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Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism
The five-time Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter and New York Times bestselling author of Stonewalled and The Smear uncovers how partisan bias and gullibility are destroying American journalism.
The news as we once knew it no longer exists. It’s become a product molded and shaped to suit the narrative. Facts that don’t fit are omitted. Off-narrative people and views are controversialized or neatly deposited down the memory hole. Partisan pundits, analysts and anonymous sources fill news space leaving little room for facts. The line between opinion and fact has disappeared.
In The Death of the News, Sharyl Attkisson reveals with gripping detail the struggles inside newsrooms where journalism used to rule. For the first time, dozens of current and former top national news executives, producers and reporters give insider accounts, speaking with shocking candor about their industry’s devolution.
Americans know their news diet is now filled with fast food concoctions created from talking point recipes devised by partisan and corporate interests. They see a record number of fact mistakes made by some of the world’s most formerly well-respected media outlets . . . often with no apologies. The media largely blames Donald Trump. But as this autopsy shows, the death of the news as we once knew it is self-inflicted. And the weapon was the narrative.
Sharyl Attkisson also finds reason for hope and argues that courageous, counternarrative news reporting can revive journalism.
The news as we once knew it no longer exists. It’s become a product molded and shaped to suit the narrative. Facts that don’t fit are omitted. Off-narrative people and views are controversialized or neatly deposited down the memory hole. Partisan pundits, analysts and anonymous sources fill news space leaving little room for facts. The line between opinion and fact has disappeared.
In The Death of the News, Sharyl Attkisson reveals with gripping detail the struggles inside newsrooms where journalism used to rule. For the first time, dozens of current and former top national news executives, producers and reporters give insider accounts, speaking with shocking candor about their industry’s devolution.
Americans know their news diet is now filled with fast food concoctions created from talking point recipes devised by partisan and corporate interests. They see a record number of fact mistakes made by some of the world’s most formerly well-respected media outlets . . . often with no apologies. The media largely blames Donald Trump. But as this autopsy shows, the death of the news as we once knew it is self-inflicted. And the weapon was the narrative.
Sharyl Attkisson also finds reason for hope and argues that courageous, counternarrative news reporting can revive journalism.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published November 20, 2020
422 people are currently reading
1426 people want to read
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January 25, 2021
Sharyl Attkisson has worked as a journalist for thirty-five years, employed for healthy stretches of that time by CBS News, PBS, and CNN. She has a solid reputation in her field and more than a little street cred. When the pandemic hit, she approached the subject as any Old School journalist might - by providing a balanced assortment of facts, some of which included statements made by experts early on (Fauci, the World Health Organization, the CDC, the NIH) who were, though unknown to anyone at that juncture, underestimating the virus and its potential impact on the nation. But this is what a journalist does; she includes expert assessment and initial statistics in her reporting. To her understandable surprise, the mainstream media took issue with the balanced nature of the material. Her work was criticized in print, on air, and on the Internet. The Coronavirus Pandemic of 2019 had already begun to be politicized.
Although much of what was asserted against her has since been publicly retracted, few took note - the Covid horse having already escaped the journalistic barn to gallop rather energetically from political camp to political camp. The finger-pointing started up and somehow seemed so much more important than the health crisis itself that any fact you couldn't blame on someone was dismissed as non-newsworthy. It's a hell of a way to cover a pandemic, and does few favors for the populace suffering through it. But that's what we got, and Attkisson's concern with how we reached this sorry pass is the theme of her book.
Areas covered here include Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, the bias in polling, the bias in fact-checking, the prevalence of talking heads and panels filled with discredited government figures scrambling to resurrect their careers. Attention is painfully paid to the many stories the media got wrong - referenced in specific and sourced to the extent that the mistakes are undeniable. This is depressing material, made more so by Attkisson's adherence to her journalistic integrity; every charge she makes she supports with a preponderance of evidence. Cronkite, himself, could not take issue with this.
If you find, in light of what you've encountered over the last few years, that you just don't trust the news anymore? This is an examination worth reading.
Although much of what was asserted against her has since been publicly retracted, few took note - the Covid horse having already escaped the journalistic barn to gallop rather energetically from political camp to political camp. The finger-pointing started up and somehow seemed so much more important than the health crisis itself that any fact you couldn't blame on someone was dismissed as non-newsworthy. It's a hell of a way to cover a pandemic, and does few favors for the populace suffering through it. But that's what we got, and Attkisson's concern with how we reached this sorry pass is the theme of her book.
Areas covered here include Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, the bias in polling, the bias in fact-checking, the prevalence of talking heads and panels filled with discredited government figures scrambling to resurrect their careers. Attention is painfully paid to the many stories the media got wrong - referenced in specific and sourced to the extent that the mistakes are undeniable. This is depressing material, made more so by Attkisson's adherence to her journalistic integrity; every charge she makes she supports with a preponderance of evidence. Cronkite, himself, could not take issue with this.
If you find, in light of what you've encountered over the last few years, that you just don't trust the news anymore? This is an examination worth reading.
September 4, 2020
Slanted, by Sharyl Attkisson is a frightening look at what media has become in the last 20 or so years, with many of the influence makers roaring onto the scene within the last 12 years.
We've become so lazy, that we allow thinking to be done for us. Facts are decided by invisible unknown fact checkers.
Personal narratives are more relevant than the who what where when why and have 3 sources to back up your article.
In Slanted, Attkisson teaches us how to recognize propagandists, resist the persistence of false media narratives, and who is behind the driving forces behind today's dangerous blend of facts and opinion.
A must read for every parent, every student.
We've become so lazy, that we allow thinking to be done for us. Facts are decided by invisible unknown fact checkers.
Personal narratives are more relevant than the who what where when why and have 3 sources to back up your article.
In Slanted, Attkisson teaches us how to recognize propagandists, resist the persistence of false media narratives, and who is behind the driving forces behind today's dangerous blend of facts and opinion.
A must read for every parent, every student.
September 19, 2020
You can relate to fake news and Trump’s issues with the media better if you understand the concept of The Narrative. That is the most important revelation in Sharyl Atkisson’s latest book, Slanted. Unfortunately, the rest of the book consists of apologies and misdirection for Trump’s acts, actions, and behavior while she attacks the news media herself.
Atkisson is a former CBS News star. She has decades of experience, all the best connections in the business, and the smarts to earn her solid reputation. She is also a staunch Conservative in what she sees as a sea of liberals and left wingers, which raises her hackles and fears for her field. The results get crazier as the book goes on.
The main, true and important point she makes is that the news is a shadow of its former self. It has become sloppy. Fact-checking is becoming a lost art. Journalists have long abandoned the rules of the game, like having solid proof and unimpeachable confirmation of claims they report. Instead, she says, journalists have made themselves the story. They make the claims themselves, and insist you trust them rather than the original sources. “Reporters routinely declare information to be fact as if they had personally confirmed it, when they could not possibly have done so,” she says at various points and in various ways. Journalists no longer present the story and let the viewer/reader decide. They feel they must hammer it home as their own firsthand experience and analysis. Until recently, that would have been called editorializing and left to editorialists. Today, it is considered reporting the news, and everyone is encouraged to do it.
To no one’s shock or surprise, they get it wrong a lot. They apologize a lot (later, when the story is well past its prime, ie. forgotten). Or, they stand their ground despite all findings to the contrary. The result is falsehoods making their way into viewers’ minds, and staying there even when they are demonstrably false. It is shameful, an ugly development in what used to be a reliable and important service, and in Atkisson’s mind, a terrible disservice to the innocent victim, Donald Trump.
The Narrative she speaks of is the preset attitude that journalists have on various topics. Russia manipulating Trump. Trump as racist. Trump as selfish, self-centered, greedy, in it purely for himself, narcissistic, uninformed, operating alone, dismantling national institutions he swore to uphold, etc. etc. etc. Any reporter who brings a story that doesn’t follow this line of thinking, will find their story rejected everywhere they try to place it. That is the chokehold The Narrative holds over the news and therefore the populace at large.
Fairness has no place at, say The New York Times, which gets a lot of scolding from Atkisson in its own chapter of shame. Arrogant reporters refuse to retract false accusations, editors demand even more severe and direct criticism of Trump, and lots of negative adjectives in otherwise anodyne paragraphs tilt the story against the common good, common decency or the Trump administration.
She gives the example of the #metoo era, in which men’s careers are destroyed by sexual assault charges. It doesn’t matter that the charges might be fraudulent. It doesn’t matter that there might be no evidence whatsoever, or that timeframes prove they are false, or that they are later withdrawn. Or that the accuser is simply seeking the spotlight. The damage is done: automatically guilty as charged. As one top CBS news executive realized, there was no point defending himself; it would only make things worse and drag it out for years. Better to just take retirement and get on with life. The media does not investigate the accusations; it feeds on them. The media have become the problem instead of the solution in a system where innocent until proven guilty is the supposed rule.
All of these media charges are true, and Atkisson assembles them in a way that makes clear just how far journalism has fallen. With them in mind, readers can see plainly for themselves how badly they are served on a daily basis, and not just from the obvious and self-declared biases of an MSNBC or a Fox News. It includes everything else too, from The Wall Street Journal, to The New York Times, to Time Magazine and all the online services, blogs and podcasts. It is inescapable. Finding the real news is a challenge and most are not up to it.
She devotes an entire chapter to the fall into disrepute of CNN, which she quotes insiders as calling unrecognizable any more. No one researches the news; they just talk about its implications for various interests, live, off the cuff and without any backup evidence. It has become an embarrassment of talking heads, providing little or no usable information, 24 hours a day.
Atkisson shows the power of journalists to frame anything or anyone however they choose, altering public perception. She lists some fake obituaries from #wapodeathnotices to prove it, easily. For example: “Adolf Hitler, passionate community planner and dynamic public speaker, dies at 56.” All true, and all totally removed from the reality and the importance of the event and the man. But framed the way the reporter wanted it, it stands as its own truth.
But does that make the news industry “the enemy of the people?”
It does make working for these outlets soul-selling. Editors instruct reporters to produce stories that will specifically make the administration look bad. Anything that could be deemed criticism of an investor or advertiser could get the journalist in hot water. Rogue middle managers can hold up production, order changes that make no sense, and induce “death by a thousand cuts” until the story is outdated, useless, or incomprehensible any more. She cites one of her own stories where editors made her take out certain key facts, only to be told months later that she should consider adding those facts if she ever wanted it aired.
Honestly, I think most Americans see themselves in that same situation every day of their working lives, with irrational managers, irrational demands, oppressive working conditions, and the total destruction of self-respect, pride in work, or sense of accomplishment. CBS might be hell, but it is far from an isolated case. Rather than being shocked, readers will simply relate directly to Atkisson’s frustrations.
Back in the book, things start to deteriorate as Atkisson reveals her own Conservative bona fides.
She writes a lot about Trump’s lying, and how the news likes to tack on the words “with no evidence” to claims he makes. Even if the reporters have no evidence to the contrary. Eventually, she begins to put quotation marks around the word “lies”. She questions why Biden is accused merely of making gaffes, but when it comes to Trump, they are lies. (The answer of course, is that if Biden makes a gaffe, he does not take action based on it. Nothing happens. When Trump lies, people die.) She says “Even if two, five or ten of these stories about Trump were true, how could they all be true?” A very odd defense of a huge issue In America today.
She defends Trump as just using his own, very successful Narratives. Simply calling Elizabeth Warren Pocahontas all the time worked wonders, according to Atkisson. Or The Failing New York Times to try to damage its credibility. She says he calls Congressman Adam Schiff Pencil Neck, which I confess I have never seen or heard before and which means nothing to me. But I have seen Trump write Little Adam Schitt, which is disgusting enough to make me question Trump’s qualifications to be president of the USA. It is not helped by his use of the Narratives of Deep State and QAnon. Or “very good people – on both sides.” Or shithole countries. Or suckers and losers. But Atkisson doesn’t examine any of those Narratives.
She is even more selective with numbers. She writes about Trump having 72 million Twitter followers in his own name, plus an additional 28 million for the White House account giving him “a neat hundred million” followers. I can’t imagine a journalist with 40 years’ experience making that claim. The duplication factor is almost certainly close to 100%. Everyone who follows the White House also follows Trump, probably because they have to, or miss out on something. She has absolutely no information that the two lists are mutually exclusive, but she makes that claim anyway, doing precisely what she criticizes – making herself the expert regardless of the facts she has no knowledge of.
The same goes for her sources. One of the most galling things reporters do is not name sources. Anonymous sources are suspect. But Atkisson hides almost all her sources as “a former insider” or “a top TV news executive,” once again doing precisely what she rails against for everyone else. This kind of hypocrisy, ironically, is why few trust the news media.
Towards the end, Atkisson gets so granular it becomes silly. She heavily criticizes Comedy Central’s The Daily Show for going after Trump so intensely. She dissects a particular episode until it becomes almost unrecognizable. But The Daily Show is not and never has been journalism. It is an entertainment vehicle. A comedy. A satire. Its whole job is to bite at the ankles of the bloviated state. She questions why it doesn’t go after others. The answer is because they aren’t the president. That’s all. I would have thought it was obvious.
She then puts headlines under a microscope, getting way off track in a Conservative rant on the news. Her rewriting of the news simply lowers her to the level of the scribes she criticizes as out of scope for their mission.
She concludes her book with her personal collection 131 times the media were wrong (“Major Mistakes”) about something, mostly Trump, during this term of office. Some are famous incidents readers will recognize, but most are errors like this:
28. September 7, 2017: The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman reports that Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called President Trump about an immigration issue. Actually, Trump made the call to Pelosi.
I have reviewed several Conservative books, because I am ever hopeful of appreciating a new argument. (I did not know this would be one of them when I began reading it.) They all seem to suffer the same bizarre malaise. They begin strongly, with a central claim that is valid, makes total sense, and changes the way readers will think going forward. That is most welcome, powerful and valuable: an alternative viewpoint that is dramatically true and overlooked. But then they all get bogged down in half-truths, hypocrisy, selective facts and head-scratching tangents, shooting down everything they had accomplished off the top.
It’s too bad.
David Wineberg
Atkisson is a former CBS News star. She has decades of experience, all the best connections in the business, and the smarts to earn her solid reputation. She is also a staunch Conservative in what she sees as a sea of liberals and left wingers, which raises her hackles and fears for her field. The results get crazier as the book goes on.
The main, true and important point she makes is that the news is a shadow of its former self. It has become sloppy. Fact-checking is becoming a lost art. Journalists have long abandoned the rules of the game, like having solid proof and unimpeachable confirmation of claims they report. Instead, she says, journalists have made themselves the story. They make the claims themselves, and insist you trust them rather than the original sources. “Reporters routinely declare information to be fact as if they had personally confirmed it, when they could not possibly have done so,” she says at various points and in various ways. Journalists no longer present the story and let the viewer/reader decide. They feel they must hammer it home as their own firsthand experience and analysis. Until recently, that would have been called editorializing and left to editorialists. Today, it is considered reporting the news, and everyone is encouraged to do it.
To no one’s shock or surprise, they get it wrong a lot. They apologize a lot (later, when the story is well past its prime, ie. forgotten). Or, they stand their ground despite all findings to the contrary. The result is falsehoods making their way into viewers’ minds, and staying there even when they are demonstrably false. It is shameful, an ugly development in what used to be a reliable and important service, and in Atkisson’s mind, a terrible disservice to the innocent victim, Donald Trump.
The Narrative she speaks of is the preset attitude that journalists have on various topics. Russia manipulating Trump. Trump as racist. Trump as selfish, self-centered, greedy, in it purely for himself, narcissistic, uninformed, operating alone, dismantling national institutions he swore to uphold, etc. etc. etc. Any reporter who brings a story that doesn’t follow this line of thinking, will find their story rejected everywhere they try to place it. That is the chokehold The Narrative holds over the news and therefore the populace at large.
Fairness has no place at, say The New York Times, which gets a lot of scolding from Atkisson in its own chapter of shame. Arrogant reporters refuse to retract false accusations, editors demand even more severe and direct criticism of Trump, and lots of negative adjectives in otherwise anodyne paragraphs tilt the story against the common good, common decency or the Trump administration.
She gives the example of the #metoo era, in which men’s careers are destroyed by sexual assault charges. It doesn’t matter that the charges might be fraudulent. It doesn’t matter that there might be no evidence whatsoever, or that timeframes prove they are false, or that they are later withdrawn. Or that the accuser is simply seeking the spotlight. The damage is done: automatically guilty as charged. As one top CBS news executive realized, there was no point defending himself; it would only make things worse and drag it out for years. Better to just take retirement and get on with life. The media does not investigate the accusations; it feeds on them. The media have become the problem instead of the solution in a system where innocent until proven guilty is the supposed rule.
All of these media charges are true, and Atkisson assembles them in a way that makes clear just how far journalism has fallen. With them in mind, readers can see plainly for themselves how badly they are served on a daily basis, and not just from the obvious and self-declared biases of an MSNBC or a Fox News. It includes everything else too, from The Wall Street Journal, to The New York Times, to Time Magazine and all the online services, blogs and podcasts. It is inescapable. Finding the real news is a challenge and most are not up to it.
She devotes an entire chapter to the fall into disrepute of CNN, which she quotes insiders as calling unrecognizable any more. No one researches the news; they just talk about its implications for various interests, live, off the cuff and without any backup evidence. It has become an embarrassment of talking heads, providing little or no usable information, 24 hours a day.
Atkisson shows the power of journalists to frame anything or anyone however they choose, altering public perception. She lists some fake obituaries from #wapodeathnotices to prove it, easily. For example: “Adolf Hitler, passionate community planner and dynamic public speaker, dies at 56.” All true, and all totally removed from the reality and the importance of the event and the man. But framed the way the reporter wanted it, it stands as its own truth.
But does that make the news industry “the enemy of the people?”
It does make working for these outlets soul-selling. Editors instruct reporters to produce stories that will specifically make the administration look bad. Anything that could be deemed criticism of an investor or advertiser could get the journalist in hot water. Rogue middle managers can hold up production, order changes that make no sense, and induce “death by a thousand cuts” until the story is outdated, useless, or incomprehensible any more. She cites one of her own stories where editors made her take out certain key facts, only to be told months later that she should consider adding those facts if she ever wanted it aired.
Honestly, I think most Americans see themselves in that same situation every day of their working lives, with irrational managers, irrational demands, oppressive working conditions, and the total destruction of self-respect, pride in work, or sense of accomplishment. CBS might be hell, but it is far from an isolated case. Rather than being shocked, readers will simply relate directly to Atkisson’s frustrations.
Back in the book, things start to deteriorate as Atkisson reveals her own Conservative bona fides.
She writes a lot about Trump’s lying, and how the news likes to tack on the words “with no evidence” to claims he makes. Even if the reporters have no evidence to the contrary. Eventually, she begins to put quotation marks around the word “lies”. She questions why Biden is accused merely of making gaffes, but when it comes to Trump, they are lies. (The answer of course, is that if Biden makes a gaffe, he does not take action based on it. Nothing happens. When Trump lies, people die.) She says “Even if two, five or ten of these stories about Trump were true, how could they all be true?” A very odd defense of a huge issue In America today.
She defends Trump as just using his own, very successful Narratives. Simply calling Elizabeth Warren Pocahontas all the time worked wonders, according to Atkisson. Or The Failing New York Times to try to damage its credibility. She says he calls Congressman Adam Schiff Pencil Neck, which I confess I have never seen or heard before and which means nothing to me. But I have seen Trump write Little Adam Schitt, which is disgusting enough to make me question Trump’s qualifications to be president of the USA. It is not helped by his use of the Narratives of Deep State and QAnon. Or “very good people – on both sides.” Or shithole countries. Or suckers and losers. But Atkisson doesn’t examine any of those Narratives.
She is even more selective with numbers. She writes about Trump having 72 million Twitter followers in his own name, plus an additional 28 million for the White House account giving him “a neat hundred million” followers. I can’t imagine a journalist with 40 years’ experience making that claim. The duplication factor is almost certainly close to 100%. Everyone who follows the White House also follows Trump, probably because they have to, or miss out on something. She has absolutely no information that the two lists are mutually exclusive, but she makes that claim anyway, doing precisely what she criticizes – making herself the expert regardless of the facts she has no knowledge of.
The same goes for her sources. One of the most galling things reporters do is not name sources. Anonymous sources are suspect. But Atkisson hides almost all her sources as “a former insider” or “a top TV news executive,” once again doing precisely what she rails against for everyone else. This kind of hypocrisy, ironically, is why few trust the news media.
Towards the end, Atkisson gets so granular it becomes silly. She heavily criticizes Comedy Central’s The Daily Show for going after Trump so intensely. She dissects a particular episode until it becomes almost unrecognizable. But The Daily Show is not and never has been journalism. It is an entertainment vehicle. A comedy. A satire. Its whole job is to bite at the ankles of the bloviated state. She questions why it doesn’t go after others. The answer is because they aren’t the president. That’s all. I would have thought it was obvious.
She then puts headlines under a microscope, getting way off track in a Conservative rant on the news. Her rewriting of the news simply lowers her to the level of the scribes she criticizes as out of scope for their mission.
She concludes her book with her personal collection 131 times the media were wrong (“Major Mistakes”) about something, mostly Trump, during this term of office. Some are famous incidents readers will recognize, but most are errors like this:
28. September 7, 2017: The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman reports that Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called President Trump about an immigration issue. Actually, Trump made the call to Pelosi.
I have reviewed several Conservative books, because I am ever hopeful of appreciating a new argument. (I did not know this would be one of them when I began reading it.) They all seem to suffer the same bizarre malaise. They begin strongly, with a central claim that is valid, makes total sense, and changes the way readers will think going forward. That is most welcome, powerful and valuable: an alternative viewpoint that is dramatically true and overlooked. But then they all get bogged down in half-truths, hypocrisy, selective facts and head-scratching tangents, shooting down everything they had accomplished off the top.
It’s too bad.
David Wineberg
December 25, 2020
A stunning, and thus unfortunately depressing, expose of the extent to which journalism in the U.S. has been stifled or has become mere propaganda around a single "narrative." The book is written and reported by one of the country's best (still) investigative journalists, with numerous examples from her own experiences at CNN and CBS as well as that of others.
The final appendix lists over 130 instances of what Attkisson delicately calls "major media mistakes" between August 2016 and June 2020.
Those looking for a fuller range of news sources will find them at the end, under Organizations and Publications.
Highly, highly recommended to those interested in U.S. news censorship, those who want to understand how news reporting morphed into news suppression, and/or those who want a list of more reliable sources (with one notable exception that changed since the completion of the book).
The final appendix lists over 130 instances of what Attkisson delicately calls "major media mistakes" between August 2016 and June 2020.
Those looking for a fuller range of news sources will find them at the end, under Organizations and Publications.
Highly, highly recommended to those interested in U.S. news censorship, those who want to understand how news reporting morphed into news suppression, and/or those who want a list of more reliable sources (with one notable exception that changed since the completion of the book).
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 6, 2020
There is an important discussion to be had about journalistic ethics in this hyper-partisan age, but I don't think this book is it. The book is well-written, as you'd expect from a former national reporter. But the content is problematic. It reads like a long bitter rambling rant from a propagandist at a conservative TV or radio network: conspiracy theories, extended airings of grievances, revenge screeds against those who the author feels have done her wrong, victimization claims, head-scratching analysis. I found lots of individual bits that I agreed with, but the idea that journalists shouldn't push back against deliberate misinformation from politicians, that they should, in order to be "fair", treat conspiracy theories with the same weight as serious policy debates, is quite dangerous. I don't know what the right answer is, but when one side is dealing more-or-less in reality and the other in operating in a universe of "alternate facts", journalists can't just treat the resulting discussion as if both perspectives were equally reasonable. The old adage that "facts have a liberal bias" generally bears out, and I don't think "Slanted" really comes to grips with that. This book was not a pleasant read, but it does provide lots of challenging opinions to think about, which does provide some value.
September 15, 2020
This book was a super in-depth look at how the media has really gone from objective to subjective. It only pushes the narrative that the bosses want to show. Sharyl Attkisson was speaking from experience in the media and it was very eye opening. It was also very well-written so I never felt like I was lost.
December 26, 2020
Should be a bi-partisan message, turns into a maga rally... It's so shameful how much depth she goes into explaining the abuses of media in spinning reports to suit the agenda or "narrative" of the reporter.
For example, after chastising "the left" (where she previously had successfully remained centrist in tone and verbiage earlier on in the book) for suddenly using the "without evidence" term with "lie", she later on spins the Mueller report as if she'd not even read it, made claims of its contents, made a point to tie the Clintons to the FBI, described Comey as digging up dirt in his notes, and claimed Mueller's testimony to Congress as "confused", that Mueller "didn't seem to understand the details of the case".
It is so undeniably a false narrative to on the one hand accuse the media for taking Trump's misstatement out of context ("Russia, if you're listening, please help my campaign" on camera at a rally) while making up context of a congressional testimony on the potus of a rushed report full of confidential info and ongoing related investigations while on camera to the public. It doesn't take a Pulitzer to read the Mueller report and see evidence where she claims it proves there was none.
For the record, the FBI could not ascertain whether or not Trump was smart enough to have meant his myriad of transgressions, and intent matters in law. The FBI reported that there was a reasonable doubt of Trump's maturity, wit and competence, such that he could not be RECOMMENDED for punishment, not that there was no attempted criminal activity but that the activity was so dumb it was possible the foul play was ignorant...
She uses words like "the FBI did spy on the Trump campaign" neglecting the acronym Federal Bureau of Investigation. It slams the courts for wire taps over a "sham" Steele dossier... Despite the principle targets' public confessions and admissions on camera as perfectly valid evidence. She neglects the FBI was already investigating Flynn and Obama told Trump administration as much before Trump decided to trust Flynn anyway, and she casually dismisses Flynn perjury, or confessions of Cohen, or admissions by Trump staffers, or the material reality of lies about crowd sizes as being evidence of a liar which might make it easier to label a liar as a liar even in news print.
This book pretends to be reasonable while flagrantly cherry picking only the lightest cases of refutable plausible deniability, while constantly making the same mistakes she done by those described in her book as the problem. She wrote a whole book about the harmful prevalence of media spin and bias while unabashedly employing every single one of those same tactics with the same flawed argument traps and skewed logic that she accuses her compatriots of.
It's a book worth reading to practise critical thinking, but not for the reasons the author intended, I suspect... Terrible. I feel dumber having spent hours trying to hear out a strong opposing argument. The first half was balanced enough, but around ch 7 it just falls straight into propaganda territory, taking a strong turn out of nowhere.
For example, after chastising "the left" (where she previously had successfully remained centrist in tone and verbiage earlier on in the book) for suddenly using the "without evidence" term with "lie", she later on spins the Mueller report as if she'd not even read it, made claims of its contents, made a point to tie the Clintons to the FBI, described Comey as digging up dirt in his notes, and claimed Mueller's testimony to Congress as "confused", that Mueller "didn't seem to understand the details of the case".
It is so undeniably a false narrative to on the one hand accuse the media for taking Trump's misstatement out of context ("Russia, if you're listening, please help my campaign" on camera at a rally) while making up context of a congressional testimony on the potus of a rushed report full of confidential info and ongoing related investigations while on camera to the public. It doesn't take a Pulitzer to read the Mueller report and see evidence where she claims it proves there was none.
For the record, the FBI could not ascertain whether or not Trump was smart enough to have meant his myriad of transgressions, and intent matters in law. The FBI reported that there was a reasonable doubt of Trump's maturity, wit and competence, such that he could not be RECOMMENDED for punishment, not that there was no attempted criminal activity but that the activity was so dumb it was possible the foul play was ignorant...
She uses words like "the FBI did spy on the Trump campaign" neglecting the acronym Federal Bureau of Investigation. It slams the courts for wire taps over a "sham" Steele dossier... Despite the principle targets' public confessions and admissions on camera as perfectly valid evidence. She neglects the FBI was already investigating Flynn and Obama told Trump administration as much before Trump decided to trust Flynn anyway, and she casually dismisses Flynn perjury, or confessions of Cohen, or admissions by Trump staffers, or the material reality of lies about crowd sizes as being evidence of a liar which might make it easier to label a liar as a liar even in news print.
This book pretends to be reasonable while flagrantly cherry picking only the lightest cases of refutable plausible deniability, while constantly making the same mistakes she done by those described in her book as the problem. She wrote a whole book about the harmful prevalence of media spin and bias while unabashedly employing every single one of those same tactics with the same flawed argument traps and skewed logic that she accuses her compatriots of.
It's a book worth reading to practise critical thinking, but not for the reasons the author intended, I suspect... Terrible. I feel dumber having spent hours trying to hear out a strong opposing argument. The first half was balanced enough, but around ch 7 it just falls straight into propaganda territory, taking a strong turn out of nowhere.
December 25, 2020
I cannot recommend this book and couldn’t even bring myself to completely finish it which is rare for me. I thought that this would be a more detached commentary on the state of journalism. This book reads as more of an airing of grievances from the author. Although she makes a couple good points, her assertions lack depth and are clouded by bias.
December 30, 2020
Sharyl Attkisson’s new book, Slanted, is among my favorite reads for 2020. It is a disturbing, infuriating, and deeply informative book about the devolution of the mainstream media from a woman who has intimate knowledge of it. Attkisson is a former CNN and CBS investigative reporter who currently runs a non-partisan podcast. As someone who has grown increasingly tired of partisan media, I was interested to see Attkisson’s take and figured it would be a good place to start for a more objective look at the media and politics.
Attkisson starts off with a history of the media and how it began its downturn into something that has made people deeply suspicious. She details killed stories based on politics on both sides of the aisle and various smear campaigns. It was unsettling to learn how much is at play behind the scenes of the media and how much power they have. The stories that get aired, promoted, or blocked are often due to corporate or political interests/power. For example, Attkisson details how Amy Robach had the Jeffery Epstein story well before it actually broke, but it was killed due to pressure from the English royals who didn’t want Prince Andrew’s name dragged in. Since the network was hoping to keep access to the royals open and didn’t want to jeopardize their opportunity for interviews with the royal family, they didn’t break Robach’s story. Stories like these didn’t do much to increase my confidence in the legacy media.
Though Attkisson criticizes the mainstream media in general, she saves her biggest and harshest criticisms for the New York Times and CNN. She details what she perceives as the downward spiral of CNN from a respected news station that she was proud to work for, to a station hell-bent on creating celebrity journalists and sacrificing journalistic integrity and ethics in order to promote narratives. She interviews various journalists from these outlets, many speaking anonymously to avoid future blackballing, who discuss their concerns with the way journalism is currently trending.
This book was finished in the summer of 2020 so much of it is quite current. She devotes time to Covid 19 and, of course, politics. She points out ways that the media has overtly revealed bias as well as how they have revealed bias more covertly through word choice.
What I liked most about this book was that Attkisson provided many concrete examples to prove her points. For example, in one part of the book, she pulls specific quotes from various politicians to highlight the ways the media’s leftist bias has them attacking what a Republican may say while saying nothing about a Democrat saying essentially the same thing. This part was particularly disheartening because in instances where there was actually bi-partisan agreement, the media made it out to seem that the two sides were deeply divided.
Chapters 6 and 7 and the appendix largely have to do with Trump, with chapter 7 focusing on the Russian collusion narrative. While some may perceive Attikisson’s focus on Trump to be a defense of him, she explains that though the media has been sacrificing ethics for some time, it has gone into overdrive since 2016. She explains that Trump “is the biggest reason we have arrived where we are in journalism today [and] the press has used Trump’s perceived flaws and vulnerabilities as an excuse to justify very unjournalistic language and behavior.” Her concern is the effect this could have on media credibility. Attikisson maintains that, “no matter how we feel about Trump or any other subject of our reporting, we are not entitled to exaggerate about them, publish poorly sourced reporting, or treat them unfairly under the rationale that they somehow deserve it.” What may be perceived as defenses of Trump are in fact defenses of objectivity and integrity in reporting.
Near the end, Attkisson does offer some hope and she provides a list of reliable non-partisan (or at least partisan but fair and balanced) sources and journalists. I found this to be very helpful and have followed some new folks and downloaded some new apps for different sources. So far, I like what I have seen of those sources.
Whether you lean left or right, I encourage you to pick up this book and to read it with an open mind. Because we should all care about the veracity of the news we consume. Manipulation by the media is dangerous and could tear us apart even more if we let it. That should terrify all of us, regardless of politics.
Attkisson starts off with a history of the media and how it began its downturn into something that has made people deeply suspicious. She details killed stories based on politics on both sides of the aisle and various smear campaigns. It was unsettling to learn how much is at play behind the scenes of the media and how much power they have. The stories that get aired, promoted, or blocked are often due to corporate or political interests/power. For example, Attkisson details how Amy Robach had the Jeffery Epstein story well before it actually broke, but it was killed due to pressure from the English royals who didn’t want Prince Andrew’s name dragged in. Since the network was hoping to keep access to the royals open and didn’t want to jeopardize their opportunity for interviews with the royal family, they didn’t break Robach’s story. Stories like these didn’t do much to increase my confidence in the legacy media.
Though Attkisson criticizes the mainstream media in general, she saves her biggest and harshest criticisms for the New York Times and CNN. She details what she perceives as the downward spiral of CNN from a respected news station that she was proud to work for, to a station hell-bent on creating celebrity journalists and sacrificing journalistic integrity and ethics in order to promote narratives. She interviews various journalists from these outlets, many speaking anonymously to avoid future blackballing, who discuss their concerns with the way journalism is currently trending.
This book was finished in the summer of 2020 so much of it is quite current. She devotes time to Covid 19 and, of course, politics. She points out ways that the media has overtly revealed bias as well as how they have revealed bias more covertly through word choice.
What I liked most about this book was that Attkisson provided many concrete examples to prove her points. For example, in one part of the book, she pulls specific quotes from various politicians to highlight the ways the media’s leftist bias has them attacking what a Republican may say while saying nothing about a Democrat saying essentially the same thing. This part was particularly disheartening because in instances where there was actually bi-partisan agreement, the media made it out to seem that the two sides were deeply divided.
Chapters 6 and 7 and the appendix largely have to do with Trump, with chapter 7 focusing on the Russian collusion narrative. While some may perceive Attikisson’s focus on Trump to be a defense of him, she explains that though the media has been sacrificing ethics for some time, it has gone into overdrive since 2016. She explains that Trump “is the biggest reason we have arrived where we are in journalism today [and] the press has used Trump’s perceived flaws and vulnerabilities as an excuse to justify very unjournalistic language and behavior.” Her concern is the effect this could have on media credibility. Attikisson maintains that, “no matter how we feel about Trump or any other subject of our reporting, we are not entitled to exaggerate about them, publish poorly sourced reporting, or treat them unfairly under the rationale that they somehow deserve it.” What may be perceived as defenses of Trump are in fact defenses of objectivity and integrity in reporting.
Near the end, Attkisson does offer some hope and she provides a list of reliable non-partisan (or at least partisan but fair and balanced) sources and journalists. I found this to be very helpful and have followed some new folks and downloaded some new apps for different sources. So far, I like what I have seen of those sources.
Whether you lean left or right, I encourage you to pick up this book and to read it with an open mind. Because we should all care about the veracity of the news we consume. Manipulation by the media is dangerous and could tear us apart even more if we let it. That should terrify all of us, regardless of politics.
August 29, 2023
It's been about 5 years since my family gave up watching the news for the side-ed-ness that we felt we were being spoonfed. Having a journalist call out her own occupation only further emphasizes how far society has allowed reporting to go. It's not about sides, the country deserves to hear both sides of the news and be allowed to come to their own conclusions. Leave the narratives to authors of stories, not current events/news.
January 23, 2021
I won’t give this five stars bc I’ve known most of what the author wrote, but that’s partially bc I follow her reporting.
So much truth. So much terrible media behavior.
If you read one book this year...well that’s lame but at least read this one.
So much truth. So much terrible media behavior.
If you read one book this year...well that’s lame but at least read this one.
January 23, 2021
I read the first 50 pages last night and there are a few problems. The author's premise is that the news is manipulated to serve the purposes of a given news organization. The tenor of that purpose is what's referred to in the business as the Narrative. Her intention is to show, through anecdotes of her own experience, how news is thus manipulated. She is an award-winning journalist whose work is held in high esteem, but right at the outset she has roused my suspicion.
One of her first observations is that there is often implicit bias in the way stories are assigned to reporters. The reporter is often asked to justify a presumed premise. She cites an assignment she was given in which she was asked to document the hardships faced by parents who are trying to raise a family while working jobs that pay the minimum wage. After a diligent search, she could find no families that were operating on minimum wages. As a last resort, she visited a McDonald’s where she figured she would be able to find people working for the minimum wage, but she found that every three months workers were given a raise of .25 an hour, so virtually no one was being paid the minimum wage. She notes the fact that in many places the local minimum wage is higher than the federal mandate. And here, only five pages in, she betrays my trust. As an example of the difference between the local and federal minimum wage she cites the fact that “(In 2020, for example, the Washington D.C. minimum wage was $15.00, more than double the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.)” The problem with that little factoid is that she worked on this story in the late 1990’s, at which time the federal minimum wage was $5.15 and the DC wage was $6.15 an hour. Her conclusion was that what was interesting about the story was that it was “difficult to find anyone raising children on minimum wage”. It may have been equally interesting to find out whether people were struggling despite making more than the minimum wage; to find out what kind of wage it actually takes to rise out of poverty.
There is a certain arrogance in not acknowledging her own bias in this regard, and I suspect that that arrogance may have contributed in part to the dissension between her and here producers.
A little further on she defends Trump against accusations of racism and misogyny by saying that he is equally offensive to members of his own race and gender. What an embarrassing argument.
It’s not a long book and a breezy read, so I’ll continue with it for the sake of the inside story of the news business and the promised attestations of other journalists, I have no doubt that the news is influenced by monied interests. It’s not useful though to make specious claims and faulty arguments that arise from a surprisingly facile intellect motivated in no small part by retribution for what she perceives as her victimization. She is outraged that editors get to decide what will or will not be reported. That is, in fact, the definition of an editor. It would be more useful if she focused her outrage on the corrupt influences.
Somehow she thinks that the corruption she has encountered in the news business justifies Trump’s claims that the mainstream media is all “fake news”. There is an important distinction between quashing a story for political reasons and claiming that the press lied about you having had the largest inauguration crowd in history. How can I trust her if she can’t or won’t see that difference?
One of her first observations is that there is often implicit bias in the way stories are assigned to reporters. The reporter is often asked to justify a presumed premise. She cites an assignment she was given in which she was asked to document the hardships faced by parents who are trying to raise a family while working jobs that pay the minimum wage. After a diligent search, she could find no families that were operating on minimum wages. As a last resort, she visited a McDonald’s where she figured she would be able to find people working for the minimum wage, but she found that every three months workers were given a raise of .25 an hour, so virtually no one was being paid the minimum wage. She notes the fact that in many places the local minimum wage is higher than the federal mandate. And here, only five pages in, she betrays my trust. As an example of the difference between the local and federal minimum wage she cites the fact that “(In 2020, for example, the Washington D.C. minimum wage was $15.00, more than double the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.)” The problem with that little factoid is that she worked on this story in the late 1990’s, at which time the federal minimum wage was $5.15 and the DC wage was $6.15 an hour. Her conclusion was that what was interesting about the story was that it was “difficult to find anyone raising children on minimum wage”. It may have been equally interesting to find out whether people were struggling despite making more than the minimum wage; to find out what kind of wage it actually takes to rise out of poverty.
There is a certain arrogance in not acknowledging her own bias in this regard, and I suspect that that arrogance may have contributed in part to the dissension between her and here producers.
A little further on she defends Trump against accusations of racism and misogyny by saying that he is equally offensive to members of his own race and gender. What an embarrassing argument.
It’s not a long book and a breezy read, so I’ll continue with it for the sake of the inside story of the news business and the promised attestations of other journalists, I have no doubt that the news is influenced by monied interests. It’s not useful though to make specious claims and faulty arguments that arise from a surprisingly facile intellect motivated in no small part by retribution for what she perceives as her victimization. She is outraged that editors get to decide what will or will not be reported. That is, in fact, the definition of an editor. It would be more useful if she focused her outrage on the corrupt influences.
Somehow she thinks that the corruption she has encountered in the news business justifies Trump’s claims that the mainstream media is all “fake news”. There is an important distinction between quashing a story for political reasons and claiming that the press lied about you having had the largest inauguration crowd in history. How can I trust her if she can’t or won’t see that difference?
April 7, 2025
.
Slanted: How the News Media
Taught Us to Love Censorship
and Hate Journalism
By Sharyl Attkisson, published in 2020 and about 300+ pages.
overview:
"...bestselling author Sharyl Attkisson takes on the media's misreporting on Black Lives Matter, coronavirus, Joe Biden, Silicon Valley censorship, and more.
When the facts don't fit their Narrative, the media abandons the facts, not the Narrative. Virtually every piece of information you get through the media has been massaged, shaped, curated, and manipulated before it reaches you. Some of it is censored entirely. The news can no longer be counted on to reflect all the facts. Instead of telling us what happened yesterday, they tell us what's new in the prepackaged soap opera they've been calling the news.
For the past four years, five-time Emmy Award–winning investigative journalist and New York Times bestselling author Sharyl Attkisson has been collecting and dissecting alarming incidents tracing the shocking devolution of what used to be the most respected news organizations on the planet. For the first time, top news executives and reporters representing every major national television news outlet—from ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN to FOX and MSNBC—speak frankly, confiding in Attkisson about the death of the news as they once knew it. Their concern transcends partisan divides.
Most frightening of all, a broad campaign in the media has convinced many Americans not only to accept but to demand censorship over journalism. It is a stroke of genius on the part of those seeking to influence public opinion: undermine public confidence in the news, then insist upon "curating" information and divining the "truth." The thinking is done for you. They'll decide which pesky facts shouldn't cross your desk by declaring them false, irrelevant, debunked, unsafe, or out-of-bounds.
We have reached a state of utter absurdity, where journalism schools teach students that their own, personal truth or chosen narratives matter more than reality. In Slanted, Attkisson digs into the language of propagandists, the persistence of false media narratives, the driving forces behind today's dangerous blend of facts and opinion, the abandonment of journalism ethics, and the new, Orwellian definition of what it means to report the news."
•
The book has 12 chapters, an Intro, Conclusion and an Appendix "Major Media Mistakes in the Era of Trump."
This list gives the date, the news service or name of the reporter or pundit who made the false statement and sometimes notes if a correction or retraction was made.
For example:
"7. Jan. 20, 2017: Zeke Miller of Time reports that President Trump has removed the bust statue of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., from the Oval Office. The news goes viral. It is false."
"107. January 7, 2020: MSNBC wrongly reports up to thirty US deaths after an Iranian rocket attack. In fact, no Americans were killed."
The list has 131 such mistakes, incompetence or outright lies from the mainstream media (MSM), including such prominent news services as The New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, CNN, CBS News and many others.
The Introduction summarizes George Orwell's novel 1984, relating that Orwellian nightmare of Big Brother and censorship to our current problem with the mainstream media censoring the news or creating fake news, propaganda and spin, now referred to as The Narrative.
"The Narrative refers to a story line that influential people want told in order to define and narrow your views. The goal of The Narrative is to embed chosen ideas so deeply within society that they are no longer questioned—scratch that—so that questions are not permitted."
Some details by chapter.
• Chapter 1. CBS Tales: Death by a Thousand Cuts
There are two harmful slants in news. Intentional bias is justified by those doing it, versus unwitting bias where they are so entrenched they can't see their own prejudice. The author provides many examples from her years of experience. One of her stories about high school kids holding an after-school Bible study was rejected by CBS because the kids couldn't be vilified as religious extremists.
When she was assigned to find dirt on President Bush (2004), she unintentionally uncovered much on John Kerry the Democratic candidate for POTUS. CBS was only interested in a story to smear Bush.
Killing a story for various reasons "reveal a lot about the death of the news as we knew it."
The New York ATM welfare scandal story was killed because those involved were all black.
Fraud at Feed the Children charity, where donations were not being used to feed children. The charity managed to compel CBS to kill the expose.
Death by a thousand cuts, is Attkisson's nickname for the process of subtly killing a story by editing, cutting out important details of a hard-hitting story, making it innocuous and endlessly delaying it's release.
A story revealing fraud by the companies that provide school lunches was killed because Michelle Obama was involved in an initiative to improve lunches and it may have tainted her reputation. In chapter 4 Attkisson mentions a threat from the Obama administration that forced CBS to cancel one of her investigative reports.
She believes CBS News killed her interview story with Senator Ted Cruz "because it did not portray Cruz as a fire-breathing villain."
These are a few examples of the author's some 100 or so investigative stories killed because they did not fit the CBS News narrative bias. Of course she finally quit CBS after 20+ years as an award winning investigative journalist and then they and others in the mainstream media vilified and impugned her.
• Ch 2. The Narrative by Proxy
Covers the alarming trend of reporters who are no longer objective or bipartisan since they insert their own opinions into new stories as just part of the "facts," spinning their stories to prove the popular viewpoint. Since Donald Trump began his presidential campaign in 2015, the press, the mainstream media has pushed only an anti-Trump narrative no matter what he says or does. Now neutral reporters are harassed or ruined if they don't demonize DJT.
"In today’s Alice in Wonderland environment, reporters who show overt bias against Trump view themselves as fair. But reporters who are fair to Trump are labeled as biased."
Gives the details of government officials and major media sources putting out fictitious "news" specifically to smear DJT. Social media (Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc), the government and others collude to censor the opposition. They've even flagged the author's (Attkisson's) own reports as false info. Attkisson published her book in 2020 and now in 2022 Elon Musk has proven the collusion she witnessed. Twitter and the Democratic Party conspired to censor free speech and conservatives.
• Ch 3. Weaponizing The Narrative / The #MeToo Poison Pen
"...the #MeToo narrative has been perverted in today's slanted media environment." The GOP's Justice Kavanaugh and many others became victims of this #MeToo lie perpetrated by the Lib - Dems to punish or destroy their opponents. Some were targeted to settle scores or over power struggles and other hidden agendas.
• Ch 4. When Narratives Collide
Starts with a story about MSNBC's Brian Williams's on air math blunder. Bloomberg's campaign spent $500 million. No, that does not mean all Americans (327 million) could have become millionaires with that 500 mil. The point is a national news service and staff presented false information to the public without anyone doing a simple fact check. "...this says a lot about what has happened to the media and why people do not trust the news."
Also covers: Trump didn't cause mistrust in the news and "Fake News" is the "Enemy of the People;" propaganda terms are now commonly used by "news" reporters, e.g., phobic is used to label anyone with a different opinion and debunked is used to discredit different views or facts.
Some narratives backfire. When the media labeled DJT a racist, Democrat Candice Owens woke up to this narrative of lies. She started "Blexit," the black exit out of the Democrat party. Candice and others who oppose the media's narrative are always demonized and or ignored, even if they are a well-spoken black activist.
• Ch 5. The New York Times / All the Narratives Fit to Print
Scandals at "The New Woke Times," like publishing more unsubstantiated charges about DJT for the purpose of shaping public opinion, just cuz they and the left hate him. Even printing such a story violated the NYT's own rules for publishing. The paper continued the attack on Justice Kavanaugh with more dorm party lies from his days at Yale, which were published as fact and they defended their biased reporting as being in-line with the views of their leftist readers. The author states; "Never did Trump’s slur, “the failing New York Times,” seem to hit closer to home."
• Ch 6. The Verbiage of The Narrative / Lies, Evidence, and Bombshells
Ordinary news stories are now reported as bombshells or breaking news so they seem more important to the reader, as well as true, even if they aren't. "Sloppy, slanted, and opinionated journalism against Trump" led to pulitzers and more unprofessional reporting. The unhinged media, for the first time, started using the L-word, calling DJT a liar, but ignoring the lies of Hillary, Obama, Biden and other leftists. Jokes, exaggerations and gaffes were now labeled as blatant Trump lies. Just another way to disparage him.
Kamala Harris and other Dems still claim Michael Brown was murdered. A claim made without evidence and obviously contrary to the facts, but the MSM has never called these Democrats liars, which they are. The author wasn't a Trump fan, but she's disgusted over the media's mendacious treatment of the president, falsely labeling him racist, anti-immigrant, a liar and a Russian stooge. Nonsense she calls "The Mother of All Narratives."
• Ch 7. The Mother of All Narratives / Russia, Russia, Russia
Here the author examines the Russia hoax narrative, "...a stunning feat of propaganda." Trump was said to have somehow colluded with Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, in order to win the 2016 election. This nonsensical hoax, the author says, "is responsible for the single greatest erosion of public trust in ... news organizations." The media, intelligence officials and the Democrat Party perpetrated this narrative.
Some of the victims and perpetrators are presented here.
Carter Page (a victim) was illegally spied on by the FBI.
James Clapper, the corrupt Director of National Intelligence, was hired by CNN to promote the Russia hoax.
John Brennan, the corrupt CIA director, became a pundit and Twitter propagandist, attacking Trump and pushing the fake story.
Robert Mueller, was [the figurehead] in the special counsel. His team were all Democrat political hacks, but in the end they were forced to concede there was no collusion with Russia.
Senator John McCain [a RINO] endlessly condemned DJT and helped with the fake anti-Trump dossier.
James Comey, the corrupt FBI director who let Hillary and company off scot-free after they "erased subpoenaed documents, wiped a ... server, and destroyed Clinton's old mobile devices ... with a hammer." He also leaked info and other materials to use against Trump.
Michael Horowitz, DOJ Inspector General, issued a report on the FBI and their illegal spying on the Trump campaign. Although Comey and the FBI were implicated in wrongdoing, nothing much came of it. The mainstream media's (MSM) narrative covered it up with fake claims of "nothing to see here," leaving Libs believing Trump and company were still "guilty of something involving Russia."
• Ch 8. CNN: The Cable Narrative Network
In the distant past the author worked at CNN and she and other former employees are alarmed at the all news network becoming a biased service for the Democratic party and the political left. Now at CNN there is "no pretense of being factual or neutral." As for CNN's Jim Acosta, in the author's day, "A reporter publicly expressing animosity toward ... those he covers would have been admonished if not summarily dismissed from his job." While Acosta got himself noticed in the Press Room, he was also writing a book about his time as a White House correspondent fighting with the POTUS (Trump).
• Ch 9. Pundits and Polls: Hard to Believe
"The Narrative and the polls were wrong," again. They failed at seeing the coming Trump presidency and failed to see Biden becoming the Dem's nominee. Even "CNN wrote Biden off as a 'dead man walking.'" Nowadays, polling is not done for accurate predictions. It is not about measuring current public opinion, but is used to shape voter opinion. Polls are used to slant the headlines to help Dems and harm GOP candidates. Polling is used for "...controlling the storyline and telling people only that which will convince them to think a particular way."
• Ch 10. Media vs. Media
The mainstream media pushes The Narrative and attacks anyone who gets out of line. "In other words, instead of covering the news, they attack those who are off narrative and cover that as if it is big news." They also vilify just about anyone on the right, conservatives, Republicans, etc., turning every issue into a Right vs. Left controversy.
The Coronavirus. When the author reported on the facts about the virus, at first only the elderly and infirmed seemed most at risk, she was vilified by the New York Times as a virus-doubter, even though the paper had published the same facts about the virus. Soon former colleagues and social media were attacking her. The Times only published a retraction after she hired a libel lawyer but the hit piece had already damaged her reputation. Supposedly they believed Attkisson's report could encourage healthy folks to think the virus wasn't so dangerous after all. It's what the liberal media does, trying to change public opinion rather than reporting the news, the facts.
As the virus scare continued, the media, comedy, etc., joined in on attacking everyone on the right who presented facts or called for a calm, rational reaction. Fox News hosts, Rush, Trump, Dr Drew, GOP politicians and more were labeled virus deniers or were accused of having blood on their hands. Nancy Pelosi, Dr. Fauci and anyone on the political left who mentioned the same facts, of course they were never castigated by the mainstream media.
• Ch 11. Media Mistakes
The Trump-hating media (the NYT, the Washington Post, CNN, etc.) all started making lists of alleged Trump lies. The author began counting/tracking major media mistakes in the Trump era. The left was determined to get Trump [no mater what] and invented all kinds of untruths and stuck to them even when they proved to be false.
Here the author details a few of the many elaborate mistakes [lies] perpetrated against DJT by the mainstream media. First, they claimed the Navy ship named after the RINO, John McCain had to be kept out of Trump's view during his speech. Just a big fat lie. At Thanksgiving, Trump flew to Afghanistan to meet the troops and serve them dinner, but was reported to be at home golfing and goofing off. When Trump visited US troops in Iraq at Christmas time it was falsely reported that he broke tradition and stayed home--a lie. And of course they ignored the fact that "... President Obama never visited US troops in foreign countries or combat zones on Thanksgiving or at Christmastime ..." There are other such examples.
"When reporters get caught doing bad journalism, they and their colleagues often retort that 'Trump lies more than we do.'” That's how the media justifies their fake news stories against DJT.
• Ch 12. There's Hope
Journalists (good ones) will be attacked if they don't support the prevailing narrative and may be ostracized by colleagues, labeled conspiracy theorists or face termination. "But of this I am sure: there is more need than ever for that kind of reporter." We need news we can trust. Schools now teach journalism students to be activists, shaping their stories to convince readers to think "correctly."
Here the author recommends some non-mainstream news sources that are not doing spin and propaganda to push The Narrative: The Epic Times; Real Clear Politics; Just the News; The Hill (but their news does tilt left); Vice News (even though it's left-wing); Project Veritas (undercover exposés); CNBC, Fox Business, Bloomberg (good coverage of national and world news); WikiLeaks (documenting Democratic activity); The Intercept (off narrative, but left-leaning); Judicial Watch; The Wall Street Journal (opinion-free news) and OpenSecrets.org. She also lists several reporters who have been objective over the years in their reporting.
Conclusion
The dictators of information hope to convince the public to eventually self-censor, expecting we'll all "fall in line with what they want us to say and think..." Despite George Orwell's warnings in 1984 of forced subservance to the government, the state, we seem headed that way anyways. But the author is hopeful of a better future: "Where we are invited to use our own brains to think what we like ... free from the grip of political and corporate interests or social activists who ... seek to limit what we may know and say."
•
Excellent job of presenting the problem, liberal leftists, the Democrats wanting only their propaganda believed by all. Since I've been seeing the left's narrative in the headlines for years, there doesn't seem to be much hope for reform, despite the author's concluding optimism.
The Democrats and their leftist mainstream media have always vilified Republican presidents, the GOP and conservatives and covered up the misdeeds of other Democrats. However, I'm still not clear why the left is so deranged when it comes to president Trump. Before Donald Trump was a candidate, the media loved him and CNN called him a beloved businessman, popular the world over.
.
..
Slanted: How the News Media
Taught Us to Love Censorship
and Hate Journalism
By Sharyl Attkisson, published in 2020 and about 300+ pages.
overview:
"...bestselling author Sharyl Attkisson takes on the media's misreporting on Black Lives Matter, coronavirus, Joe Biden, Silicon Valley censorship, and more.
When the facts don't fit their Narrative, the media abandons the facts, not the Narrative. Virtually every piece of information you get through the media has been massaged, shaped, curated, and manipulated before it reaches you. Some of it is censored entirely. The news can no longer be counted on to reflect all the facts. Instead of telling us what happened yesterday, they tell us what's new in the prepackaged soap opera they've been calling the news.
For the past four years, five-time Emmy Award–winning investigative journalist and New York Times bestselling author Sharyl Attkisson has been collecting and dissecting alarming incidents tracing the shocking devolution of what used to be the most respected news organizations on the planet. For the first time, top news executives and reporters representing every major national television news outlet—from ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN to FOX and MSNBC—speak frankly, confiding in Attkisson about the death of the news as they once knew it. Their concern transcends partisan divides.
Most frightening of all, a broad campaign in the media has convinced many Americans not only to accept but to demand censorship over journalism. It is a stroke of genius on the part of those seeking to influence public opinion: undermine public confidence in the news, then insist upon "curating" information and divining the "truth." The thinking is done for you. They'll decide which pesky facts shouldn't cross your desk by declaring them false, irrelevant, debunked, unsafe, or out-of-bounds.
We have reached a state of utter absurdity, where journalism schools teach students that their own, personal truth or chosen narratives matter more than reality. In Slanted, Attkisson digs into the language of propagandists, the persistence of false media narratives, the driving forces behind today's dangerous blend of facts and opinion, the abandonment of journalism ethics, and the new, Orwellian definition of what it means to report the news."
•
The book has 12 chapters, an Intro, Conclusion and an Appendix "Major Media Mistakes in the Era of Trump."
This list gives the date, the news service or name of the reporter or pundit who made the false statement and sometimes notes if a correction or retraction was made.
For example:
"7. Jan. 20, 2017: Zeke Miller of Time reports that President Trump has removed the bust statue of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., from the Oval Office. The news goes viral. It is false."
"107. January 7, 2020: MSNBC wrongly reports up to thirty US deaths after an Iranian rocket attack. In fact, no Americans were killed."
The list has 131 such mistakes, incompetence or outright lies from the mainstream media (MSM), including such prominent news services as The New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, CNN, CBS News and many others.
The Introduction summarizes George Orwell's novel 1984, relating that Orwellian nightmare of Big Brother and censorship to our current problem with the mainstream media censoring the news or creating fake news, propaganda and spin, now referred to as The Narrative.
"The Narrative refers to a story line that influential people want told in order to define and narrow your views. The goal of The Narrative is to embed chosen ideas so deeply within society that they are no longer questioned—scratch that—so that questions are not permitted."
Some details by chapter.
• Chapter 1. CBS Tales: Death by a Thousand Cuts
There are two harmful slants in news. Intentional bias is justified by those doing it, versus unwitting bias where they are so entrenched they can't see their own prejudice. The author provides many examples from her years of experience. One of her stories about high school kids holding an after-school Bible study was rejected by CBS because the kids couldn't be vilified as religious extremists.
When she was assigned to find dirt on President Bush (2004), she unintentionally uncovered much on John Kerry the Democratic candidate for POTUS. CBS was only interested in a story to smear Bush.
Killing a story for various reasons "reveal a lot about the death of the news as we knew it."
The New York ATM welfare scandal story was killed because those involved were all black.
Fraud at Feed the Children charity, where donations were not being used to feed children. The charity managed to compel CBS to kill the expose.
Death by a thousand cuts, is Attkisson's nickname for the process of subtly killing a story by editing, cutting out important details of a hard-hitting story, making it innocuous and endlessly delaying it's release.
A story revealing fraud by the companies that provide school lunches was killed because Michelle Obama was involved in an initiative to improve lunches and it may have tainted her reputation. In chapter 4 Attkisson mentions a threat from the Obama administration that forced CBS to cancel one of her investigative reports.
She believes CBS News killed her interview story with Senator Ted Cruz "because it did not portray Cruz as a fire-breathing villain."
These are a few examples of the author's some 100 or so investigative stories killed because they did not fit the CBS News narrative bias. Of course she finally quit CBS after 20+ years as an award winning investigative journalist and then they and others in the mainstream media vilified and impugned her.
• Ch 2. The Narrative by Proxy
Covers the alarming trend of reporters who are no longer objective or bipartisan since they insert their own opinions into new stories as just part of the "facts," spinning their stories to prove the popular viewpoint. Since Donald Trump began his presidential campaign in 2015, the press, the mainstream media has pushed only an anti-Trump narrative no matter what he says or does. Now neutral reporters are harassed or ruined if they don't demonize DJT.
"In today’s Alice in Wonderland environment, reporters who show overt bias against Trump view themselves as fair. But reporters who are fair to Trump are labeled as biased."
Gives the details of government officials and major media sources putting out fictitious "news" specifically to smear DJT. Social media (Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc), the government and others collude to censor the opposition. They've even flagged the author's (Attkisson's) own reports as false info. Attkisson published her book in 2020 and now in 2022 Elon Musk has proven the collusion she witnessed. Twitter and the Democratic Party conspired to censor free speech and conservatives.
• Ch 3. Weaponizing The Narrative / The #MeToo Poison Pen
"...the #MeToo narrative has been perverted in today's slanted media environment." The GOP's Justice Kavanaugh and many others became victims of this #MeToo lie perpetrated by the Lib - Dems to punish or destroy their opponents. Some were targeted to settle scores or over power struggles and other hidden agendas.
• Ch 4. When Narratives Collide
Starts with a story about MSNBC's Brian Williams's on air math blunder. Bloomberg's campaign spent $500 million. No, that does not mean all Americans (327 million) could have become millionaires with that 500 mil. The point is a national news service and staff presented false information to the public without anyone doing a simple fact check. "...this says a lot about what has happened to the media and why people do not trust the news."
Also covers: Trump didn't cause mistrust in the news and "Fake News" is the "Enemy of the People;" propaganda terms are now commonly used by "news" reporters, e.g., phobic is used to label anyone with a different opinion and debunked is used to discredit different views or facts.
Some narratives backfire. When the media labeled DJT a racist, Democrat Candice Owens woke up to this narrative of lies. She started "Blexit," the black exit out of the Democrat party. Candice and others who oppose the media's narrative are always demonized and or ignored, even if they are a well-spoken black activist.
• Ch 5. The New York Times / All the Narratives Fit to Print
Scandals at "The New Woke Times," like publishing more unsubstantiated charges about DJT for the purpose of shaping public opinion, just cuz they and the left hate him. Even printing such a story violated the NYT's own rules for publishing. The paper continued the attack on Justice Kavanaugh with more dorm party lies from his days at Yale, which were published as fact and they defended their biased reporting as being in-line with the views of their leftist readers. The author states; "Never did Trump’s slur, “the failing New York Times,” seem to hit closer to home."
• Ch 6. The Verbiage of The Narrative / Lies, Evidence, and Bombshells
Ordinary news stories are now reported as bombshells or breaking news so they seem more important to the reader, as well as true, even if they aren't. "Sloppy, slanted, and opinionated journalism against Trump" led to pulitzers and more unprofessional reporting. The unhinged media, for the first time, started using the L-word, calling DJT a liar, but ignoring the lies of Hillary, Obama, Biden and other leftists. Jokes, exaggerations and gaffes were now labeled as blatant Trump lies. Just another way to disparage him.
Kamala Harris and other Dems still claim Michael Brown was murdered. A claim made without evidence and obviously contrary to the facts, but the MSM has never called these Democrats liars, which they are. The author wasn't a Trump fan, but she's disgusted over the media's mendacious treatment of the president, falsely labeling him racist, anti-immigrant, a liar and a Russian stooge. Nonsense she calls "The Mother of All Narratives."
• Ch 7. The Mother of All Narratives / Russia, Russia, Russia
Here the author examines the Russia hoax narrative, "...a stunning feat of propaganda." Trump was said to have somehow colluded with Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, in order to win the 2016 election. This nonsensical hoax, the author says, "is responsible for the single greatest erosion of public trust in ... news organizations." The media, intelligence officials and the Democrat Party perpetrated this narrative.
Some of the victims and perpetrators are presented here.
Carter Page (a victim) was illegally spied on by the FBI.
James Clapper, the corrupt Director of National Intelligence, was hired by CNN to promote the Russia hoax.
John Brennan, the corrupt CIA director, became a pundit and Twitter propagandist, attacking Trump and pushing the fake story.
Robert Mueller, was [the figurehead] in the special counsel. His team were all Democrat political hacks, but in the end they were forced to concede there was no collusion with Russia.
Senator John McCain [a RINO] endlessly condemned DJT and helped with the fake anti-Trump dossier.
James Comey, the corrupt FBI director who let Hillary and company off scot-free after they "erased subpoenaed documents, wiped a ... server, and destroyed Clinton's old mobile devices ... with a hammer." He also leaked info and other materials to use against Trump.
Michael Horowitz, DOJ Inspector General, issued a report on the FBI and their illegal spying on the Trump campaign. Although Comey and the FBI were implicated in wrongdoing, nothing much came of it. The mainstream media's (MSM) narrative covered it up with fake claims of "nothing to see here," leaving Libs believing Trump and company were still "guilty of something involving Russia."
• Ch 8. CNN: The Cable Narrative Network
In the distant past the author worked at CNN and she and other former employees are alarmed at the all news network becoming a biased service for the Democratic party and the political left. Now at CNN there is "no pretense of being factual or neutral." As for CNN's Jim Acosta, in the author's day, "A reporter publicly expressing animosity toward ... those he covers would have been admonished if not summarily dismissed from his job." While Acosta got himself noticed in the Press Room, he was also writing a book about his time as a White House correspondent fighting with the POTUS (Trump).
• Ch 9. Pundits and Polls: Hard to Believe
"The Narrative and the polls were wrong," again. They failed at seeing the coming Trump presidency and failed to see Biden becoming the Dem's nominee. Even "CNN wrote Biden off as a 'dead man walking.'" Nowadays, polling is not done for accurate predictions. It is not about measuring current public opinion, but is used to shape voter opinion. Polls are used to slant the headlines to help Dems and harm GOP candidates. Polling is used for "...controlling the storyline and telling people only that which will convince them to think a particular way."
• Ch 10. Media vs. Media
The mainstream media pushes The Narrative and attacks anyone who gets out of line. "In other words, instead of covering the news, they attack those who are off narrative and cover that as if it is big news." They also vilify just about anyone on the right, conservatives, Republicans, etc., turning every issue into a Right vs. Left controversy.
The Coronavirus. When the author reported on the facts about the virus, at first only the elderly and infirmed seemed most at risk, she was vilified by the New York Times as a virus-doubter, even though the paper had published the same facts about the virus. Soon former colleagues and social media were attacking her. The Times only published a retraction after she hired a libel lawyer but the hit piece had already damaged her reputation. Supposedly they believed Attkisson's report could encourage healthy folks to think the virus wasn't so dangerous after all. It's what the liberal media does, trying to change public opinion rather than reporting the news, the facts.
As the virus scare continued, the media, comedy, etc., joined in on attacking everyone on the right who presented facts or called for a calm, rational reaction. Fox News hosts, Rush, Trump, Dr Drew, GOP politicians and more were labeled virus deniers or were accused of having blood on their hands. Nancy Pelosi, Dr. Fauci and anyone on the political left who mentioned the same facts, of course they were never castigated by the mainstream media.
• Ch 11. Media Mistakes
The Trump-hating media (the NYT, the Washington Post, CNN, etc.) all started making lists of alleged Trump lies. The author began counting/tracking major media mistakes in the Trump era. The left was determined to get Trump [no mater what] and invented all kinds of untruths and stuck to them even when they proved to be false.
Here the author details a few of the many elaborate mistakes [lies] perpetrated against DJT by the mainstream media. First, they claimed the Navy ship named after the RINO, John McCain had to be kept out of Trump's view during his speech. Just a big fat lie. At Thanksgiving, Trump flew to Afghanistan to meet the troops and serve them dinner, but was reported to be at home golfing and goofing off. When Trump visited US troops in Iraq at Christmas time it was falsely reported that he broke tradition and stayed home--a lie. And of course they ignored the fact that "... President Obama never visited US troops in foreign countries or combat zones on Thanksgiving or at Christmastime ..." There are other such examples.
"When reporters get caught doing bad journalism, they and their colleagues often retort that 'Trump lies more than we do.'” That's how the media justifies their fake news stories against DJT.
• Ch 12. There's Hope
Journalists (good ones) will be attacked if they don't support the prevailing narrative and may be ostracized by colleagues, labeled conspiracy theorists or face termination. "But of this I am sure: there is more need than ever for that kind of reporter." We need news we can trust. Schools now teach journalism students to be activists, shaping their stories to convince readers to think "correctly."
Here the author recommends some non-mainstream news sources that are not doing spin and propaganda to push The Narrative: The Epic Times; Real Clear Politics; Just the News; The Hill (but their news does tilt left); Vice News (even though it's left-wing); Project Veritas (undercover exposés); CNBC, Fox Business, Bloomberg (good coverage of national and world news); WikiLeaks (documenting Democratic activity); The Intercept (off narrative, but left-leaning); Judicial Watch; The Wall Street Journal (opinion-free news) and OpenSecrets.org. She also lists several reporters who have been objective over the years in their reporting.
Conclusion
The dictators of information hope to convince the public to eventually self-censor, expecting we'll all "fall in line with what they want us to say and think..." Despite George Orwell's warnings in 1984 of forced subservance to the government, the state, we seem headed that way anyways. But the author is hopeful of a better future: "Where we are invited to use our own brains to think what we like ... free from the grip of political and corporate interests or social activists who ... seek to limit what we may know and say."
•
Excellent job of presenting the problem, liberal leftists, the Democrats wanting only their propaganda believed by all. Since I've been seeing the left's narrative in the headlines for years, there doesn't seem to be much hope for reform, despite the author's concluding optimism.
The Democrats and their leftist mainstream media have always vilified Republican presidents, the GOP and conservatives and covered up the misdeeds of other Democrats. However, I'm still not clear why the left is so deranged when it comes to president Trump. Before Donald Trump was a candidate, the media loved him and CNN called him a beloved businessman, popular the world over.
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..
May 23, 2021
Bastardizing Orwell’s 1984 to suit the GOP’s current demented agenda—despite Attkisson’s smoke bombs and circus mirrors used to deflect and beguile readers far beyond reality—Slanted is another deplorable defender of the pathological liar, egotistical narcissist, criminal grifter, and historic sociopathic racist otherwise known as Donald J. Trump, and all the sycophants and toadies clasping his bloated ankles for their time at the feeding trough of Plutocracy. “The media at large became committed to a political agenda to undermine and ultimately remove Trump from office. Which only served to prove his point about their bias” (p. 14). Attkisson’s bellowing of news bias, while completely true for most major outlets, is laughably one-sided and shallowly targeted. CBS, CNN, and the New York Times are her prime villains, which I won’t bother defending for being biased, for forcing narratives, and for editing perspectives (though the NYT’s 130 Pulitzers is impossible to ignore). She also (1) rails against Politically Correct culture, conjuring the modern-day Satanic Panic of “cancel culture” as the GOP’s go-to lament for its desire to spin lies, project racism, and protect a Caucasian-centric everything within their delusional narratives. Simple moral integrity and basic multicultural humanism are also pushed aside to defend the clarion call of “free speech” to support QAnon conspiracies, pathetic insurrections spurred by criminal sedition (blue lives matter, just not on Capitol Hill where morons wearing viking hats are heroes), and all the guns one could ever desire (“many responsible gun owners support responsible gun laws”—they do, and I’m one of them, just not the ones with military armories buried in their backyards, in fantasy militias afraid of the ghost armies of “Antifa”, and cosplaying Tom Clancy Delta Force characters as they plant bombs in the Capitol; (2) she defends white-collar sexual predators, at least on the GOP side of things (women lie with the “chilling weaponization of #MeToo” (p. 84), with no irony lost upon the author, so I’ll include Al Franken’s latest video here to offer a counter-perspective to this whole book where “history is hard” [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRYH0... (3) she denounces anti-poverty crusades (she apparently couldn’t find one single mother with kids using the SNAP program in all of New York City at one point, thereby concluding that “social welfare” is thoroughly abused, no doubt parroting timeworn talking points by Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Lou Dobbs, Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Ronald Regan, and their devoted, brainwashed followers over the past five decades; and, (4) defends all the “narratives” of the Far Right, backed by their greed-driven millionaires and dark money enterprises like Heritage Action, sister to the Heritage Foundation, and helmed by Trumper Jessica Anderson and whose funding is completely shrouded by Citizens United, fundamentally backing all voter suppression laws unleashed in 2021 in a brazen, white-knuckled power-grab to keep their feeding trough full (https://www.motherjones.com/politics/...). Attkisson now works for the Daily Signal (something I’ve never heard of), and unsurprisingly funded by the Heritage Foundation, as well as has a show on Sinclair Broadcasting, yay!
This is what the clever ones still remaining in the GOP do. They find facts, such as “responsible gun owners support responsible gun laws” and then twist them to suit their “base”, or “look, this one doctor says vaccines cause autism, it must be true!”, even though the GOP doesn’t really care about guns or the Bible or dead kids or the welfare of the lower classes. “Thoughts and prayers” all-around as long as the money keeps pouring in. Thirty-round magazines, bump stocks, silencers, and open carry laws feed their fanatical fans, even when half of all Americans cannot afford a $500 emergency bill because they are living check to check with no savings to speak of, but the puppet masters categorically care only about their personal power and their personal wealth. Blue lives matter (especially the sociopathic ones), not Indigenous or Black or Brown or Asian or Muslim lives. The police, in many ways, uphold systemic racism in this land of hypocrisy. The rest is smoke and mirrors and lies, and now I suppose recruitment of empty-headed foot soldiers to act as their unofficial brute squads hiding behind online anonymity and physical masks. The GOP really is cult-like now, and the psychology of cults—for leaders and followers—fits a simple template (just read the seminal work on cult thinking, When Prophecy Fails by Festinger, Riecken, and Schachter, for this template). While they descend into deranged asininity, the GOP is pushing harder and harder towards authoritarian rule, using every tool and trick of the trade.
What’s inexcusable here is that Attkisson spends absolutely no time talking about the lies, obfuscations, and disinformation machine of the GOP through Rupert Murdoch’s, Roger Stone’s, Steve Bannon’s, and Alex Jones’s media outlets (add in Sinclair broadcasting and newspaper conglomerates owned by the filthy-rich too). The tailored doctoring of information to suit an incredibly slanted agenda, never mind the vulture capitalists consuming media outlets near and far to spew their own agendas upon the gullible masses (https://www.npr.org/2021/05/21/998730...), is deeply entrenched and probably unsolvable. Even if algorithms could tag everything as either a Fact, an Opinion, or a Falsehood, many would doubt the verdicts, blame secret cabals for not reading what their pathological brains want to read (the Earth is flat! The Dems want to steal your bacon-double cheeseburgers right out of your greasy, obese hands! It’s a Plandemic! Pedophile cults are in the invisible basements of pizza joints! BBQ-BEER-FREEDOM!), and holing up in online caves sharing the crazy with all who will listen.
Politifact does the best they can in this climate, since our digital oligarchs only care about ad revenue and most people only care about pet photos and 20-somethings in bikinis (https://www.politifact.com/).
News in the modern era—with attention spans shorter than goldfish looking for the next endorphin kick, with our education system horribly underfunded and critical thinking skills on the severe downslide—are primarily about click-bait. Important news has, at best, a 48-hour cycle. Remember when canned goods were declared toxic just a few years ago? Remember the micro plastics coursing through our bloodstreams? Clean coal? Healthy cigarettes? How recycling will save the planet? Weapons of Mass Distraction in Iraq? The Panama Papers? Serious news is all too often suffocated by garbage schlock and awe. Twitter King Trump, second-coming of that Arab-Jew Jesus Christ for many, knew this all too well, and the GOP has unleashed all the crud that was previously pressed beneath the societal carpet with the very same tactics to keep them afloat.
Attkisson does another wonderful ploy at the very end of this book, listing her expertly vetted champions of authentic, objective journalism, just like her. Individuals from Propublica, The Intercept, The New Yorker, and others are listed. “See, I’m not alone! I won an Edward R. Murrow award once (as part of a team)!” In fact, she ends the book perfectly—again bookending this tripe through Orwellian eyes:
“ . . . I’d like to believe there is a version of our future in which information is accessible in its many forms, with the recognition that often what’s right or wrong, and what’s considered factually correct, is no more than a matter of opinion or a snapshot in time. Where we are invited to use our own brains to think what we like, form our own conclusions, change our minds, feel out our positions, argue, and debate—free from the grip of political and corporate interests or social activists who increasingly seek to limit what we may know and say. The quest for knowledge is ongoing and never final.
I choose to believe there is a viable path to such a place because the alternative is too chilling. In an alternate future, people will be told this book was never written.”
If only. Propagandists on the Right can’t even read books accurately, too busy toiling in their disinformation machinations, cherry-picking facts to candy-coat their lies.
“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.” ― George Orwell, 1984
This is what the clever ones still remaining in the GOP do. They find facts, such as “responsible gun owners support responsible gun laws” and then twist them to suit their “base”, or “look, this one doctor says vaccines cause autism, it must be true!”, even though the GOP doesn’t really care about guns or the Bible or dead kids or the welfare of the lower classes. “Thoughts and prayers” all-around as long as the money keeps pouring in. Thirty-round magazines, bump stocks, silencers, and open carry laws feed their fanatical fans, even when half of all Americans cannot afford a $500 emergency bill because they are living check to check with no savings to speak of, but the puppet masters categorically care only about their personal power and their personal wealth. Blue lives matter (especially the sociopathic ones), not Indigenous or Black or Brown or Asian or Muslim lives. The police, in many ways, uphold systemic racism in this land of hypocrisy. The rest is smoke and mirrors and lies, and now I suppose recruitment of empty-headed foot soldiers to act as their unofficial brute squads hiding behind online anonymity and physical masks. The GOP really is cult-like now, and the psychology of cults—for leaders and followers—fits a simple template (just read the seminal work on cult thinking, When Prophecy Fails by Festinger, Riecken, and Schachter, for this template). While they descend into deranged asininity, the GOP is pushing harder and harder towards authoritarian rule, using every tool and trick of the trade.
What’s inexcusable here is that Attkisson spends absolutely no time talking about the lies, obfuscations, and disinformation machine of the GOP through Rupert Murdoch’s, Roger Stone’s, Steve Bannon’s, and Alex Jones’s media outlets (add in Sinclair broadcasting and newspaper conglomerates owned by the filthy-rich too). The tailored doctoring of information to suit an incredibly slanted agenda, never mind the vulture capitalists consuming media outlets near and far to spew their own agendas upon the gullible masses (https://www.npr.org/2021/05/21/998730...), is deeply entrenched and probably unsolvable. Even if algorithms could tag everything as either a Fact, an Opinion, or a Falsehood, many would doubt the verdicts, blame secret cabals for not reading what their pathological brains want to read (the Earth is flat! The Dems want to steal your bacon-double cheeseburgers right out of your greasy, obese hands! It’s a Plandemic! Pedophile cults are in the invisible basements of pizza joints! BBQ-BEER-FREEDOM!), and holing up in online caves sharing the crazy with all who will listen.
Politifact does the best they can in this climate, since our digital oligarchs only care about ad revenue and most people only care about pet photos and 20-somethings in bikinis (https://www.politifact.com/).
News in the modern era—with attention spans shorter than goldfish looking for the next endorphin kick, with our education system horribly underfunded and critical thinking skills on the severe downslide—are primarily about click-bait. Important news has, at best, a 48-hour cycle. Remember when canned goods were declared toxic just a few years ago? Remember the micro plastics coursing through our bloodstreams? Clean coal? Healthy cigarettes? How recycling will save the planet? Weapons of Mass Distraction in Iraq? The Panama Papers? Serious news is all too often suffocated by garbage schlock and awe. Twitter King Trump, second-coming of that Arab-Jew Jesus Christ for many, knew this all too well, and the GOP has unleashed all the crud that was previously pressed beneath the societal carpet with the very same tactics to keep them afloat.
Attkisson does another wonderful ploy at the very end of this book, listing her expertly vetted champions of authentic, objective journalism, just like her. Individuals from Propublica, The Intercept, The New Yorker, and others are listed. “See, I’m not alone! I won an Edward R. Murrow award once (as part of a team)!” In fact, she ends the book perfectly—again bookending this tripe through Orwellian eyes:
“ . . . I’d like to believe there is a version of our future in which information is accessible in its many forms, with the recognition that often what’s right or wrong, and what’s considered factually correct, is no more than a matter of opinion or a snapshot in time. Where we are invited to use our own brains to think what we like, form our own conclusions, change our minds, feel out our positions, argue, and debate—free from the grip of political and corporate interests or social activists who increasingly seek to limit what we may know and say. The quest for knowledge is ongoing and never final.
I choose to believe there is a viable path to such a place because the alternative is too chilling. In an alternate future, people will be told this book was never written.”
If only. Propagandists on the Right can’t even read books accurately, too busy toiling in their disinformation machinations, cherry-picking facts to candy-coat their lies.
“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.” ― George Orwell, 1984
December 1, 2020
“Slanted” is an exposure of the depths the news outlets have sunk to in their obsession to control what author Sharyl Attkisson refers to as The Narrative. Fact-twisting, using different words to protect those who are deemed worthy of protection (think “lying” versus “misspoke” or “misrepresented” or “did not accurately recall”), and outright lies are only a few of the weapons in their arsenal.
Ms. Attkisson, longtime investigative reporter for CBS, shares personal examples of instances where her stories were changed or buried because they did not conform to The Narrative being pushed by her supervisors. She also exposes some of the biggest stories of recent times, including the #MeToo movement, Russia and the 2016 election, and the overwhelming attacks on Donald Trump.
Because of the author’s positions on each of these stories, many will position her as conservative and thus dismiss her assertions. However, Ms. Attkisson takes great pains to present in detail her reporting ethics as well as the same doctrine that for years had been the cornerstone of reliable news coverage. Sadly, these beliefs have been left by the wayside and an Orwellian-type structure has permeated what was once a respectable profession. A mere allegation is regarded as true if there is no proof to refute it, negating a basic principle of how investigative reporting should be practiced.
The Appendix is a section that should not be overlooked: Major Media Mistakes in the Era of Trump. The author documents items not based on fact, opinions, and plain old untruths.
While the use of the press and news outlets has always had those who pushed their own views, there was more of a balance so we could hear both sides. Years ago, there was a practice that rebuttals were allowed equal time on the airwaves, thus giving a voice to the opposition. We are living in a time when most print and TV/radio stations push The Narrative, and it is difficult to find a contrary opinion. Essentially, it is work to gather information from both sides of an issue to enable us to have the ability to make up our own minds on where we stand. “Slanted” details this issue, acknowledging that the news outlets are making these decisions for us and merely telling us what to think.
I did like that the author used the last chapter to suggest changes, ways that the news could return to promoting objective standards (as in, there is room to report both liberal and conservative views in a non-biased format). There are still people in the industry bucking the trend (and on both sides of the political spectrum), but it is a tough road. Our job is to seek these people out. Ms. Attkisson leaves us with a list of organizations and individuals who we may wish to pursue in our quest to find out the truth. Five stars.
Ms. Attkisson, longtime investigative reporter for CBS, shares personal examples of instances where her stories were changed or buried because they did not conform to The Narrative being pushed by her supervisors. She also exposes some of the biggest stories of recent times, including the #MeToo movement, Russia and the 2016 election, and the overwhelming attacks on Donald Trump.
Because of the author’s positions on each of these stories, many will position her as conservative and thus dismiss her assertions. However, Ms. Attkisson takes great pains to present in detail her reporting ethics as well as the same doctrine that for years had been the cornerstone of reliable news coverage. Sadly, these beliefs have been left by the wayside and an Orwellian-type structure has permeated what was once a respectable profession. A mere allegation is regarded as true if there is no proof to refute it, negating a basic principle of how investigative reporting should be practiced.
The Appendix is a section that should not be overlooked: Major Media Mistakes in the Era of Trump. The author documents items not based on fact, opinions, and plain old untruths.
While the use of the press and news outlets has always had those who pushed their own views, there was more of a balance so we could hear both sides. Years ago, there was a practice that rebuttals were allowed equal time on the airwaves, thus giving a voice to the opposition. We are living in a time when most print and TV/radio stations push The Narrative, and it is difficult to find a contrary opinion. Essentially, it is work to gather information from both sides of an issue to enable us to have the ability to make up our own minds on where we stand. “Slanted” details this issue, acknowledging that the news outlets are making these decisions for us and merely telling us what to think.
I did like that the author used the last chapter to suggest changes, ways that the news could return to promoting objective standards (as in, there is room to report both liberal and conservative views in a non-biased format). There are still people in the industry bucking the trend (and on both sides of the political spectrum), but it is a tough road. Our job is to seek these people out. Ms. Attkisson leaves us with a list of organizations and individuals who we may wish to pursue in our quest to find out the truth. Five stars.
January 26, 2021
The people who need to read this the most are probably the ones least likely to do so unfortunately. What the media has become is both disturbing and disheartening. It's refreshing to find someone who still practices journalism in it's intended fashion. The world needs more of this!
November 29, 2020
Interesting book. I was especially interested in the history of CNN and it’s first 20 years focus on news and then the change to more opinion-based reporting.
August 31, 2024
Attkisson's main thesis is that the news is manipulated to serve the (political) purposes of a given news organization, which she repeatedly refers to as the Narrative. I found the begging of the book somewhat interesting.
The author claims that there is often implicit bias in the way stories are assigned to reporters and they are often asked to justify a presumed premise. Based on my own experience as a journalist, I recognized this practice, however, I would never claim that this is the rule newsrooms live by. She seems to forget that "defending" your story and its premises has always been the normal practice of the newsrooms. It's not an ideological control, but the discussion of the newsworthiness, and important for media/resources planning.
And then it all went off the rail. Attkisson accuses everything and everyone of being biased, but -- in great irony -- doesn't acknowledge her own biases. This whole book is an attempt to confirm the alt-right's "Narrative" of how the media is too liberal and news is "fake". She dedicates a whole chapter to anti-vaxing claiming she as a journalist was oppressed because she wasn't able to publish a story in support of the anti-vax narratives. From chapter to chapter she justifies and defends Trump against accusations of racism and misogyny by saying that he is equally offensive to members of his own race and gender. She is critical of fact-checking and claims that this was used to advance Trump's opponents' agenda, conveniently forgetting that he was telling absurdly many lies. It is even more cringe-worthy because she uses the "good journalism must seek truth and call out everybody" idea whenever it suits her narrative and forgets it as soon as it calls her stands into question.
The author claims that there is often implicit bias in the way stories are assigned to reporters and they are often asked to justify a presumed premise. Based on my own experience as a journalist, I recognized this practice, however, I would never claim that this is the rule newsrooms live by. She seems to forget that "defending" your story and its premises has always been the normal practice of the newsrooms. It's not an ideological control, but the discussion of the newsworthiness, and important for media/resources planning.
And then it all went off the rail. Attkisson accuses everything and everyone of being biased, but -- in great irony -- doesn't acknowledge her own biases. This whole book is an attempt to confirm the alt-right's "Narrative" of how the media is too liberal and news is "fake". She dedicates a whole chapter to anti-vaxing claiming she as a journalist was oppressed because she wasn't able to publish a story in support of the anti-vax narratives. From chapter to chapter she justifies and defends Trump against accusations of racism and misogyny by saying that he is equally offensive to members of his own race and gender. She is critical of fact-checking and claims that this was used to advance Trump's opponents' agenda, conveniently forgetting that he was telling absurdly many lies. It is even more cringe-worthy because she uses the "good journalism must seek truth and call out everybody" idea whenever it suits her narrative and forgets it as soon as it calls her stands into question.
March 17, 2022
I think I would have enjoyed this book if it had been either a straight memoir of working in journalism over the last 30 years OR a really well-researched, comprehensive look at the forces threatening objectivity in news today. Instead it tried to be something in between and didn’t work for me. The thing that kept it, in my view, from feeling well-researched and comprehensive was that it failed to address in any serious way the following factors: 1) polarization in American politics generally, 2) the impact of social media/algorithms on how people get news, 3) evidence of how the news landscape has provably disintegrated in the last few decades, and 4) the extent to which true objectivity is even possible in news coverage or in anything. It’s a little grating that Attkisson attacks unacknowledged bias in the news so strongly when it’s fairly obvious that she has strong biases and doesn’t acknowledge them. From reading this book you’d think Donald Trump was an innocent victim, Fox News is irrelevant to the media landscape, and she is the only sane ethical person who’s worked in journalism in the last 20 years. Still, it did make me reconsider a lot of recent events and whether I really know the full story; also, why I have the associations I do with catch phrases like “do your own research” and “fake news.” Unfortunately her own bias made me feel like I couldn’t accept Attkisson’s version of events either.
April 25, 2021
Sharyl Attkisson is a reporter who started out many years ago at CNN when it was an actual news network. She moved to CBS where she was one of their top reporters and tv personalities and she felt that she would most likely spend her career there. That changed when she started noticing her stories were getting killed or she was told to change them in order to get them aired. Attkisson reported her stories in a very non-biased, let the chips fall where they may manner and CBS had gone the way of the new MSM, liberal slant so many of her stories went against their ideology. She decided to leave CBS and she now has a Sunday Morning show, 'Full Measure', where she is free to report stories in a factual, evidence based manner. Attkisson gives a first hand look at how the media has gone all in on their own narratives vs actual news and it really is as bad as I thought it would be. She gives lots of examples and lists names to back up her story. She never reveals if she was a Trump supporter but she gives numerous examples of how the media tilted and even lied to destroy a sitting President and in the back of the book she lists thirty-one of the big lies about President Trump. She also gives a list of her most trusted news sites on the internet. I recommend this book to anyone wondering about the downward trajectory of our so-called news and how it became so jaded.
December 9, 2021
I've seen Attkison's program on tv where she takes an issue and presents two sides. This book does not do that, it is in fact slanted. I too lament the days when the media was required to present alternative views on a topic. I expected Ms. Attkisson to talk about the Fairness Doctrine, which required media outlets to do just that. And perhaps to acknowledge that a Democrat-controlled Congress passed a bill to re-instate the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 and Ronald Reagan vetoed the bill. Ms. Attkison then uses this book to slam left leaning media sources without slamming right leaning media sources that do the same and worse. I was hoping for a balanced approach on this topic, but it read like sour grapes of a disgruntled employee.
November 9, 2021
Spot on! Sharyl Attkinsson, former CBS and CNN anchor/reporter perfectly captures what is going on in journalism today -- a total disregard for neutral, balanced newsreporting that was a mainstay of our free-thinking society for many years. In its place, biased news that "fits the political narrative" has run amuck, causing us to distrust the news. As a trained journalist, I saw this situation worsen over the past 40+ years to the point where most new reporters believe it's okay to mix opinion with news stories. No wonder no one believes anything anymore! Atkinson gives examples from the Left and the Right, where journalism has been replaced with carefully calculated propaganda.
December 3, 2020
WOW! That pretty much sums up my opinion of the latest book by Sharyl Attkisson. I have read all of her books and they are all extremely enlightening regarding the underbelly of American Journalism.
Attkisson confirms in her latest book what I have personally suspected for some time. Of late I have completely stopped watching the news because I felt it is no longer news that is being presented or worthy of being watched, at least by me. No matter what television channel or what news program you tune into, you are getting nothing but information that “someone” wants you to hear and see instead of the news that is actually happening and that can also be verified as being true.
I have read and watched Attkisson’s news programs for decades and have always felt that I received the factual news and I was permitted to make up my own mind in regards to the news story being covered. As time went on programs and specials like hers have disappeared from our news media. Attkisson points out from an “insider’s” point of view how what we see and hear on our television sets have been doctored and changed to create a “narrative” (her word) which is what I would refer to as an agenda. If you are told that 2+2=5 enough times you tend to believe that is true. When you hear others refute that proposition and who are then targeted by their fellow so-called journalists, the idea that 2+2=5 becomes more and more valid and eventually becomes what you personally believe to be true. That is what has happened to our, with the emphasis on the word OUR, news media, electronic and print. We are being fed “stories” and not being introduced to the news.
Attkisson goes even further to point out the unabashedly bias of the journalists we see and read who fail to just do their job. There was a time when it was almost impossible to determine the political slant of a television journalist (Walter Cronkite), not to be confused with a television commentator (Sean Hannity). The news consisted of verified facts and lacked obvious opinions inserted into the stories we are now being told. That is exactly what they are, STORIES with enough facts interspersed to make them appear real and truthful. Attkisson gives example after example of news media bias; unverified and false news reports and she is not afraid to call out the perpetrators by name and company affiliation. At the end of the book she identifies the number of serious untruthful stories printed about President Trump. This is not a book about Trump but instead the media coverage of Trump only is used to demonstrate how far the media has fallen in the eyes of the American viewers and readers.
The only part of the book that I disagree with is when Attkisson attempts to paint a picture of where and how the media might correct itself. She identifies news sources that she feels go the extra yard to present the facts and not opinions or “stories.” I, contrary to her hope for the future, feel we as a country have reached the tipping point on “our” press and therefore “our” journalists. Journalism as I once knew it to be is dead. I am far more pessimistic in that regard; I do not think it can ever become what it once was – a trusted AND UNBIASED source of news.
As bad as the news media is portrayed in Slanted, I still fault my fellow citizens even more than the media because we appear to be focused on one to two-minute sound bites to form our opinions and then move on. Unfortunately, those two minutes are probably the worst spent two minutes of most of our lives when we form opinions that become beliefs based on lies, misdirection’s, personal agendas and personal narratives all designed to mold the viewer/readers mind to believe what the journalist wants you to believe. When we stop thinking for ourselves, we have become the sheep defined in the book, 1984 written by George Orwell. Like it or not, we have become brainwashed and 1984 has become 2020 with our unconscious approval. As for 2+2, it equals 5 just as Orwell predicted in his book!
Who should read this book? That’s easy. EVERYONE unless you don’t care that you are being brainwashed by opinions, narratives and untruths.
Would I read it again? Probably not except to look up specific instances of news media biases. Re-reading it would not bear any fruit at least for me. Hard to be any more disgusted over our failing news media.
Would I give it as a gift? I like to think that if I give someone a book as a gift, they would read it. Sadly, so many Americans today have no desire to learn the truth and therefore the gift would be meaningless if they refused to read it to its end.
Attkisson confirms in her latest book what I have personally suspected for some time. Of late I have completely stopped watching the news because I felt it is no longer news that is being presented or worthy of being watched, at least by me. No matter what television channel or what news program you tune into, you are getting nothing but information that “someone” wants you to hear and see instead of the news that is actually happening and that can also be verified as being true.
I have read and watched Attkisson’s news programs for decades and have always felt that I received the factual news and I was permitted to make up my own mind in regards to the news story being covered. As time went on programs and specials like hers have disappeared from our news media. Attkisson points out from an “insider’s” point of view how what we see and hear on our television sets have been doctored and changed to create a “narrative” (her word) which is what I would refer to as an agenda. If you are told that 2+2=5 enough times you tend to believe that is true. When you hear others refute that proposition and who are then targeted by their fellow so-called journalists, the idea that 2+2=5 becomes more and more valid and eventually becomes what you personally believe to be true. That is what has happened to our, with the emphasis on the word OUR, news media, electronic and print. We are being fed “stories” and not being introduced to the news.
Attkisson goes even further to point out the unabashedly bias of the journalists we see and read who fail to just do their job. There was a time when it was almost impossible to determine the political slant of a television journalist (Walter Cronkite), not to be confused with a television commentator (Sean Hannity). The news consisted of verified facts and lacked obvious opinions inserted into the stories we are now being told. That is exactly what they are, STORIES with enough facts interspersed to make them appear real and truthful. Attkisson gives example after example of news media bias; unverified and false news reports and she is not afraid to call out the perpetrators by name and company affiliation. At the end of the book she identifies the number of serious untruthful stories printed about President Trump. This is not a book about Trump but instead the media coverage of Trump only is used to demonstrate how far the media has fallen in the eyes of the American viewers and readers.
The only part of the book that I disagree with is when Attkisson attempts to paint a picture of where and how the media might correct itself. She identifies news sources that she feels go the extra yard to present the facts and not opinions or “stories.” I, contrary to her hope for the future, feel we as a country have reached the tipping point on “our” press and therefore “our” journalists. Journalism as I once knew it to be is dead. I am far more pessimistic in that regard; I do not think it can ever become what it once was – a trusted AND UNBIASED source of news.
As bad as the news media is portrayed in Slanted, I still fault my fellow citizens even more than the media because we appear to be focused on one to two-minute sound bites to form our opinions and then move on. Unfortunately, those two minutes are probably the worst spent two minutes of most of our lives when we form opinions that become beliefs based on lies, misdirection’s, personal agendas and personal narratives all designed to mold the viewer/readers mind to believe what the journalist wants you to believe. When we stop thinking for ourselves, we have become the sheep defined in the book, 1984 written by George Orwell. Like it or not, we have become brainwashed and 1984 has become 2020 with our unconscious approval. As for 2+2, it equals 5 just as Orwell predicted in his book!
Who should read this book? That’s easy. EVERYONE unless you don’t care that you are being brainwashed by opinions, narratives and untruths.
Would I read it again? Probably not except to look up specific instances of news media biases. Re-reading it would not bear any fruit at least for me. Hard to be any more disgusted over our failing news media.
Would I give it as a gift? I like to think that if I give someone a book as a gift, they would read it. Sadly, so many Americans today have no desire to learn the truth and therefore the gift would be meaningless if they refused to read it to its end.
February 1, 2021
Long gone are the days when a journalist had the zeal for their profession. Where the "character" of the unrelenting, "report the facts at all cost" persona played in Hollywood has sadly passed away. My son and my money are going to journalism school. My son is one of those "let the chips fall where they may" kind of thinkers. After reading this book, I feel he has an uphill battle.
This book is precisely what I have been talking about for a decade or more now, but put into a concise book. The author is a Trump supporter, or at least she may be, but the book is not necessarily about Trump insofar as the decline in journalism since he became president. If you want to read a great book about how the industry has devolved and can put aside someone not parroting the played out narrative about orange-man-bad then I recommend this book. She not only covers the Trump phenomenon with the press but other stories like the Harvey Weinstein, NBC, debacles, etc.
The book covers how the journalists have allowed themselves to be nothing but a propaganda delivery system. When I was younger, you could not tell party affiliation of most journalists both on air and in print. The news was delivered as facts and the viewer/reader could form their own opinions. This is no longer the case.
The author gives specific example in her tenure of inexplicable canceling of stories that were fact-based and outed corruption at all levels, all parties and all people. She discusses the language that has become acceptable by reporters that would have never been allowed in the past such as liar, no proof, etc.
Journalists have become nothing but political pundits with zero integrity and zero respect for their craft. She discussed the devolution of CNN under Zuckerman's rein as well as other previously respected news outlets. This is not partisan either. Viewers and readers from both parties are disillusioned with media today.
I came out of the book having a much better knowledge of the "narrative game" and how it's played. It's bitter sweet because knowledge is indeed power but ignorance is bliss. Knowing that it's all a sham is disheartening and a sad day for us as people wanting to see/read news based on facts and not propaganda. I would love to see a media outlet purchase the failing CNN and have a policy to report the news based on facts. No opinion shows, just facts. Any journalists that lets their biases show or wears there party on their sleeves will be asked to resign or put on stories that have zero political spin such as baby alligators born in a zoo. I assure you that network would crush everyone out there.
I hate authoritative dictators trying to tell me what I should be feeling. I am a libertarian and sometimes I like what one party does and sometimes I like what the other party does.
A very interesting portion of the book is how social-media is able to manipulate real media because of the mob mentality we have allowed to take root in this country. All speech, yes even hate speech, heck hate speech more so than non hate speech should be protected. The media should report the facts regardless of corporate sponsors and political connections. I despise what social-media has become. It has become a bully pulpit for a small group of loud people that force others to act like they want or suffer the wrath of the mob. I would hope and think that every American wants to be free to voice their opinion as hurtful, offensive, or misinformed as it may be. No one person or group is the aborter of speech. What is offensive to you, may not be to me. What is hurtful for you may not be for me. I would not assume to know what is best for you, I don't want you controlling me based on what YOU feel is best for me.
Amazing, Amazing book and very apropos.
This book is precisely what I have been talking about for a decade or more now, but put into a concise book. The author is a Trump supporter, or at least she may be, but the book is not necessarily about Trump insofar as the decline in journalism since he became president. If you want to read a great book about how the industry has devolved and can put aside someone not parroting the played out narrative about orange-man-bad then I recommend this book. She not only covers the Trump phenomenon with the press but other stories like the Harvey Weinstein, NBC, debacles, etc.
The book covers how the journalists have allowed themselves to be nothing but a propaganda delivery system. When I was younger, you could not tell party affiliation of most journalists both on air and in print. The news was delivered as facts and the viewer/reader could form their own opinions. This is no longer the case.
The author gives specific example in her tenure of inexplicable canceling of stories that were fact-based and outed corruption at all levels, all parties and all people. She discusses the language that has become acceptable by reporters that would have never been allowed in the past such as liar, no proof, etc.
Journalists have become nothing but political pundits with zero integrity and zero respect for their craft. She discussed the devolution of CNN under Zuckerman's rein as well as other previously respected news outlets. This is not partisan either. Viewers and readers from both parties are disillusioned with media today.
I came out of the book having a much better knowledge of the "narrative game" and how it's played. It's bitter sweet because knowledge is indeed power but ignorance is bliss. Knowing that it's all a sham is disheartening and a sad day for us as people wanting to see/read news based on facts and not propaganda. I would love to see a media outlet purchase the failing CNN and have a policy to report the news based on facts. No opinion shows, just facts. Any journalists that lets their biases show or wears there party on their sleeves will be asked to resign or put on stories that have zero political spin such as baby alligators born in a zoo. I assure you that network would crush everyone out there.
I hate authoritative dictators trying to tell me what I should be feeling. I am a libertarian and sometimes I like what one party does and sometimes I like what the other party does.
A very interesting portion of the book is how social-media is able to manipulate real media because of the mob mentality we have allowed to take root in this country. All speech, yes even hate speech, heck hate speech more so than non hate speech should be protected. The media should report the facts regardless of corporate sponsors and political connections. I despise what social-media has become. It has become a bully pulpit for a small group of loud people that force others to act like they want or suffer the wrath of the mob. I would hope and think that every American wants to be free to voice their opinion as hurtful, offensive, or misinformed as it may be. No one person or group is the aborter of speech. What is offensive to you, may not be to me. What is hurtful for you may not be for me. I would not assume to know what is best for you, I don't want you controlling me based on what YOU feel is best for me.
Amazing, Amazing book and very apropos.
April 20, 2021
I have been listening to Sharyl Attkisson's podcast for quite some time now, and I finally got this book. This book should be discussed and read by as many people as possible-- not that it is some type of guidebook or bible, it just gives a great perspective on what is happening to journalism today. I like her approach to the news, and so I figured I would probably like her book; I am already a fan. What I like about her reporting and her writing is that it is straightforward, she gives both sides of a story as in-depth as possible, she firmly believes that journalists are to report what facts they find and not provide a narrative of their own making. She interviews reporters from many networks she has met during her career for their perspectives on what is happening today. The general consensus is that the news (mainstream media in particular) is being slanted to create a political narrative. Sharyl explains that what is happening is more than just media bias. She has been in the news business for over 30 years, so she has excellent insight and perspective to what is happening. Trust in the main stream media seems to be at an all time low, and her book gives good insight as to why. She gives a good lesson to readers about manipulation of words and stories in a world where the news travels fast-- and social media plays a key role. If you are fine with MSM, take a step out of your narrow paradigm and read something that challenges your view. This doesn't promote any politics-- it promotes people actually listening to the news with a lot more discretion and scrutiny. I'll also put a plug in for her podcast-- Full Measure. She is a little dry-- but that is kind of nice compared to all the shouting and emotional hyperbole of some news networks (on BOTH political spectrums).
February 11, 2021
Probably more like 3.5.
I do try to be "fair and balanced" and that is why I read this book. I understand and believe the experiences that happened to this seasoned journalist AND I can rationalize (but not agree with the reasoning) that news divisions are dependent on dollars coming in from advertisers. Without these monies, there would be no newscast. But, this presents a conflict of interest if the news stories are restricted or cut in order not to offend those who pay the bills.
But, by the end of the book, I felt Attkisson had switched from a middle of the roader to an absolute conservative rager. She did end the book with a list of medium and reporters who she feels are fair and truthful in reports.
I do try to be "fair and balanced" and that is why I read this book. I understand and believe the experiences that happened to this seasoned journalist AND I can rationalize (but not agree with the reasoning) that news divisions are dependent on dollars coming in from advertisers. Without these monies, there would be no newscast. But, this presents a conflict of interest if the news stories are restricted or cut in order not to offend those who pay the bills.
But, by the end of the book, I felt Attkisson had switched from a middle of the roader to an absolute conservative rager. She did end the book with a list of medium and reporters who she feels are fair and truthful in reports.
January 24, 2021
Excellent book by Sharyl Attkisson on the bias and corruption in the media today. The media no longer tells the news, the sell a narrative. They no longer give us the facts so we can decide what we think about a topic, they try to tell us what we should think about a topic. Attkisson is a very well respected journalist who worked at both CNN and CBS and has first hand knowledge of what is going on in the media today. She is a 5 time Emmy Award Winner and an Edward R. Murrow Award Winner. Everyone should read this book, but sadly those who really need to read it, will not bother.
December 14, 2020
I’ve been bothered by the obvious bias and double standards and misleading exaggeration in the news for years so I was interested in Reading what a seasoned investigative reporter had to say about it. It was very eye opening and expertly done. She was careful, fair, and detailed in her findings, the way a good journalist should be! Highly recommend.
July 16, 2021
This is not the first book I have read by Attkisson and hopefully won’t be the last. She is an excellent and brave writer. This is an important book that you should read if you are concerned about media censorship and false narratives. If you are unaware of the problem you need to read this.
February 26, 2021
I listened to this. An insiders perspective, on how the media has evolved over the past 2 decades. Eye opening.
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