it all
February 4, 2018
A disturbing account of the media landscape during the opening months of the Trump administration. While Kurtz is forthcoming with the flaws of the President, he reserves most of his vitriol for the Press and the overwhelming bias they have shown - what he calls their Trump Trauma. Future historians will be horrified by the stories recounted by Kurtz. “Donald Trump will not be president forever, but the media’s reputation, badly scarred during these polarizing years, might never recover.”
January 29, 2018
Trump Story
This book is not worth reading. The author has a one-note symphony, insisting that the press is being unfair to Donald Trump. He says that Trump exaggerates or plays down facts, but that is just his style. The whole book is simply a bringing out Trump's "missteps" and then quoting members of the press as they respond. There is no acknowledgement that he may be a bad or dangerous president.
This book is not worth reading. The author has a one-note symphony, insisting that the press is being unfair to Donald Trump. He says that Trump exaggerates or plays down facts, but that is just his style. The whole book is simply a bringing out Trump's "missteps" and then quoting members of the press as they respond. There is no acknowledgement that he may be a bad or dangerous president.
Read
February 24, 2018I’ve been alternately bored and traumatized by this book from Fox News personality Howard Kurtz. I thought I could handle an opposing viewpoint, but it’s just impossible for me to read this. Kurtz is a 45 supporter and apologist, who believes that the press has unfairly attacked the administration. Uh, no. I’m moving along to a less excruciating choice.
#DNF
#DNF
July 3, 2019
Balanced
April 2, 2018
I read this book so you won’t have to. I feel badly that I may have induced one lady to read it. I had just picked the book up from the library and started reading it while waiting for my lunch in a restaurant. She saw the book’s cover and came to my table to ask if it was easy to read and worth reading. I had just started it. I told her it was easy reading and interestingly written.
And so it is. Short chapters broken up into short segments, simple and fairly snappy sentences. But worth reading? That’s a different question.
Kurtz’s book came out about the same time as Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury”, maybe shortly after. I was going to read “Fire…” but it got so much media attention, was quoted so often, and Wolff gave so many interviews that I felt reading it would be redundant. I opted instead for Kurtz’ book, even though I knew he went to Fox TV after, I think, he got dismissed from the “Daily Beast” for some shoddy articles. He had been a long time host of “Reliable Sources” on CNN and written for the “Washington Post,” among other newspapers. So I thought his book might be balanced. He likes to think of himself that way. In his book, he quotes the President as telling him “The trouble with you is that you are too down the middle.” He takes this as a compliment, although it wasn’t clear that’s how Trump meant it. Anyway I wasn’t prepared for his book to be an outright apologia for Trump in his war with the media. It’s the media that’s mad, as he does say in his title, not Trump. Kurtz’ aim is to show that although the Trump presidency will not last forever, the damage the media is doing to themselves may.
It’s not that Kurtz presents Trump and his staff as blameless. He often writes that Trump brought upon himself the furor which develops over one or another of his comments. Same for staff. But the comments/tweets/actions are almost always characterized as “missteps,” not deliberate lies, deliberate provocations, fabrications, or outrageous claims, which they often are. On the other hand, the media’s reactions are characterized as excessive and usually unmerited. He seems to be especially close to Kelly Anne Conway, extolling her good looks and writing if she were a Democrat that without question she would be on a magazine cover. Well, to each his own. But he consistently defends the many comments that have gotten her into trouble. “What she meant…,” he says and then goes on to rewrite her statement in a non-offensive or less combative way. He even finds a way to defend “alternative facts.” He does this a lot. I’m sure that Conway (among other Trump insiders) must have been a main source for Kurtz’ book. He writes about what this and that White House person was thinking at any given time, repeats private conversations, and describes rivalries among White House staff and the like without ever attributing his sources; but it’s real insider stuff. He knows what was in Bannon’s thoughts and what his motives were and shows how his advice was usually correct, though often unheeded. He knows what was in Priebus’ thoughts, too, and how he got fired before he could announce his resignation. He also knows what Scaramucci thought, but who didn’t?
He’s very fond of Ivanka and Jared. Jared is mild mannered and undeserving of the criticism he gets and has not engaged in nor attempted to engage in questionable business dealings. Kurtz doesn’t comment on whether Jared is qualified for his large portfolio; he just comments on how he’s treated unfairly by the media. As for Trump himself, Kurtz thinks that the press doesn’t understand when Trump is just joking or sometimes when he’s just venting. Of course those comments should not be taken literally, Kurtz explains. And in some instances when the press has jumped all over Trump for something he’s said or done, Kurtz simply explains that he sees it differently.
I will concede that at times Kurtz convinced me the press has gone over-the-top and is too gleeful when they criticize of Trump. Sometimes they deserve the criticism that Kurtz gives them. But often they are doing their job.
And so it is. Short chapters broken up into short segments, simple and fairly snappy sentences. But worth reading? That’s a different question.
Kurtz’s book came out about the same time as Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury”, maybe shortly after. I was going to read “Fire…” but it got so much media attention, was quoted so often, and Wolff gave so many interviews that I felt reading it would be redundant. I opted instead for Kurtz’ book, even though I knew he went to Fox TV after, I think, he got dismissed from the “Daily Beast” for some shoddy articles. He had been a long time host of “Reliable Sources” on CNN and written for the “Washington Post,” among other newspapers. So I thought his book might be balanced. He likes to think of himself that way. In his book, he quotes the President as telling him “The trouble with you is that you are too down the middle.” He takes this as a compliment, although it wasn’t clear that’s how Trump meant it. Anyway I wasn’t prepared for his book to be an outright apologia for Trump in his war with the media. It’s the media that’s mad, as he does say in his title, not Trump. Kurtz’ aim is to show that although the Trump presidency will not last forever, the damage the media is doing to themselves may.
It’s not that Kurtz presents Trump and his staff as blameless. He often writes that Trump brought upon himself the furor which develops over one or another of his comments. Same for staff. But the comments/tweets/actions are almost always characterized as “missteps,” not deliberate lies, deliberate provocations, fabrications, or outrageous claims, which they often are. On the other hand, the media’s reactions are characterized as excessive and usually unmerited. He seems to be especially close to Kelly Anne Conway, extolling her good looks and writing if she were a Democrat that without question she would be on a magazine cover. Well, to each his own. But he consistently defends the many comments that have gotten her into trouble. “What she meant…,” he says and then goes on to rewrite her statement in a non-offensive or less combative way. He even finds a way to defend “alternative facts.” He does this a lot. I’m sure that Conway (among other Trump insiders) must have been a main source for Kurtz’ book. He writes about what this and that White House person was thinking at any given time, repeats private conversations, and describes rivalries among White House staff and the like without ever attributing his sources; but it’s real insider stuff. He knows what was in Bannon’s thoughts and what his motives were and shows how his advice was usually correct, though often unheeded. He knows what was in Priebus’ thoughts, too, and how he got fired before he could announce his resignation. He also knows what Scaramucci thought, but who didn’t?
He’s very fond of Ivanka and Jared. Jared is mild mannered and undeserving of the criticism he gets and has not engaged in nor attempted to engage in questionable business dealings. Kurtz doesn’t comment on whether Jared is qualified for his large portfolio; he just comments on how he’s treated unfairly by the media. As for Trump himself, Kurtz thinks that the press doesn’t understand when Trump is just joking or sometimes when he’s just venting. Of course those comments should not be taken literally, Kurtz explains. And in some instances when the press has jumped all over Trump for something he’s said or done, Kurtz simply explains that he sees it differently.
I will concede that at times Kurtz convinced me the press has gone over-the-top and is too gleeful when they criticize of Trump. Sometimes they deserve the criticism that Kurtz gives them. But often they are doing their job.
February 22, 2018
In inside account of the Trump administration and the media coverage. Superbly sourced and researched by Howard Kurtz, one of the few journalists left who cares about facts.
Shows the complexity and confusion inside the White House when Trump goes rogue. Shows how several times, attempting to bottle Trump up resulted in a burst of Trumpism on twitter or on media. He must be channeled, not contained. Steve Bannon comes off as a seasoned, media-savvy aide. He also documents how the media does not approach Trump the way they have covered any other president.
Helpful if you want to know what goes on in the White House communication team. Kurtz has some good inside sources.
Shows the complexity and confusion inside the White House when Trump goes rogue. Shows how several times, attempting to bottle Trump up resulted in a burst of Trumpism on twitter or on media. He must be channeled, not contained. Steve Bannon comes off as a seasoned, media-savvy aide. He also documents how the media does not approach Trump the way they have covered any other president.
Helpful if you want to know what goes on in the White House communication team. Kurtz has some good inside sources.
January 1, 2019
Howard Kurtz, host of Fox's Media Buzz, tries to present a more balanced look at the media's coverage of the president.
I'm not sure he succeeds.
For me, a New Year's resolution: no more reading about 45.
I'm not sure he succeeds.
For me, a New Year's resolution: no more reading about 45.
June 7, 2018
Kurtz does a great job demonstrating the insanity of the press today. His analysis is fair though as he points out where he believes Trump was out of line as well
June 3, 2018
This book could be titled "The Death of The Mainstream Media in America".
Even though I lived through all these stories in real time, going back and reliving them was still mind boggling. Kurtz is very fair in his coverage; pointing out all the times Trump brought the media backlash upon himself but also highlighting the insane, hateful coverage the media gives Trump.
Even though I lived through all these stories in real time, going back and reliving them was still mind boggling. Kurtz is very fair in his coverage; pointing out all the times Trump brought the media backlash upon himself but also highlighting the insane, hateful coverage the media gives Trump.
February 18, 2018
The reality of journalism in trump era dissected. Yes. Trump says things. But the press full boar on him. It clearly takes each issue and assessed the content vs the press manipulation and consistent goal to misrepresent so as to cast him in the negative light they are determined to co to use so as to bring his downfall. Too bad most Americans will never read it being in the bubble they live in. The one that continues to have them living I. A world so different than those understanding Trumps missions.
February 8, 2018
Biased Media
To be honest, I followed Kurtz when he moved from CNN to FNC. I know I have a bias on his reporting. As a news junkie, some of this was not new, but it gives the background that puts things in perspective. Journalists complain about POTUS' tweets, they also tweet. Their's are more vulgar. They say POTUS' tweets make them unsafe and fear for their families and themselves, some of their tweets have called for his murder. Kurtz makes the observation that "they abandoned fairness for activism". I believe journalists should report facts not innuendo. I personally don't want any journalist's opinion , if they don't like a president, they can vote like the rest of us to make their voice heard.
To be honest, I followed Kurtz when he moved from CNN to FNC. I know I have a bias on his reporting. As a news junkie, some of this was not new, but it gives the background that puts things in perspective. Journalists complain about POTUS' tweets, they also tweet. Their's are more vulgar. They say POTUS' tweets make them unsafe and fear for their families and themselves, some of their tweets have called for his murder. Kurtz makes the observation that "they abandoned fairness for activism". I believe journalists should report facts not innuendo. I personally don't want any journalist's opinion , if they don't like a president, they can vote like the rest of us to make their voice heard.
February 10, 2018
Howie Kurtz is a great writer.
I liked the way he set forth his facts and organized thoughtful commentary. I recommend this book to any party interested in evaluating Journalism’s role in Society.
I liked the way he set forth his facts and organized thoughtful commentary. I recommend this book to any party interested in evaluating Journalism’s role in Society.
March 12, 2018
This book sets out with a worthy goal of reporting fairly on Trump but utterly fails as it tries to keep drawing a false sense that to be fair, coverage needs to be 50% good and 50% bad. Sometimes bad stories are bad stories and the author doesn't really help his cause by reporting on reporters using the same hyperbole of which he accuses them. Kurtz complains that the media is "breathlessly" reporting or "hyperventilating" when there is a negative story, but never gives any credit when credit is due. Fair enough, I guess, at least in some cases, but for the most part, I would say that credit is given when it is due, but Trump, for the most part overshadows his own good coverage with his own tweets and negative stories that he puts out there. Specifically, Kurtz makes the claim that Trump's good performance with Hurricane Harvey wasn't played up enough. I actually watched a good deal of that coverage on CNN... they reported on it... a lot. Kurtz then makes the stunning claim that CNN wasn't covering Puerto Rico until it was clear that it was a Trump failure... which is simply not true. They covered it from before the storm hit, then in the following months. They reported on this much more than the NFL kneeling... which Trump himself was trying to use as a way to distract the media. He also takes specific stories that are significant, but presents them in such a way that makes them seem trivial. For instance, the Lester Holt interview Trump gave is presented as Trump claiming he would have fired Comey even if the Rosenstein memo wasn't issued because he didn't like the job he was doing. While that certainly was an important part of the interview, the much more important part was that he told Lester Holt that he fired him because of Russia. That tidbit was left out of this book, which is just mind boggling.
Misreadings like this detract from the book overall and make it a frustrating read as Kurtz gives rare examples that are meaningful (really, you shouldn't be quoting late night hosts and comedians... they don't count the same as CNN/MSNBC/Fox and nobody actually cares about the Twitter feed of reporters as your average media consumer is not following them). Kurtz himself describes Trump as having ODD, yet chastises other reporters for doing the same thing, which is frustrating.
Overall, frustrating and angering because he leaves out so much and skews his own reporting in an attempt to keep the book 50% positive and 50% negative. The only parts worth reading are where he directly interviews White House insiders so we get a better idea of their views of their own actions (although there is no real surprise here as they all think they are secret geniuses).
Misreadings like this detract from the book overall and make it a frustrating read as Kurtz gives rare examples that are meaningful (really, you shouldn't be quoting late night hosts and comedians... they don't count the same as CNN/MSNBC/Fox and nobody actually cares about the Twitter feed of reporters as your average media consumer is not following them). Kurtz himself describes Trump as having ODD, yet chastises other reporters for doing the same thing, which is frustrating.
Overall, frustrating and angering because he leaves out so much and skews his own reporting in an attempt to keep the book 50% positive and 50% negative. The only parts worth reading are where he directly interviews White House insiders so we get a better idea of their views of their own actions (although there is no real surprise here as they all think they are secret geniuses).
March 3, 2018
I chose to read this to get a different point of view on the Trump Presidency, and it certainly provides that. It did make me somewhat more aware of some legitimate gripes that conservatives could bring against our legitimate news media; however, the book stands more as an apologia for Trump than anything principled about media fairness. It must be said that the overall premise of the book is severely and irrecoverably undercut by the blatant criminality of the Trump Administration - we're at ~17 guilty pleas and counting and nowhere near done, and yet this book acts as if Trump and Co were all innocent lambs being mercilessly slaughtered by a vicious and out of control media. There's no self awareness of the attacks Trump has made against our democratic norms, against the press itself, and the acute lawlessness of the "victims" of this media bias anywhere in this book, so much so that it reads like an alternate reality. Trump called the press "The enemy of the American People" - a ridiculously outrageous and un-American thing for anyone to say, much less POTUS - and nowhere in this book does Howard Kurtz take a moment to actually reflect on the deep and disastrous implications of his hero saying something like this. Kurtz is unable to convincingly pretend to be amazed that the news media has trouble feigning respect for someone that just called them an enemy of the state, while refusing to defend our country from our adversaries and using public office to enrich himself and his cronies. It doesn't add up and as such, this book pretty much sucks. But two stars for the sprinkling of occasional insights.
February 24, 2018
This is a great defence of what's actually wrong the media: "Balance" It doesn't exist, because FACTS aren't balanced. If I have 10 candy bars and the news reports I sold "Around 10", that's close enough. If they say I sold "10" That's accurate, not biased. And if they say I sold "one" that's a blatant lie. Nevermind lawyerly Ivy cuntery about "Well, you did sell one, I never said you didn't sell more than one."
The Fourth Estate has two jobs: Oppose the corporo-governmental lies. Give us the facts. In that order. With Trump it's suddenly started doing the first bit a little -- but always and only in service of their corporate masters, their advertisers, and the military industrial complex.
You want people to think the news is anything other than a deliberate attempt to destroy the American peoople? Put every person who has ever worked in both the media and the Intelligence or Armed Forces out on their asses. And put anyone who lied about in prison. And while you're at it, put the war criminals up to the World fucking Court.
The part of me that still lives in the false reality constructed to pacify us enjoyed this book -- in that world, everything here makes perfect sense and is absolutely correct. But that's not reality. And that, not "Did he just call the President a liar?" is the issue mate. For fuck's sake everyone knows Jefferson hired a journalist to call Adams a damned Hermaphrodite. Politics has gotten no less childish than it ever was, and if you think otherwise you're bloody retarded.
Incidentally I always think calumny comes from that story, but it doesn't, Callender was the journalist, and calumny is a much older word than that anyway.
Oh, and for everyone who says "How would you have reacted if they x about Obama?" Sitting senators called Obama a monkey. Artists staged murders of him, and scenes of him tearing babies out of women and killing them because he worships Satan. POeople called him arab, muslim, adn terrorist. Basically, all those things people are accusing Trump of doing now, are what people were doing them. That's why Trump's being accused now. That, and corporate control of the country obviously. The treatment of Trump is not new. It's just moved from Fox and talk radio to the rest of the media.
But I'll give every Trump supporter this: The media must stop with the gossip and traitor bullshit. I'm more concerned about what I want them to do instead so that normally goes without saying, but throw the dogs their bone, yeah, the gossip is just stupid.
I actually recommend reading this, not because it's good, but because it's good to know how others think. Also, it's just not that bad. The author clearly means well. I just think he's either never actually tried to think for himself about politics as a holistic issue, or he did, and failed to come up with anything at all. And he most certainly has no sensible concept of ethics.
I also recommend reading Gregg's review here (should be above mine, so you probably already did). Or, indeed, only reading that if you aren't going to read the book.
The Fourth Estate has two jobs: Oppose the corporo-governmental lies. Give us the facts. In that order. With Trump it's suddenly started doing the first bit a little -- but always and only in service of their corporate masters, their advertisers, and the military industrial complex.
You want people to think the news is anything other than a deliberate attempt to destroy the American peoople? Put every person who has ever worked in both the media and the Intelligence or Armed Forces out on their asses. And put anyone who lied about in prison. And while you're at it, put the war criminals up to the World fucking Court.
The part of me that still lives in the false reality constructed to pacify us enjoyed this book -- in that world, everything here makes perfect sense and is absolutely correct. But that's not reality. And that, not "Did he just call the President a liar?" is the issue mate. For fuck's sake everyone knows Jefferson hired a journalist to call Adams a damned Hermaphrodite. Politics has gotten no less childish than it ever was, and if you think otherwise you're bloody retarded.
Incidentally I always think calumny comes from that story, but it doesn't, Callender was the journalist, and calumny is a much older word than that anyway.
Oh, and for everyone who says "How would you have reacted if they x about Obama?" Sitting senators called Obama a monkey. Artists staged murders of him, and scenes of him tearing babies out of women and killing them because he worships Satan. POeople called him arab, muslim, adn terrorist. Basically, all those things people are accusing Trump of doing now, are what people were doing them. That's why Trump's being accused now. That, and corporate control of the country obviously. The treatment of Trump is not new. It's just moved from Fox and talk radio to the rest of the media.
But I'll give every Trump supporter this: The media must stop with the gossip and traitor bullshit. I'm more concerned about what I want them to do instead so that normally goes without saying, but throw the dogs their bone, yeah, the gossip is just stupid.
I actually recommend reading this, not because it's good, but because it's good to know how others think. Also, it's just not that bad. The author clearly means well. I just think he's either never actually tried to think for himself about politics as a holistic issue, or he did, and failed to come up with anything at all. And he most certainly has no sensible concept of ethics.
I also recommend reading Gregg's review here (should be above mine, so you probably already did). Or, indeed, only reading that if you aren't going to read the book.
March 14, 2018
I apologize in advance for the next couple of comments. They dramatize the outrageous words news people and entertainers have used to describe the President of the United States. "Either Trump is fucking his daughter or he's shirking nepotism rules. Which is worse?", tweeted national reporter Julia Ioffe. Stephen Colbert lashed out at Trump saying, "The only thing your mouth is good for is as Putin's cock holster." Apparently anything, ANYTHING, one says about Donald Trump is fair game from writers and comedians. Howard Kurtz, former columnist for the Washington Post and Newsweek is not some crazy right winger and Trump defender. He bases his analysis on in-depth interviews with reporters, columnists, news anchors, and Trump insiders. Every president gets criticized by the press, gets poked and prodded. Jefferson supporter James Callender wrote that Adams was a rageful, lying, warmongering fellow; a "repulsive pedant" and "gross hypocrite" who “behaved neither like a man nor like a woman but instead possessed a hideous hermaphroditical character." The president of Yale University, a John Adams supporter, publically suggested that were Jefferson to become the president, “we would see our wives and daughters the victims of legal prostitution.” But attacking Donald Trump takes the attacks to a depth not seen before. It's personal. Kurtz describes what he calls "Trump Trauma", "the half-crazed compulsion to furiously attack one man." Actually, Kurtz describes how Trump Trauma extends to anyone working in the White House or supporting Mr. Trump - Kellyanne Conway, Sean Spicer, Steve Bannon, etc. In the afterword, Jimmy Carter states that "the media have been harder on Trump than any other president." I suppose a trump despiser, someone suffering from Trump Trauma, might say the criticism has been over the top at times, but generally on target and well deserved. It is commonly held that Trump shouldn't be "normalized." Normalized? I'm not sure what that means. Not treated evenhandedly? Kurtz suggests that in its zealousness, the media has lost its way, earning the label of "opposition party against an unlikely leader." His concluding comments are well kept in mind. "Donald Trump will not be president forever, but the media's reputation, badly scarred during these polarizing years, might never recover." I found Media Madness an interesting read, well-documented and engaging. If one watches and listens closely to the network news shows, what Trump calls the "fake news", one can't help but hear the tone, the adjectives and what's between the lines used to describe the president's policies and actions. The cable shows on both extremes take it to, well, the extremes, over the top. And Trump brings it on himself in garbage truckfuls. Unfortunately, too many Americans receive their news from their media outlets of choice, those that support their views. This only exacerbates the problem fueled by Trump Trauma.
April 23, 2018
I'm sure this isn't a one-star book if you agree with the author, but it made me too angry to finish reading it past about 80 pages or so. The author thinks he is being fair and balanced, but it really is more like the "fair and balanced" of Fox News. And I'm not saying this just because I disagree with him in many cases about the media, but mostly his basic assumption that there is nothing abnormal about a Trump presidency—which makes him a Trump apologist, when all is said and done. In making his case against the media—i.e., the media treating the Trump presidency as abnormal (How can even his supporters argue this is a normal presidency?) are engaging in president-bashing that reaches a level way past objectivity—he fails to acknowledge this very important fact: WHAT THE MAINSTREAM, LIBERAL AND NON-FOX MEDIA IS REPORTING IS ACTUALLY FACTUAL. (For the most part—by far. And when they get a fact wrong, they retract it. Has Fox News ever retracted anything?!)
For me, overlooking this little fact impeaches (no pun, ha ha) his credibility.
He makes no secret of his professional relationship with Trump, whom he has interviewed over many years for various news outlets (from CNN to the Washington Post to Fox News), but fails to see how it has colored his view of him. It's fine for him to see Trump as a real human being and to like the guy. Some say in person he has actual charm and charisma. Whatever. But to deny the blatantly alarming aspect of his rhetoric, his endless lies, his ignorance, his narcissism, his misogyny, his cozying up to neo-Nazis, and in some cases what seems very likely to be his hard-to-deny senility/dementia—and not even getting into his overly sympathetic views of Kellyanne Conway and Sean Spicer; clearly this guy is too close to too many of his subjects to actually their actions clearly—shows he is either himself in denial or he is full of shit and more interested in sanctimoniously accusing his fellow journalists of extreme, never-before-seen, game-changing bias than he is (yes ironically) in reporting the truth himself.
Hence why reading this book made me too angry to continue doing so.
Seriously, if any thinking person, in any country on the globe, has to even question whether the state of madness America is in right now is a result of media madness or Trump madness, their objectivity must truly be questioned. (Luckily, my reserved copy of Fire and Fury became available at the library soon after I returned Kutz's book. Even though I'm expecting some level of salaciousness and even exaggeration—at least, from what I understand—I am pretty sure Michael Wolff's intention is to record what he observed in the Trump campaign and White House, not to toss out his own theories based on his own bias. At least I hope.)
For me, overlooking this little fact impeaches (no pun, ha ha) his credibility.
He makes no secret of his professional relationship with Trump, whom he has interviewed over many years for various news outlets (from CNN to the Washington Post to Fox News), but fails to see how it has colored his view of him. It's fine for him to see Trump as a real human being and to like the guy. Some say in person he has actual charm and charisma. Whatever. But to deny the blatantly alarming aspect of his rhetoric, his endless lies, his ignorance, his narcissism, his misogyny, his cozying up to neo-Nazis, and in some cases what seems very likely to be his hard-to-deny senility/dementia—and not even getting into his overly sympathetic views of Kellyanne Conway and Sean Spicer; clearly this guy is too close to too many of his subjects to actually their actions clearly—shows he is either himself in denial or he is full of shit and more interested in sanctimoniously accusing his fellow journalists of extreme, never-before-seen, game-changing bias than he is (yes ironically) in reporting the truth himself.
Hence why reading this book made me too angry to continue doing so.
Seriously, if any thinking person, in any country on the globe, has to even question whether the state of madness America is in right now is a result of media madness or Trump madness, their objectivity must truly be questioned. (Luckily, my reserved copy of Fire and Fury became available at the library soon after I returned Kutz's book. Even though I'm expecting some level of salaciousness and even exaggeration—at least, from what I understand—I am pretty sure Michael Wolff's intention is to record what he observed in the Trump campaign and White House, not to toss out his own theories based on his own bias. At least I hope.)
April 3, 2018
I wanted to read this book because I remembered watching Howard Kurtz's show about the media quite a few years ago. He played the role of the neutral moderator, so I assumed he would take a neutral role in this book, showing how both the Trump administration and the media who cover them have trouble telling the truth. Wrong! Although Kurtz admits that Trump often lies, he is clearly on the side of the insane, racist President and his enablers. The only news folks that he may have interviewed seem to be Chuck Todd and Jake Tapper. He definitely didn't talk to Rachel Maddow or Lawrence O'Donnell. His main sources were Kellyanne Conway, Corey Lewandowski, Sean Spicer, Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon, and probably Jared's wife Ivanka as well as Reince Priebus. Instead of recognizing that the media, having made Trump famous and given him a pass through the early stages of the 2016 campaign because they didn't take him seriously and enjoyed the ratings he created, were trying to correct their mistake by saving us from the incompetent maniac they had helped win the election, Kurtz thinks the "elite" media are suffering from Trump trauma. He insinuates that the media were always anti-Trump, although many of them were his friends and regularly had him on their shows. But what made Kurtz earn a rare (possibly unprecedented) one-star review from me (almost all books have some value, and this one included plenty of interesting information) was the following sentence: "That might have been the most troubling declaration: that Trump's racism was simply an undisputed fact, not a journalist's assessment, and that there was no room for dissent on this score" (p. 23). Mr. Kurtz obviously suffers from that vile form of dementia called racism, a disorder that not only includes often hidden racist attitudes toward nonwhites but also unreasonable anger at anyone who mentions that racism can and does exist. The "tell" besides that sentence is his discussion of Bill Clinton's use of the media, which mentions MTV and Larry King but not Clinton's playing the saxophone on Arsenio Hall's show. Bigots are everywhere in America; that's the most important lesson of Trump's presidency, and many of them, like Kurtz, are hiding in plain sight. Trump's racism is more overt and more dangerous now because he's in the White House. But bigots like Kurtz are ultimately more dangerous than the more visible bigots whom these racism deniers enable.
April 22, 2018
This dryly reviews all the basics of the media vs. Trump during the year after his election. The facts are there and Kurtz tries hard to be fair to both sides, but he rarely offers much in the way of opinion or insight. Near the end he writes, "I've been pretty rough on my profession in this book." No, he hasn't been rough enough! He does ask some skeptical questions when the New York Times or NBC News includes opinions in what should be objective news stories, but he never goes far enough in condemning them for failing to uphold journalistic standards.
He claims he'll get "a ton of personal criticism" from media colleagues, but there's little here for them to complain about because Kurtz also points out many of Trump's flaws. While it's interesting to hear the behind-the-scenes thoughts of Sean Spicer or Kellyanne Conway, there are huge gaps in the book where he needed to dig deeper and get more responses from those involved. Most concerning is his failure to mention the fact that George Soros and Media Matters, along with the Democratic National Committee, provide the liberal press with daily talking points for supposedly objective news reports, and all the press repeat those phrases word-for-word without attribution. Certainly Trump deserves to have his ridiculous tweets and lies pointed out, but Kurtz should have gone farther pointing out the same from the media.
He claims he'll get "a ton of personal criticism" from media colleagues, but there's little here for them to complain about because Kurtz also points out many of Trump's flaws. While it's interesting to hear the behind-the-scenes thoughts of Sean Spicer or Kellyanne Conway, there are huge gaps in the book where he needed to dig deeper and get more responses from those involved. Most concerning is his failure to mention the fact that George Soros and Media Matters, along with the Democratic National Committee, provide the liberal press with daily talking points for supposedly objective news reports, and all the press repeat those phrases word-for-word without attribution. Certainly Trump deserves to have his ridiculous tweets and lies pointed out, but Kurtz should have gone farther pointing out the same from the media.
February 27, 2018
As a former journalist (granted, sports journalist), I'm intrigued by the shifting journalistic landscape in which so many so-called reporters place more emphasis on shock value—and being first—and less on getting the story right or providing appropriate context. Similarly, I'm frustrated by the way many consumers of today's "news" unflinchingly trust these platforms and why television pundit shows are so popular.
Understanding the premise of the book going in, I figured I'd take exception each time the press is blamed for trying to hold the Trump team accountable. Yet, I believe it's important to step out of the echo chamber so many of us live in when it comes to how we receive our news. It's healthy to at least consider opinions that differ from our own.
That said, Trump has no one to blame but himself for how he's portrayed in the media. While I appreciated the context Kurtz provided as an apparent media insider, I found myself shaking my head each time the reader's expected to feel sorry for Trump or his inner circle because the media is doing its job in attempting to hold the administration's feet to the fire.
Understanding the premise of the book going in, I figured I'd take exception each time the press is blamed for trying to hold the Trump team accountable. Yet, I believe it's important to step out of the echo chamber so many of us live in when it comes to how we receive our news. It's healthy to at least consider opinions that differ from our own.
That said, Trump has no one to blame but himself for how he's portrayed in the media. While I appreciated the context Kurtz provided as an apparent media insider, I found myself shaking my head each time the reader's expected to feel sorry for Trump or his inner circle because the media is doing its job in attempting to hold the administration's feet to the fire.
February 20, 2018
Howard Kurtz offers an "unbiased" review of the relationship between Trump and the media. It is obvious to anyone paying attention that the relationship is contentious. Kurtz's conclusion is that the media has over-hyped the president's failures and under-hyped his successes. I'd agree with that assessment. Kurtz argues that only a handful of media outlets including his Fox News have treated Trump fairly. This I do not agree with. Trump feeds the media frenzy with lies and misdirection and then complains when he is caught in the lie. Kurtz even admits these things and gives his insider look at the dis-function and leaks inside the WH but still he blames the media for falling for it and reporting it. This is disingenuous at best. After 3 years of binge watching the news myself, I can agree that the media needs to focus on the important stories and not the sideshow. There is just so much the public can consume without throwing up.
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