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Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth
The urgent and untold story of the collusion between Fox News and Donald Trump from the New York Times bestselling author of Top of the Morning.
While other leaders were marshaling resources to combat the greatest pandemic in modern history, President Donald Trump was watching TV. Trump watches over six hours of Fox News a day, a habit his staff refers to as “executive time.” In January 2020, when Fox News began to downplay COVID-19, the President was quick to agree. In March, as the deadly virus spiraled out of control, Sean Hannity mocked “coronavirus hysteria” as “new hoax” from the left. Millions of Americans took Hannity and Trump's words as truth—until some of them started to get sick.
In Hoax, CNN anchor and chief media correspondent Brian Stelter tells the twisted story of the relationship between Donald Trump and Fox News. From the moment Trump glided down the golden escalator to announce his candidacy in the 2016 presidential election to his acquittal on two articles of impeachment in early 2020, Fox hosts spread his lies and smeared his enemies. Over the course of two years, Stelter spoke with over 250 current and former Fox insiders in an effort to understand the inner workings of Rupert Murdoch's multibillion-dollar media empire. Some of the confessions are alarming. “We don't really believe all this stuff,” a producer says. “We just tell other people to believe it.”
At the center of the story lies Sean Hannity, a college dropout who, following the death of Fox News mastermind Roger Ailes, reigns supreme at the network that pays him $30 million a year. Stelter describes the raging tensions inside Fox between the Trump loyalists and the few remaining journalists. He reveals why former chief news anchor Shep Smith resigned in disgust in 2019; why a former anchor said “if I stay here I’ll get cancer;” and how Trump has exploited the leadership vacuum at the top to effectively seize control of the network.
Including never before reported details, Hoax exposes the media personalities who, though morally bankrupt, profit outrageously by promoting the President’s propaganda and radicalizing the American right. It is a book for anyone who reads the news and wonders: How did this happen?
While other leaders were marshaling resources to combat the greatest pandemic in modern history, President Donald Trump was watching TV. Trump watches over six hours of Fox News a day, a habit his staff refers to as “executive time.” In January 2020, when Fox News began to downplay COVID-19, the President was quick to agree. In March, as the deadly virus spiraled out of control, Sean Hannity mocked “coronavirus hysteria” as “new hoax” from the left. Millions of Americans took Hannity and Trump's words as truth—until some of them started to get sick.
In Hoax, CNN anchor and chief media correspondent Brian Stelter tells the twisted story of the relationship between Donald Trump and Fox News. From the moment Trump glided down the golden escalator to announce his candidacy in the 2016 presidential election to his acquittal on two articles of impeachment in early 2020, Fox hosts spread his lies and smeared his enemies. Over the course of two years, Stelter spoke with over 250 current and former Fox insiders in an effort to understand the inner workings of Rupert Murdoch's multibillion-dollar media empire. Some of the confessions are alarming. “We don't really believe all this stuff,” a producer says. “We just tell other people to believe it.”
At the center of the story lies Sean Hannity, a college dropout who, following the death of Fox News mastermind Roger Ailes, reigns supreme at the network that pays him $30 million a year. Stelter describes the raging tensions inside Fox between the Trump loyalists and the few remaining journalists. He reveals why former chief news anchor Shep Smith resigned in disgust in 2019; why a former anchor said “if I stay here I’ll get cancer;” and how Trump has exploited the leadership vacuum at the top to effectively seize control of the network.
Including never before reported details, Hoax exposes the media personalities who, though morally bankrupt, profit outrageously by promoting the President’s propaganda and radicalizing the American right. It is a book for anyone who reads the news and wonders: How did this happen?
350 pages, Hardcover
First published August 25, 2020
2386 people are currently reading
4483 people want to read
About the author
Brian Stelter
5 books85 followersBrian Stelter is the chief media correspondent for CNN and anchor of the show Reliable Sources. He was previously a staff writer at the New York Times and was featured as a subject in the New York Times documentary Page One. Before joining the Times in 2007, he was the founder and editor of TVNewser, the pre-eminent blog about the television news industry, which was sold to MediaBistro in 2004.
(source: Amazon)
(source: Amazon)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 506 reviews
May 30, 2021
Fake newsing one´s way to the top.
A nice description of how demagogic politicians and conservative, right wing media outlets work together. The cynicism and cold intelligence behind these networks are astonishing, it´s getting more and more movie like, a mixture of thriller, dark satire, and a mixture of Orwellian and Huxleyian visions.
One of the most important conclusions of this work is not to just criticize the obviously biased, far right and left wing media outlets, but the so called objective, free press too. Because they are not producing easy to see propaganda, but subtle consent towards that the economic and democratic system is still working, which is totally wrong too.
George Carlin said it best
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9646...
Of course, there are immense differences in quality and sophistication between Fox and CNN, but in general, each kind of medium has a more or less obvious and well or bad hidden mixture of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaga...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_m...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychol...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychol...
I can´t overemphasize this enough, one of the reasons why I am often throwing around with these 4 links is that people tend to think of an end of history, of a kind of final democratic victory in states with a free press, but instead Chomsky, Crouch, etc. are right when they are describing a corporatocracy completely out of control for decades that is disguised as ridiculous voting all 4 to 5 years with all media together creating the phantasmagoria of lived enlightened ideals, which is not the case.
Even the most social democratic, left, even green media and parties don´t say out loud that the whole press and governmental system is a satire, a bad joke, not even worth investing time and effort, because if there would be a good, fair, competent, not sold and completely lobby controlled sockpuppet parliament in close to every democratic Western country, the world wouldn´t be breaking to pieces, nature getting completely destroyed, millions unnecessarily dying each year, neofeudalism and neoliberalism devastating the once eco social Keyniasian European states while neocolonialism is overexploiting what is left of biodiversity in the Southern hemisphere, etc..
It´s ridiculous, it´s as if close to all state and private media would be reporting out of an insane asylum for decades now and everybody is wasting her/his time by thinking and talking about this garbage, never getting informed about the fact that there are many better alternatives.
Because of much talk and discussion about the replication crisis, I add these thoughts to nonfiction books dealing with humanities, so you might have already seen it.
One could call the replication crisis the viral fake news epidemic of many fields of science that was a hidden, chronic disease over decades and centuries and has become extremely widespread during the last years, since the first critics began vaccinating against it, provoking virulent counterarguments. I don´t know how else this could end than with nothing else than paradigm shifts, discovering many anachronisms, and a better, fact- and number based research with many control instances before something of an impact on the social policy gets accepted.
Some soft science books are nothing more than fairytales for adults who never had the chance to built a free opinion because most of the media they consume to stay informed and get educated avoids any criticism of the current economic system.
Without having read or heard ideas by Chomsky, Monbiot, Klein, Ken Robinson, Monbiot, Peter Singer, William McDonough, Ziegler, Colin Crouch, Jeremy Rifkin, David Graeber, John Perkins, and others, humans will always react to people like me, condemning the manipulation practiced everywhere with terrifying success, with anger and refusal.
These authors don´t hide aspects of the truth and describe the real state of the world, don´t predict the future and preach the one only, the true way, ignoring anything like black swans, coincidences, or the, for each small child logical, fact that nobody knows what will happen, and collect exactly the free available data people such indoctrinated people to ignore forever.
A few points that led to the replication crisis:
I had an intuitive feeling regarding this for years, but the replication crisis proofed that there are too many interconnections of not strictly scientific fields such as economics and politics with many humanities. Look, already some of the titles are biased towards a more positive or negative attitude, but thinking too optimistic is the same mistake as being too pessimistic, it isn´t objective anymore and one can be instrumentalized without even recognizing it.
In natural sciences, theoretical physicists, astrophysicists, physicians… that were friends of a certain idea will always say that there is the option of change, that a discovery may lead to a new revolution, and that their old work has to be reexamined. So in science regarding the real world the specialists are much more open to change than in some humanities, isn´t that strange?
It would be as if one would say that all humans are representative, similar, that there are no differences. But it´s not, each time a study is made there are different people, opinions, so many coincidences, and unique happenings that it´s impossible to reproduce it.
Scandinavia vs the normal world. The society people live in makes happiness, not theoretical, not definitive concepts.
One can manipulate so many parameters in those studies that the result can be extremely positive or negative, just depending on what who funds the study and does the study wants as results.
One could use the studies she/ he needs to create an optimistic or a pessimistic book and many studies about human nature are redundant, repetitive, or biased towards a certain result, often an optimistic outcome or spectacular, groundbreaking results. Do you know who does that too? Statistics, economics, politics, and faith.
I wish I could be a bit more optimistic than realistic, but not hard evidence based stuff is a bit of a no go if it involves practical applications, especially if there is the danger of not working against big problems by doing as if they weren´t there.
A few points that lead away from it:
1. Tech
2. Nordic model
3. Open data, open government,
4. Blockchains, cryptocurrencies, quantum computing, to make each financial transaction transparent and traceable.
5. Points mentioned in the Wiki article
6. It must be horrible for the poor scientists who work in those fields and are now suffering because the founding fathers used theories and concepts that have nothing to do with real science. They worked hard to build a career to just find out that the predecessors integrated methods that couldn´t work in other systems, let's say an evolving computer program or a machine or a human body or anywhere except in ones´ imagination. They are truly courageous to risk criticism because of the humanities bashing wave that won´t end soon. As in so many fields, it are a few black sheep who ruin everything for many others and the more progressive a young scientist is, the more he is in danger of getting smashed between a hyper sensible public awareness and the old anachronism shepherds, avoiding anything progressive with the danger of a paradigm shift or even a relativization of the field they dedicated their career to. There has to be strict segregation between theories and ideas and applications in real life, so that anything can be researched, but not used to do crazy things.
The worst bad science practice includes, from Wikipedia, taken from the article about the replication crisis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replica...
1. The replication crisis (or replicability crisis or reproducibility crisis) is, as of 2020, an ongoing methodological crisis in which it has been found that many scientific studies are difficult or impossible to replicate or reproduce. The replication crisis affects the social sciences and medicine most severely.[
2. The inability to replicate the studies of others has potentially grave consequences for many fields of science in which significant theories are grounded on unreproducible experimental work. The replication crisis has been particularly widely discussed in the field of psychology and in medicine, where a number of efforts have been made to re-investigate classic results
3. A 2016 poll of 1,500 scientists reported that 70% of them had failed to reproduce at least one other scientist's experiment (50% had failed to reproduce one of their own experiments).[8] In 2009, 2% of scientists admitted to falsifying studies at least once and 14% admitted to personally knowing someone who did.
4. „Psychological research is, on average, afflicted with low statistical power."
5. Firstly, questionable research practices (QRPs) have been identified as common in the field.[18] Such practices, while not intentionally fraudulent, involve capitalizing on the gray area of acceptable scientific practices or exploiting flexibility in data collection, analysis, and reporting, often in an effort to obtain a desired outcome. Examples of QRPs include selective reporting or partial publication of data (reporting only some of the study conditions or collected dependent measures in a publication), optional stopping (choosing when to stop data collection, often based on statistical significance of tests), p-value rounding (rounding p-values down to 0.05 to suggest statistical significance), file drawer effect (nonpublication of data), post-hoc storytelling (framing exploratory analyses as confirmatory analyses), and manipulation of outliers (either removing outliers or leaving outliers in a dataset to cause a statistical test to be significant).[18][19][20][21] A survey of over 2,000 psychologists indicated that a majority of respondents admitted to using at least one QRP.[18] False positive conclusions, often resulting from the pressure to publish or the author's own confirmation bias, are an inherent hazard in the field, requiring a certain degree of skepticism on the part of readers.[2
6. Secondly, psychology and social psychology in particular, has found itself at the center of several scandals involving outright fraudulent research,
7. Thirdly, several effects in psychological science have been found to be difficult to replicate even before the current replication crisis. Replications appear particularly difficult when research trials are pre-registered and conducted by research groups not highly invested in the theory under questioning.
8. Scrutiny of many effects have shown that several core beliefs are hard to replicate. A recent special edition of the journal Social Psychology focused on replication studies and a number of previously held beliefs were found to be difficult to replicate.[25] A 2012 special edition of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science also focused on issues ranging from publication bias to null-aversion that contribute to the replication crises in psychology.[26] In 2015, the first open empirical study of reproducibility in psychology was published, called the Reproducibility Project. Researchers from around the world collaborated to replicate 100 empirical studies from three top psychology journals. Fewer than half of the attempted replications were successful at producing statistically significant results in the expected directions, though most of the attempted replications did produce trends in the expected directions.
9. Many research trials and meta-analyses are compromised by poor quality and conflicts of interest that involve both authors and professional advocacy organizations, resulting in many false positives regarding the effectiveness of certain types of psychotherapy
10. The reproducibility of 100 studies in psychological science from three high-ranking psychology journals.[44] Overall, 36% of the replications yielded significant findings (p value below 0.05) compared to 97% of the original studies that had significant effects. The mean effect size in the replications was approximately half the magnitude of the effects reported in the original studies.
11. Highlighting the social structure that discourages replication in psychology, Brian D. Earp and Jim A. C. Everett enumerated five points as to why replication attempts are uncommon:[50][51]
1. "Independent, direct replications of others' findings can be time-consuming for the replicating researcher"
2. "[Replications] are likely to take energy and resources directly away from other projects that reflect one's own original thinking"
3. "[Replications] are generally harder to publish (in large part because they are viewed as being unoriginal)"
4. "Even if [replications] are published, they are likely to be seen as 'bricklaying' exercises, rather than as major contributions to the field
5. "[Replications] bring less recognition and reward, and even basic career security, to their authors"[52]
For these reasons the authors advocated that psychology is facing a disciplinary social dilemma, where the interests of the discipline are at odds with the interests of the individual researcher
12. Medicine. Out of 49 medical studies from 1990–2003 with more than 1000 citations, 45 claimed that the studied therapy was effective. Out of these studies, 16% were contradicted by subsequent studies, 16% had found stronger effects than did subsequent studies, 44% were replicated, and 24% remained largely unchallenged.[58] The US Food and Drug Administration in 1977–1990 found flaws in 10–20% of medical studies
13. Marketing is another discipline with a "desperate need" for replication.[64] Many famous marketing studies fail to be repeated upon replication, a notable example being the "too-many-choices" effect, in which a high number of choices of product makes a consumer less likely to purchase.[65] In addition to the previously mentioned arguments, replication studies in marketing are needed to examine the applicability of theories and models across countries and cultures, which is especially important because of possible influences of globalization.
14. A 2016 study in the journal Science found that one-third of 18 experimental studies from two top-tier economics journals (American Economic Review and the Quarterly Journal of Economics) failed to successfully replicate.[67][68] A 2017 study in the Economic Journal suggested that "the majority of the average effects in the empirical economics literature are exaggerated by a factor of at least 2 and at least one-third are exaggerated by a factor of 4 or more.
15. In the US, science's reproducibility crisis has become a topic of political contention, linked to the attempt to diminish regulations – e.g.
A nice description of how demagogic politicians and conservative, right wing media outlets work together. The cynicism and cold intelligence behind these networks are astonishing, it´s getting more and more movie like, a mixture of thriller, dark satire, and a mixture of Orwellian and Huxleyian visions.
One of the most important conclusions of this work is not to just criticize the obviously biased, far right and left wing media outlets, but the so called objective, free press too. Because they are not producing easy to see propaganda, but subtle consent towards that the economic and democratic system is still working, which is totally wrong too.
George Carlin said it best
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9646...
Of course, there are immense differences in quality and sophistication between Fox and CNN, but in general, each kind of medium has a more or less obvious and well or bad hidden mixture of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaga...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_m...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychol...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychol...
I can´t overemphasize this enough, one of the reasons why I am often throwing around with these 4 links is that people tend to think of an end of history, of a kind of final democratic victory in states with a free press, but instead Chomsky, Crouch, etc. are right when they are describing a corporatocracy completely out of control for decades that is disguised as ridiculous voting all 4 to 5 years with all media together creating the phantasmagoria of lived enlightened ideals, which is not the case.
Even the most social democratic, left, even green media and parties don´t say out loud that the whole press and governmental system is a satire, a bad joke, not even worth investing time and effort, because if there would be a good, fair, competent, not sold and completely lobby controlled sockpuppet parliament in close to every democratic Western country, the world wouldn´t be breaking to pieces, nature getting completely destroyed, millions unnecessarily dying each year, neofeudalism and neoliberalism devastating the once eco social Keyniasian European states while neocolonialism is overexploiting what is left of biodiversity in the Southern hemisphere, etc..
It´s ridiculous, it´s as if close to all state and private media would be reporting out of an insane asylum for decades now and everybody is wasting her/his time by thinking and talking about this garbage, never getting informed about the fact that there are many better alternatives.
Because of much talk and discussion about the replication crisis, I add these thoughts to nonfiction books dealing with humanities, so you might have already seen it.
One could call the replication crisis the viral fake news epidemic of many fields of science that was a hidden, chronic disease over decades and centuries and has become extremely widespread during the last years, since the first critics began vaccinating against it, provoking virulent counterarguments. I don´t know how else this could end than with nothing else than paradigm shifts, discovering many anachronisms, and a better, fact- and number based research with many control instances before something of an impact on the social policy gets accepted.
Some soft science books are nothing more than fairytales for adults who never had the chance to built a free opinion because most of the media they consume to stay informed and get educated avoids any criticism of the current economic system.
Without having read or heard ideas by Chomsky, Monbiot, Klein, Ken Robinson, Monbiot, Peter Singer, William McDonough, Ziegler, Colin Crouch, Jeremy Rifkin, David Graeber, John Perkins, and others, humans will always react to people like me, condemning the manipulation practiced everywhere with terrifying success, with anger and refusal.
These authors don´t hide aspects of the truth and describe the real state of the world, don´t predict the future and preach the one only, the true way, ignoring anything like black swans, coincidences, or the, for each small child logical, fact that nobody knows what will happen, and collect exactly the free available data people such indoctrinated people to ignore forever.
A few points that led to the replication crisis:
I had an intuitive feeling regarding this for years, but the replication crisis proofed that there are too many interconnections of not strictly scientific fields such as economics and politics with many humanities. Look, already some of the titles are biased towards a more positive or negative attitude, but thinking too optimistic is the same mistake as being too pessimistic, it isn´t objective anymore and one can be instrumentalized without even recognizing it.
In natural sciences, theoretical physicists, astrophysicists, physicians… that were friends of a certain idea will always say that there is the option of change, that a discovery may lead to a new revolution, and that their old work has to be reexamined. So in science regarding the real world the specialists are much more open to change than in some humanities, isn´t that strange?
It would be as if one would say that all humans are representative, similar, that there are no differences. But it´s not, each time a study is made there are different people, opinions, so many coincidences, and unique happenings that it´s impossible to reproduce it.
Scandinavia vs the normal world. The society people live in makes happiness, not theoretical, not definitive concepts.
One can manipulate so many parameters in those studies that the result can be extremely positive or negative, just depending on what who funds the study and does the study wants as results.
One could use the studies she/ he needs to create an optimistic or a pessimistic book and many studies about human nature are redundant, repetitive, or biased towards a certain result, often an optimistic outcome or spectacular, groundbreaking results. Do you know who does that too? Statistics, economics, politics, and faith.
I wish I could be a bit more optimistic than realistic, but not hard evidence based stuff is a bit of a no go if it involves practical applications, especially if there is the danger of not working against big problems by doing as if they weren´t there.
A few points that lead away from it:
1. Tech
2. Nordic model
3. Open data, open government,
4. Blockchains, cryptocurrencies, quantum computing, to make each financial transaction transparent and traceable.
5. Points mentioned in the Wiki article
6. It must be horrible for the poor scientists who work in those fields and are now suffering because the founding fathers used theories and concepts that have nothing to do with real science. They worked hard to build a career to just find out that the predecessors integrated methods that couldn´t work in other systems, let's say an evolving computer program or a machine or a human body or anywhere except in ones´ imagination. They are truly courageous to risk criticism because of the humanities bashing wave that won´t end soon. As in so many fields, it are a few black sheep who ruin everything for many others and the more progressive a young scientist is, the more he is in danger of getting smashed between a hyper sensible public awareness and the old anachronism shepherds, avoiding anything progressive with the danger of a paradigm shift or even a relativization of the field they dedicated their career to. There has to be strict segregation between theories and ideas and applications in real life, so that anything can be researched, but not used to do crazy things.
The worst bad science practice includes, from Wikipedia, taken from the article about the replication crisis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replica...
1. The replication crisis (or replicability crisis or reproducibility crisis) is, as of 2020, an ongoing methodological crisis in which it has been found that many scientific studies are difficult or impossible to replicate or reproduce. The replication crisis affects the social sciences and medicine most severely.[
2. The inability to replicate the studies of others has potentially grave consequences for many fields of science in which significant theories are grounded on unreproducible experimental work. The replication crisis has been particularly widely discussed in the field of psychology and in medicine, where a number of efforts have been made to re-investigate classic results
3. A 2016 poll of 1,500 scientists reported that 70% of them had failed to reproduce at least one other scientist's experiment (50% had failed to reproduce one of their own experiments).[8] In 2009, 2% of scientists admitted to falsifying studies at least once and 14% admitted to personally knowing someone who did.
4. „Psychological research is, on average, afflicted with low statistical power."
5. Firstly, questionable research practices (QRPs) have been identified as common in the field.[18] Such practices, while not intentionally fraudulent, involve capitalizing on the gray area of acceptable scientific practices or exploiting flexibility in data collection, analysis, and reporting, often in an effort to obtain a desired outcome. Examples of QRPs include selective reporting or partial publication of data (reporting only some of the study conditions or collected dependent measures in a publication), optional stopping (choosing when to stop data collection, often based on statistical significance of tests), p-value rounding (rounding p-values down to 0.05 to suggest statistical significance), file drawer effect (nonpublication of data), post-hoc storytelling (framing exploratory analyses as confirmatory analyses), and manipulation of outliers (either removing outliers or leaving outliers in a dataset to cause a statistical test to be significant).[18][19][20][21] A survey of over 2,000 psychologists indicated that a majority of respondents admitted to using at least one QRP.[18] False positive conclusions, often resulting from the pressure to publish or the author's own confirmation bias, are an inherent hazard in the field, requiring a certain degree of skepticism on the part of readers.[2
6. Secondly, psychology and social psychology in particular, has found itself at the center of several scandals involving outright fraudulent research,
7. Thirdly, several effects in psychological science have been found to be difficult to replicate even before the current replication crisis. Replications appear particularly difficult when research trials are pre-registered and conducted by research groups not highly invested in the theory under questioning.
8. Scrutiny of many effects have shown that several core beliefs are hard to replicate. A recent special edition of the journal Social Psychology focused on replication studies and a number of previously held beliefs were found to be difficult to replicate.[25] A 2012 special edition of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science also focused on issues ranging from publication bias to null-aversion that contribute to the replication crises in psychology.[26] In 2015, the first open empirical study of reproducibility in psychology was published, called the Reproducibility Project. Researchers from around the world collaborated to replicate 100 empirical studies from three top psychology journals. Fewer than half of the attempted replications were successful at producing statistically significant results in the expected directions, though most of the attempted replications did produce trends in the expected directions.
9. Many research trials and meta-analyses are compromised by poor quality and conflicts of interest that involve both authors and professional advocacy organizations, resulting in many false positives regarding the effectiveness of certain types of psychotherapy
10. The reproducibility of 100 studies in psychological science from three high-ranking psychology journals.[44] Overall, 36% of the replications yielded significant findings (p value below 0.05) compared to 97% of the original studies that had significant effects. The mean effect size in the replications was approximately half the magnitude of the effects reported in the original studies.
11. Highlighting the social structure that discourages replication in psychology, Brian D. Earp and Jim A. C. Everett enumerated five points as to why replication attempts are uncommon:[50][51]
1. "Independent, direct replications of others' findings can be time-consuming for the replicating researcher"
2. "[Replications] are likely to take energy and resources directly away from other projects that reflect one's own original thinking"
3. "[Replications] are generally harder to publish (in large part because they are viewed as being unoriginal)"
4. "Even if [replications] are published, they are likely to be seen as 'bricklaying' exercises, rather than as major contributions to the field
5. "[Replications] bring less recognition and reward, and even basic career security, to their authors"[52]
For these reasons the authors advocated that psychology is facing a disciplinary social dilemma, where the interests of the discipline are at odds with the interests of the individual researcher
12. Medicine. Out of 49 medical studies from 1990–2003 with more than 1000 citations, 45 claimed that the studied therapy was effective. Out of these studies, 16% were contradicted by subsequent studies, 16% had found stronger effects than did subsequent studies, 44% were replicated, and 24% remained largely unchallenged.[58] The US Food and Drug Administration in 1977–1990 found flaws in 10–20% of medical studies
13. Marketing is another discipline with a "desperate need" for replication.[64] Many famous marketing studies fail to be repeated upon replication, a notable example being the "too-many-choices" effect, in which a high number of choices of product makes a consumer less likely to purchase.[65] In addition to the previously mentioned arguments, replication studies in marketing are needed to examine the applicability of theories and models across countries and cultures, which is especially important because of possible influences of globalization.
14. A 2016 study in the journal Science found that one-third of 18 experimental studies from two top-tier economics journals (American Economic Review and the Quarterly Journal of Economics) failed to successfully replicate.[67][68] A 2017 study in the Economic Journal suggested that "the majority of the average effects in the empirical economics literature are exaggerated by a factor of at least 2 and at least one-third are exaggerated by a factor of 4 or more.
15. In the US, science's reproducibility crisis has become a topic of political contention, linked to the attempt to diminish regulations – e.g.
September 28, 2025
State-supported media.
Donny Trump’s Propaganda machine.
The best book ever at Concisely gathering and exposing the blatant manipulation by Sean Hattity and the soldier mentality of the Fox flock. A dot to dot exposure of how a conservative news channel, formerly with journalistic principles, shed its Integrity in 2017, its conservative philosophy, and its actual news team in favor of nothing but, cheerleaders and pleaders for Trump, nearly 24/7..
A scary stat: Fox News used the word “hoax” more than 600 times in the first 6 months alone of 2020.
How pathetic. How illustrative of the depths to which this “news station,” which once had promise for conservatives like me, has sunk.
Donny Trump’s Propaganda machine.
The best book ever at Concisely gathering and exposing the blatant manipulation by Sean Hattity and the soldier mentality of the Fox flock. A dot to dot exposure of how a conservative news channel, formerly with journalistic principles, shed its Integrity in 2017, its conservative philosophy, and its actual news team in favor of nothing but, cheerleaders and pleaders for Trump, nearly 24/7..
A scary stat: Fox News used the word “hoax” more than 600 times in the first 6 months alone of 2020.
How pathetic. How illustrative of the depths to which this “news station,” which once had promise for conservatives like me, has sunk.
January 18, 2021
“This “do as I say, not as I do” attitude was one of the first things the producer noticed when he started working for F& F. Anti-marijuana segments were a layup on the show. Then he headed to a house party with colleagues for the first time and saw half the staff out on the balcony getting high. “Okay,” he said to himself, “so we don’t really believe all this stuff. We just tell other people to believe it.”
― Brian Stelter, Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth
My review:
Any Political junkie really needs to put this one at the top of their list. Brian Stelter has written an excellent book, filled with facts....the last thing Fox News would know anything about.
Within this book Stelter tells the tale of how American's unfair and dishonest news station came to be. And how they went from a lean right" News station to perpetuating the biggest hoax on the American People.
In Hoax, we learn about the toxic but profitable relationship between Trump and the station. How they came to rely on each other to the point that even many journalists at Fox either resigned or were forced out.
We learn about many of the top hosts there and how they got their start and why they became who they are. It's a pretty good length book..neither to long nor to short and Stelter has so many sources including people at Fox...past and present.
But most of all the use of Propaganda as a replacement for Real News is explored. The writer makes the connection between the Fox way of defining News.....often with use of the word "Hoax" or
"Fake News", to Soviet Disinformation and Information wars.
Apparently the word "Hoax" was used around 900 times in Fox in just a six month period.
And the motivations of the people involved....some people's ever growing horror as they realized that their network had created a monster that was loose and to big to reign back in was fascinating to read about. Contrary to what many might think, there are good people at Fox who do have a conscience who either got out or were pushed out or are still there trying and fighting to report News and not Hoaxes.
Anger and outrage....we are the put upon people is their weapon of choice. From imaginary caravans coming to kill us all, to wars on Christmas, to our very way of life being in peril....Fox knows that anger sells and being in a perpetual state of rage snags viewers.
And what of the good ones..like Shepard Smith? Chris Wallace? Well...you will read about them too. I do think this is an important book, in that it really lays before us the myth of Fox News and rips away this company's foundation to expose one big, For profit, money making machine.
Money is at the root of all of it....everything is ratings.....as the people in charge regularly betray their viewers, their employees and each other.
I really enjoyed this book and was up late into the night yesterday reading it. Much did not surprise me. I have tried to watch Fox in the past and still occasionally watch Chris Wallace although it's getting harder. This network exists in an alternative reality and in this book you will find out why.
Did you know that Fox News is not even labeled news? They are considered "entertainment". I don't think their entertainment. I think as I read in Hoax, I agree with Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham's brother who says that they are indeed "the killing channel".
The only thing I wish were different is that he'd have released this book AFTER the 2020 election. I'd have liked to know the reaction of many at Fox to Joe Biden winning. I'd have also liked to know more about the decision to call Arizona early on for Biden, and most of all how they plan to run their network in the future.
I'd like to think they will focus on becoming more of an honest network that focuses less on Hoaxes and more on straight up news but based on this book and from what I already know, I'd say the chances of that are akin to my winning the lottery. 4.5 stars for an engaging, well written and fascinating book.
― Brian Stelter, Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth
My review:
Any Political junkie really needs to put this one at the top of their list. Brian Stelter has written an excellent book, filled with facts....the last thing Fox News would know anything about.
Within this book Stelter tells the tale of how American's unfair and dishonest news station came to be. And how they went from a lean right" News station to perpetuating the biggest hoax on the American People.
In Hoax, we learn about the toxic but profitable relationship between Trump and the station. How they came to rely on each other to the point that even many journalists at Fox either resigned or were forced out.
We learn about many of the top hosts there and how they got their start and why they became who they are. It's a pretty good length book..neither to long nor to short and Stelter has so many sources including people at Fox...past and present.
But most of all the use of Propaganda as a replacement for Real News is explored. The writer makes the connection between the Fox way of defining News.....often with use of the word "Hoax" or
"Fake News", to Soviet Disinformation and Information wars.
Apparently the word "Hoax" was used around 900 times in Fox in just a six month period.
And the motivations of the people involved....some people's ever growing horror as they realized that their network had created a monster that was loose and to big to reign back in was fascinating to read about. Contrary to what many might think, there are good people at Fox who do have a conscience who either got out or were pushed out or are still there trying and fighting to report News and not Hoaxes.
Anger and outrage....we are the put upon people is their weapon of choice. From imaginary caravans coming to kill us all, to wars on Christmas, to our very way of life being in peril....Fox knows that anger sells and being in a perpetual state of rage snags viewers.
And what of the good ones..like Shepard Smith? Chris Wallace? Well...you will read about them too. I do think this is an important book, in that it really lays before us the myth of Fox News and rips away this company's foundation to expose one big, For profit, money making machine.
Money is at the root of all of it....everything is ratings.....as the people in charge regularly betray their viewers, their employees and each other.
I really enjoyed this book and was up late into the night yesterday reading it. Much did not surprise me. I have tried to watch Fox in the past and still occasionally watch Chris Wallace although it's getting harder. This network exists in an alternative reality and in this book you will find out why.
Did you know that Fox News is not even labeled news? They are considered "entertainment". I don't think their entertainment. I think as I read in Hoax, I agree with Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham's brother who says that they are indeed "the killing channel".
The only thing I wish were different is that he'd have released this book AFTER the 2020 election. I'd have liked to know the reaction of many at Fox to Joe Biden winning. I'd have also liked to know more about the decision to call Arizona early on for Biden, and most of all how they plan to run their network in the future.
I'd like to think they will focus on becoming more of an honest network that focuses less on Hoaxes and more on straight up news but based on this book and from what I already know, I'd say the chances of that are akin to my winning the lottery. 4.5 stars for an engaging, well written and fascinating book.
August 30, 2020
An excellent book focusing on Fox News and its relationship with President Trump. This book is based upon well sourced facts, the truth. It reveals and documents the effects of our economic systems, our out of control anti-trust policies, systemic racism, control of information by wealthy elites, and the need to inform are so dysfunctional in our modern culture/society. This is a serious book with a serious approach. Aristocracy was the bane leading to the founding of this political experiment called the United States of America. Playing on well established racism and ignorance, a huge segment of our population (many of whom do not realize our racist their thinking is) are lemmings to our extant aristocracy. Thank you Brian Stelter but I doubt the people who need to read this book will do so, evidencing the importance of real journalism (one of your main points).
September 5, 2021
Brian Stelter is the perfect person to write a book like this, as he as been cultivating sources and friendships within the Fox network since he was in high school. I think the most revealing thing for me in this book is that faithful Fox viewers truly do not want actual news. They want propaganda and opinion and confirmation of their biases and smearing of those who don't agree with them. When the Fox channel occasionally tries to provide actual news with some semi-unbiased truth, the ratings drop precipitously, and they get complaints and hate mail from their viewers. This is incomprehensible to me. I want the truth, no matter how much it hurts or angers me. Never before have we seen how important it is to have reliable information than during the Covid-19 pandemic. People have died because they have believed what they heard on Fox, amplified by Republican politicians. Shameful.
September 20, 2020
Seriously, why bother to tell me what Fox News insiders, executives and sycophants say off-the-record about the company they work for and from which they derive their livelihood from. Is it really credible that they think Trump is a moron, or that their employee is rotten or that they hate what they have done, but all the while not doing anything of substance about it? This book is full of that kind of story ‘if only I were able to tell the truth about how we at Fox News feel about the rot that we created, everyone would understand’. I'm reminded of Albert Speer and his Phil Donahue interview, ‘I was only Hitler’s architect, and some of my best friends were Jews’, if it weren’t for the architects maybe Hitler could have been slowed down, and who cares who your best friends were when you were part of the final solution.
Who cares what is in the heart of the Fox News deep background sources that the author truly cherishes and doesn’t want to upset in his story telling? Daily, we get background stories in reality based news from Trump’s inner circle about how the president really doesn’t mean what he said and that his tone is better, and this author is pulling that kind of bait and switch about the truly odious nature of the enablers at Fox News. They are deplorable and they have enabled the deplorables who watch that network unleash the demon that is the Republican party all in order that they all can hate the same people and feel actualized through their hate.
Shepard Smith comes out as the only decent person within the bowels of the beast that is known as Fox News. Trump is right about one thing, that fake news is real, but he doesn’t realize that Fake News and Fox News are one and the same. In the narrative of the story I am cheering on Shepard Smith, but is it really courageous to say that the Caravan is not an ‘invasion’, and is that a brave stance when it is obvious to everyone except for the deplorables who make up the Fox News universe. Unfortunately, at Fox News it was a brave stance, but really, have our standards for bravery gotten that low?
And what’s this about the author who knew that Bill Barr had put pressure on Fox News to keep Judge Neopolitan (sp?) off the news. How come the author didn’t report that when it was relevant.
There is an odd thing about this book. It is obsolete even though it was up to date until June 2020 with its narrative. Covid-19 and Black Lives Matter are changing everything. Trump's claims of Hoax and fake news (recall Hitler just called it ‘Jew Press’, the Germans knew what he meant) have changed the equation. Trump’s lies about Covid-19 enabled by Fox News are killing people. Fox News is becoming irrelevant because reality has consequences since reality has a liberal bias. Tucker Carlson’s white supremacy is falling flat, and Eva Braun’s Nose’s (Laura Ingram) stupidity is disappearing back in to the swamp from which they climbed out of.
When I turn on my TV and Xfinity has ‘Black Lives Matter’ on it, or when my Firestick, Google search has the same or when the Milwaukee Bucks refuse to play a game and all the other sports league follow suit, the fascist at Fox News are losing. Trump’s denial of reality is only working for the already deplorable and they are not converting any but those who are already in the fascist choir. There is one line about fascists that explains the misogynists, racists, and homophobes that make up the deplorables who believe the fake news at Fox News, the individual sublimates themselves for the sake of a mystical consensus. The fascist who make up Trump’s followers very meaning for life is tied to who they hate since they hate the same people and for them their value, meaning and beliefs are tied to denying the truth because hate must be taught in order to be perpetuated and they are grasping for their last breath of hate as if their hate depends on it, because all their hate would have been for naught otherwise therefore they are fighting this fight as if their very being depends on it, since they will have lost everything that they hold dear if they must lose their hate and their sublimation of themselves to their mystical consensus would have meant they were wrong about everything.
This book is obsolete already. The author believes that there are many good people who work at Fox but they are just too afraid to say it out loud. Though, the Shepard Smith story was interesting and as the author implies and I think Fox News made a huge mistake in getting rid of him because all they have left are purveyors of fake news as is amply shown in this book.
Who cares what is in the heart of the Fox News deep background sources that the author truly cherishes and doesn’t want to upset in his story telling? Daily, we get background stories in reality based news from Trump’s inner circle about how the president really doesn’t mean what he said and that his tone is better, and this author is pulling that kind of bait and switch about the truly odious nature of the enablers at Fox News. They are deplorable and they have enabled the deplorables who watch that network unleash the demon that is the Republican party all in order that they all can hate the same people and feel actualized through their hate.
Shepard Smith comes out as the only decent person within the bowels of the beast that is known as Fox News. Trump is right about one thing, that fake news is real, but he doesn’t realize that Fake News and Fox News are one and the same. In the narrative of the story I am cheering on Shepard Smith, but is it really courageous to say that the Caravan is not an ‘invasion’, and is that a brave stance when it is obvious to everyone except for the deplorables who make up the Fox News universe. Unfortunately, at Fox News it was a brave stance, but really, have our standards for bravery gotten that low?
And what’s this about the author who knew that Bill Barr had put pressure on Fox News to keep Judge Neopolitan (sp?) off the news. How come the author didn’t report that when it was relevant.
There is an odd thing about this book. It is obsolete even though it was up to date until June 2020 with its narrative. Covid-19 and Black Lives Matter are changing everything. Trump's claims of Hoax and fake news (recall Hitler just called it ‘Jew Press’, the Germans knew what he meant) have changed the equation. Trump’s lies about Covid-19 enabled by Fox News are killing people. Fox News is becoming irrelevant because reality has consequences since reality has a liberal bias. Tucker Carlson’s white supremacy is falling flat, and Eva Braun’s Nose’s (Laura Ingram) stupidity is disappearing back in to the swamp from which they climbed out of.
When I turn on my TV and Xfinity has ‘Black Lives Matter’ on it, or when my Firestick, Google search has the same or when the Milwaukee Bucks refuse to play a game and all the other sports league follow suit, the fascist at Fox News are losing. Trump’s denial of reality is only working for the already deplorable and they are not converting any but those who are already in the fascist choir. There is one line about fascists that explains the misogynists, racists, and homophobes that make up the deplorables who believe the fake news at Fox News, the individual sublimates themselves for the sake of a mystical consensus. The fascist who make up Trump’s followers very meaning for life is tied to who they hate since they hate the same people and for them their value, meaning and beliefs are tied to denying the truth because hate must be taught in order to be perpetuated and they are grasping for their last breath of hate as if their hate depends on it, because all their hate would have been for naught otherwise therefore they are fighting this fight as if their very being depends on it, since they will have lost everything that they hold dear if they must lose their hate and their sublimation of themselves to their mystical consensus would have meant they were wrong about everything.
This book is obsolete already. The author believes that there are many good people who work at Fox but they are just too afraid to say it out loud. Though, the Shepard Smith story was interesting and as the author implies and I think Fox News made a huge mistake in getting rid of him because all they have left are purveyors of fake news as is amply shown in this book.
September 24, 2020
“The word ‘hoax’ was uttered more than nine hundred times on Fox News in the first six months of 2020. Every time Trump tweeted it, or [Sean] Hannity shouted it, a little bit more truth was chipped away from America’s foundation—precisely at a time when the country was beset by multiple crises and needed honesty and accuracy, compassion and sound science.” — Brian Stelter, Author / CNN Journalist
This book, “Hoax”, highlights how Fox “News” is in a vicious loop of publicizing spiced up versions of particularly volatile viewpoints, President Trump voraciously consumes Fox broadcasts, who then tweets what they broadcast, and they then report on what he tweets, they spin a new “story” and the cycle begins again. It’s a endless cycle of hyperbole, lies, and misinformation. All done at Fox for one thing, not to give or value the news, or to inform the public, but to make money. One executive joked about how the network printed money in its basement, as its $2 billion a year in profit was that lucrative. They earned their bread and butter buttering up the political base of middle America — the very same base that supports President Trump 100% through thick or thin, hell or high water. As it is the most watched cable news channel in America, why mess with what is a highly lucrative profit machine.
Stelter points out that not all people at Fox hold these views. His is an insider account, told from anonymous Fox sources who cannot speak openly for fear of losing their jobs and hence their economic livelihoods. He largely shows regard for genuine journalists of the network (in the genuine news division), compared to the opinion hosts who populate prime time and morning shows, who spawn anger, panic, incite fear, deny real news as fake, and are sycophants to a president obsessed with this network and these opinion hosts’ shows most especially. All because that promotes the bottom line. The lack of any fact checking department at Fox is proof (from the legitimate journalistic perspective) that they do not take their jobs seriously as a news agency, as fact-checking is vital for all serious news agencies.
Having spent a lifetime studying Hitler’s Nazi Germany, I have seen how official propaganda (false news) propped up public sentiment in favor of the Nazi government despite the disaster of World War 2, which regular citizens didn’t understand the full extent of at the time. Without question it influenced the German people to support a government despite its massive failure to support the best interests of the German people the German press should have actually served and protected. One cannot help but make that comparison to today’s America and the unholy alliance between an autocratic ruler in Donald Trump and a propagandistic news network in Fox that have an unhealthy symbiotic relationship that is largely leading America toward a path of willful self-destruction.
This book, “Hoax”, highlights how Fox “News” is in a vicious loop of publicizing spiced up versions of particularly volatile viewpoints, President Trump voraciously consumes Fox broadcasts, who then tweets what they broadcast, and they then report on what he tweets, they spin a new “story” and the cycle begins again. It’s a endless cycle of hyperbole, lies, and misinformation. All done at Fox for one thing, not to give or value the news, or to inform the public, but to make money. One executive joked about how the network printed money in its basement, as its $2 billion a year in profit was that lucrative. They earned their bread and butter buttering up the political base of middle America — the very same base that supports President Trump 100% through thick or thin, hell or high water. As it is the most watched cable news channel in America, why mess with what is a highly lucrative profit machine.
Stelter points out that not all people at Fox hold these views. His is an insider account, told from anonymous Fox sources who cannot speak openly for fear of losing their jobs and hence their economic livelihoods. He largely shows regard for genuine journalists of the network (in the genuine news division), compared to the opinion hosts who populate prime time and morning shows, who spawn anger, panic, incite fear, deny real news as fake, and are sycophants to a president obsessed with this network and these opinion hosts’ shows most especially. All because that promotes the bottom line. The lack of any fact checking department at Fox is proof (from the legitimate journalistic perspective) that they do not take their jobs seriously as a news agency, as fact-checking is vital for all serious news agencies.
Having spent a lifetime studying Hitler’s Nazi Germany, I have seen how official propaganda (false news) propped up public sentiment in favor of the Nazi government despite the disaster of World War 2, which regular citizens didn’t understand the full extent of at the time. Without question it influenced the German people to support a government despite its massive failure to support the best interests of the German people the German press should have actually served and protected. One cannot help but make that comparison to today’s America and the unholy alliance between an autocratic ruler in Donald Trump and a propagandistic news network in Fox that have an unhealthy symbiotic relationship that is largely leading America toward a path of willful self-destruction.
August 27, 2020
Donald Trump is a menace to civilized society. He surrounds himself with dopes who have no ideals except to be his sycophants. This book is necessary reading. We have to get rid of this crook. He makes Richard Nixon look like Mother Theresa.
August 30, 2020
I enjoyed this more than I expected. Wish I knew who the unnamed sources are ☺
September 29, 2020
Never in the history of American politics has a national news organization been an extension of a political party or president. This may seem to be a harsh observation but when one examines President Donald Trump’s twitter feed, public statements, or speeches it appears at times to reflect what is presented on Fox News. If one were to listen to the commentary of Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Lou Dobbs, or the hosts of Fox and Friends among many others one can only imagine if the president is parroting them, or they are parroting him. Amidst a pandemic that has killed over 206,000 Americans President Trump spends a good part of his day watching Fox News. Since we live in such precarious times it would be interesting to know how this situation evolved, whether it is in fact true, and what are the implications for American democracy. Thankfully, CNN’s Reliable Sources anchor, Brian Stelter’s new book, HOAX: DONALD TRUMP, FOX NEWS, AND THE DANGEROUS DISTORTION OF TRUTH has taken on this task.
The title of Stelter’s book, HOAX is very apropos. It's Donald Trump’s new favorite word. He fears Covid-19 makes him look weak, something his ego cannot accept. Instead of fulfilling his constitutional duty to protect the American people he categorizes the pandemic as a hoax, with Sean Hannity as his chief enabler, some referring to him as Trump‘s “shadow chief of staff.” Stelter aptly describes how in early 2020, Trump and Hannity engaged in their usual feedback loop which had life and death consequences as they downplayed the coronavirus to the detriment of the American public. Hannity “fed misinformation to Trump and Trump fed misinformation right back to Hannity.” The two men brought out the worst in each other as it appeared that Trump programmed Hannity’s show with his constant call-ins during prime time and it often appeared that Hannity produced Trump’s presidency. Hannity would become apart from granting sycophantic interviews and concocted conspiracies but a daily sounding board for the president.
The concept of a feedback loop is one of Stelter’s primary themes as he displays examples of it throughout the book that reinforce his arguments. Whether dealing with Fox and Friends’ hosts, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham the loop seems fully functional. A few examples. When Congressman Elijah Cummings’ House committee was investigating how the Trump administration was treating migrants, all of a sudden Fox programming was reinforcing and supporting Trumps’ tweets – “The Battle for Baltimore,” as Trump referred to Cummings’ district as “a disgusting rat infested mess that no human being would want to live there.” Fox opinion hosts employed constant repetition as they did with trying to clean up Trump’s mess after his courting of white supremacists during and after the Charlottesville debacle, or how Fox went after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez after she was elected to Congress in 2018, or the caravans that were invading America through Mexico before the 2018 Congressional elections, or Trump’s defense during the impeachment process or the Mueller investigation; or Trump’s belief that the crowd at his inauguration was much larger than Obama’s; or how a debunked conspiracy theory that a Democratic National Committee staffer was murdered for leaking campaign emails; or the false claim that Ukraine, not Russia, was interfering in the 2016 election; and of course the current coronavirus highlighted by hydroxychloroquine– the list goes on and on.
Fox’s approach raises the question are they really a news station or just entertainment and “brain washing” for the extreme right in America. Rupert Murdoch has created an exceptionally profitable business model that thrives on deceit, lies, personal attacks, while reinforcing an alternative reality as opposed to fact and truth. Stelter describes numerous personality issues at Fox, but more importantly he presents the schism that exist(ed) as the more traditional news types like Brett Baier, Chris Wallace and Shep Smith had to deal with the outrageous commentary of the Fox and Friends hosts, Steve Doocy, Brian Kilmeade and Ainsley Earhardt; Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham. Finally, in October 2019, Smith had enough and resigned because of disagreements with Carlson over Fox coverage of the impeachment process. The reality for Trump is that unlike President Bill Clinton who created a “war room” to deal with impeachment, Trump did not have to as Fox became his “war room.”
Stelter reviews the history of the Fox news channel delving into turning points in their approach to news. In 1996 Rupert Murdoch provided Roger Ailes with a “boat load of cash” to develop a strong news channel to attract conservatives, sort of a “Limbaugh” approach for cable television is one example. The election of Barack Obama became the radicalizing force is next, and finally in 2011, Ailes gave Trump a weekly phone-in slot on Fox and Friends. Hannity would become a nightly attack ad for people who distrusted the nightly news. Guests on Hannity and other programs went outside the accepted norms of journalism. In fact, Fox and Friends with their constant call-ins from Trump may be more important to Trump’s presidential launch than “The Apprentice.” If one examines the “incestuous” relationship between Trump and Fox hosts one can see that once in office that Trump’s daily briefings seemed prepared by Fox as their commentary usually wound up in Trump’s tweets and then he would act upon them.
Stelter explores numerous dramas that have taken place internally at Fox. The Meghan Kelly/Trump feud; the sexual harassment lawsuits against Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly; the machinations between Hannity and O’Reilly; the problem that Tucker Carlson presented as he was losing ad revenue; attempts to keep Shep Smith which failed; the reasons why so many journalists remained at Fox and only a few walked out; issues within the Murdoch family as the two sons had diametrically different visions for the channel. In terms of drama Carlson and Ingraham pursued it each evening with their message of cultural displacement of whites by immigrants and the loss of status of white Christian America. Fox and Friends would supplant Trump’s morning intelligence briefing and it became the A.M. edition of Hannity. But as disgraceful as it appeared it made sense as most Fox hosts were geared to an audience of one – Donald Trump.
If there are criticisms that need to be made regarding Stelter’s work is at times he becomes too emotional and his language regresses to match the Fox hosts he decries. Further, he should have tried to approach Fox viewers and see what is so attractive to them about the information that they are being exposed to. It is obvious that Fox is enticing to millions, but why? Do viewers understand that they are being manipulated or in their heart of hearts believe and accept all the misinformation they digest? Stelter glosses over answers to these questions. Perhaps he could have examined this phenomena a bit more.
After reading HOAX I emerged with a massive headache – a malady brought upon by Stelter’s description of the manipulation of fact and news by a media giant to the detriment of our democracy. For Fox ratings and profits were the mantra and they would say and do anything that would reinforce that goal. As the Trump presidency evolved Fox became more and more state run television, something that has never happened since television became a mainstay in American households. Now that I have completed the book, I know what it is like to spend time in the Fox pro-Trump universe of misinformation. As the election approaches, I would recommend that most Americans should read Stelter’s work and apply what they learn to their choice of candidate.
The title of Stelter’s book, HOAX is very apropos. It's Donald Trump’s new favorite word. He fears Covid-19 makes him look weak, something his ego cannot accept. Instead of fulfilling his constitutional duty to protect the American people he categorizes the pandemic as a hoax, with Sean Hannity as his chief enabler, some referring to him as Trump‘s “shadow chief of staff.” Stelter aptly describes how in early 2020, Trump and Hannity engaged in their usual feedback loop which had life and death consequences as they downplayed the coronavirus to the detriment of the American public. Hannity “fed misinformation to Trump and Trump fed misinformation right back to Hannity.” The two men brought out the worst in each other as it appeared that Trump programmed Hannity’s show with his constant call-ins during prime time and it often appeared that Hannity produced Trump’s presidency. Hannity would become apart from granting sycophantic interviews and concocted conspiracies but a daily sounding board for the president.
The concept of a feedback loop is one of Stelter’s primary themes as he displays examples of it throughout the book that reinforce his arguments. Whether dealing with Fox and Friends’ hosts, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham the loop seems fully functional. A few examples. When Congressman Elijah Cummings’ House committee was investigating how the Trump administration was treating migrants, all of a sudden Fox programming was reinforcing and supporting Trumps’ tweets – “The Battle for Baltimore,” as Trump referred to Cummings’ district as “a disgusting rat infested mess that no human being would want to live there.” Fox opinion hosts employed constant repetition as they did with trying to clean up Trump’s mess after his courting of white supremacists during and after the Charlottesville debacle, or how Fox went after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez after she was elected to Congress in 2018, or the caravans that were invading America through Mexico before the 2018 Congressional elections, or Trump’s defense during the impeachment process or the Mueller investigation; or Trump’s belief that the crowd at his inauguration was much larger than Obama’s; or how a debunked conspiracy theory that a Democratic National Committee staffer was murdered for leaking campaign emails; or the false claim that Ukraine, not Russia, was interfering in the 2016 election; and of course the current coronavirus highlighted by hydroxychloroquine– the list goes on and on.
Fox’s approach raises the question are they really a news station or just entertainment and “brain washing” for the extreme right in America. Rupert Murdoch has created an exceptionally profitable business model that thrives on deceit, lies, personal attacks, while reinforcing an alternative reality as opposed to fact and truth. Stelter describes numerous personality issues at Fox, but more importantly he presents the schism that exist(ed) as the more traditional news types like Brett Baier, Chris Wallace and Shep Smith had to deal with the outrageous commentary of the Fox and Friends hosts, Steve Doocy, Brian Kilmeade and Ainsley Earhardt; Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham. Finally, in October 2019, Smith had enough and resigned because of disagreements with Carlson over Fox coverage of the impeachment process. The reality for Trump is that unlike President Bill Clinton who created a “war room” to deal with impeachment, Trump did not have to as Fox became his “war room.”
Stelter reviews the history of the Fox news channel delving into turning points in their approach to news. In 1996 Rupert Murdoch provided Roger Ailes with a “boat load of cash” to develop a strong news channel to attract conservatives, sort of a “Limbaugh” approach for cable television is one example. The election of Barack Obama became the radicalizing force is next, and finally in 2011, Ailes gave Trump a weekly phone-in slot on Fox and Friends. Hannity would become a nightly attack ad for people who distrusted the nightly news. Guests on Hannity and other programs went outside the accepted norms of journalism. In fact, Fox and Friends with their constant call-ins from Trump may be more important to Trump’s presidential launch than “The Apprentice.” If one examines the “incestuous” relationship between Trump and Fox hosts one can see that once in office that Trump’s daily briefings seemed prepared by Fox as their commentary usually wound up in Trump’s tweets and then he would act upon them.
Stelter explores numerous dramas that have taken place internally at Fox. The Meghan Kelly/Trump feud; the sexual harassment lawsuits against Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly; the machinations between Hannity and O’Reilly; the problem that Tucker Carlson presented as he was losing ad revenue; attempts to keep Shep Smith which failed; the reasons why so many journalists remained at Fox and only a few walked out; issues within the Murdoch family as the two sons had diametrically different visions for the channel. In terms of drama Carlson and Ingraham pursued it each evening with their message of cultural displacement of whites by immigrants and the loss of status of white Christian America. Fox and Friends would supplant Trump’s morning intelligence briefing and it became the A.M. edition of Hannity. But as disgraceful as it appeared it made sense as most Fox hosts were geared to an audience of one – Donald Trump.
If there are criticisms that need to be made regarding Stelter’s work is at times he becomes too emotional and his language regresses to match the Fox hosts he decries. Further, he should have tried to approach Fox viewers and see what is so attractive to them about the information that they are being exposed to. It is obvious that Fox is enticing to millions, but why? Do viewers understand that they are being manipulated or in their heart of hearts believe and accept all the misinformation they digest? Stelter glosses over answers to these questions. Perhaps he could have examined this phenomena a bit more.
After reading HOAX I emerged with a massive headache – a malady brought upon by Stelter’s description of the manipulation of fact and news by a media giant to the detriment of our democracy. For Fox ratings and profits were the mantra and they would say and do anything that would reinforce that goal. As the Trump presidency evolved Fox became more and more state run television, something that has never happened since television became a mainstay in American households. Now that I have completed the book, I know what it is like to spend time in the Fox pro-Trump universe of misinformation. As the election approaches, I would recommend that most Americans should read Stelter’s work and apply what they learn to their choice of candidate.
August 29, 2020
I'm reading this book now and it appears Mr. Stelter is still trying to push the Russian collusion myth as part of his attack on Fox news because the cable channel did not report what he felt the network should have reported regarding the Russian collusion investigation, like CNN did.
(On a side bar, I remember the day Wolf Blitzer said he was shocked about what was in the IG report regarding Clinton's secret server and the FBI's conduct, and how that story went away)
Stelter is jealous of the people over at fox as the book is sort of wacky and all and is just sort of strange in that respects. Honestly, I sort of though Mark Dice was the kindle voice, as I read Mr. Stelter's views.
The primary thesis throughout the whole book failed to even remotely reference the Mueller Hearings. If you are a regular CNN or MSNBC or the other big 3 network watcher, you may not be aware about that special moment in history as it did indeed expose the hoax. You can find a copy of that book here on Amazon: (Transcripts of the Mueller Hearings: House Committee on the Judiciary & House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Hearings). I've read this book with review too.
In my view, CNN is the flagship of propaganda and it's apparent the network is getting really worried they are losing the psywar on the rest of the population and the example can be found reading Jeffrey Toobin's book, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump as both books from these CNN authors forgot about all of the other publications from the government pointing out, there was a coup attempt and most of the MSM was a part of it as noted in the references below.
Additionally, although I suspect both authors working for CNN (Stelter & Toobin) got together with Josh Campbell also working for CNN, was a FBI agent and was the special assistant to James Comey. I am grateful for Mr. Campbell's service to my country but regretfully, the FBI agent also forgot to point out the potential to improve the quality of the FBI, as referenced below.
FBI IG Report: A Review of Various Actions by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Justice in Advance of the 2016 Election: U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General
DOJ OIG REPORT INTO CLINTON EMAIL INVESTIGATION: DOJ OIG RELEASES REPORT ON VARIOUS ACTIONS BY THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION AND DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE IN ADVANCE OF THE 2016 ELECTION
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Interview of Glenn Simpson
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Meeting Transcript (January 29, 2018): Includes BOTH The Nunes and Schiff Memos
A Report of Investigation of Certain Allegations Relating to Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe: February 2018
Report on Russian Active Measures: The Declassified Investigation into Russian Interference
Transcripts of the Mueller Hearings: House Committee on the Judiciary & House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Hearings
Interview of Bruce Ohr: Committee On The Judiciary, Joint With The Committee On Government Reform And Oversight
Interview of Lisa Page: Committee On The Judiciary, U.S. House Of Representatives
Interview of Peter Strzok: Committee On The Judiciary, U.S. House Of Representatives
Michael Horowitz statement Before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee 11 Dec 2019: Examining the IG Report on Abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act FISA
The Clinton Email Server Report: Department of State Report on Security Incidents Related to Potentially Classified Emails sent to Former Secretary of State Clinton’s Private Email Server, Oct 2019
The FBI Confidential Source Failure: Audit of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Management of its Confidential Human Source Validation Processes by the Office of the Inspector General
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY of the Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane Investigation: OIG Report 09 Dec. 2019
Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane Investigation: Office of the Inspector General U.S. Department of Justice 09 December 2019
Report of Investigation of Former FBI Director James Comey: Disclosure of Sensitive Investigative Information and Handling of Certain Memoranda
Finally, there was a biological creation made in China as CNN is really, really confused on who responsible for the mess as it wasn't the potus but these people do need a different narrative because everything previously has failed.
The book fails for me and is even more of a mess than Toobin or Josh Campbell's books as I've read those two books from CNN too.
It's weirdly disturbing people are supporting this book and it's difficult to know if these people supporting this pos are just clueless or they are the enemy.
(On a side bar, I remember the day Wolf Blitzer said he was shocked about what was in the IG report regarding Clinton's secret server and the FBI's conduct, and how that story went away)
Stelter is jealous of the people over at fox as the book is sort of wacky and all and is just sort of strange in that respects. Honestly, I sort of though Mark Dice was the kindle voice, as I read Mr. Stelter's views.
The primary thesis throughout the whole book failed to even remotely reference the Mueller Hearings. If you are a regular CNN or MSNBC or the other big 3 network watcher, you may not be aware about that special moment in history as it did indeed expose the hoax. You can find a copy of that book here on Amazon: (Transcripts of the Mueller Hearings: House Committee on the Judiciary & House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Hearings). I've read this book with review too.
In my view, CNN is the flagship of propaganda and it's apparent the network is getting really worried they are losing the psywar on the rest of the population and the example can be found reading Jeffrey Toobin's book, True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump as both books from these CNN authors forgot about all of the other publications from the government pointing out, there was a coup attempt and most of the MSM was a part of it as noted in the references below.
Additionally, although I suspect both authors working for CNN (Stelter & Toobin) got together with Josh Campbell also working for CNN, was a FBI agent and was the special assistant to James Comey. I am grateful for Mr. Campbell's service to my country but regretfully, the FBI agent also forgot to point out the potential to improve the quality of the FBI, as referenced below.
FBI IG Report: A Review of Various Actions by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Justice in Advance of the 2016 Election: U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General
DOJ OIG REPORT INTO CLINTON EMAIL INVESTIGATION: DOJ OIG RELEASES REPORT ON VARIOUS ACTIONS BY THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION AND DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE IN ADVANCE OF THE 2016 ELECTION
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Interview of Glenn Simpson
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Meeting Transcript (January 29, 2018): Includes BOTH The Nunes and Schiff Memos
A Report of Investigation of Certain Allegations Relating to Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe: February 2018
Report on Russian Active Measures: The Declassified Investigation into Russian Interference
Transcripts of the Mueller Hearings: House Committee on the Judiciary & House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Hearings
Interview of Bruce Ohr: Committee On The Judiciary, Joint With The Committee On Government Reform And Oversight
Interview of Lisa Page: Committee On The Judiciary, U.S. House Of Representatives
Interview of Peter Strzok: Committee On The Judiciary, U.S. House Of Representatives
Michael Horowitz statement Before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee 11 Dec 2019: Examining the IG Report on Abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act FISA
The Clinton Email Server Report: Department of State Report on Security Incidents Related to Potentially Classified Emails sent to Former Secretary of State Clinton’s Private Email Server, Oct 2019
The FBI Confidential Source Failure: Audit of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Management of its Confidential Human Source Validation Processes by the Office of the Inspector General
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY of the Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane Investigation: OIG Report 09 Dec. 2019
Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane Investigation: Office of the Inspector General U.S. Department of Justice 09 December 2019
Report of Investigation of Former FBI Director James Comey: Disclosure of Sensitive Investigative Information and Handling of Certain Memoranda
Finally, there was a biological creation made in China as CNN is really, really confused on who responsible for the mess as it wasn't the potus but these people do need a different narrative because everything previously has failed.
The book fails for me and is even more of a mess than Toobin or Josh Campbell's books as I've read those two books from CNN too.
It's weirdly disturbing people are supporting this book and it's difficult to know if these people supporting this pos are just clueless or they are the enemy.
September 22, 2021
Never been interested in politic ever on my life, until this clown showed up. But I'm möte interested in how it could hapend, why it did and what is the konsekvens of it all. Luckily there is so much books to read and even some very interesting dokumntaries. Bit of same emotions as when I consume any horror to be honest. Anywho this is a low 4 stars, maybe 3.7. it is a good book, has some good points and is informative. But I've might have gotten a bit tired of all of these books but then it's a me thing. Very interesting nevertheless
September 2, 2020
Just another opinionated anti-Trump book based on unnamed, anonymous and off the record sources. Frankly, I think most of it is simply made up to suit Stelter's agenda and continue the running feud with Hannity. Considering that Stelter works at CNN and continues to repeat absurd and patently false DNC talking points, it's truly shameless and hypocritical to bash FNC as partisan. The true irony of the Trump age is how much money is being made by Trump detractors with thin books...
November 26, 2020
The far-Right propaganda tool known as FOX News has re-shaped television, the media, and the country in ways that have been fundamentally detrimental. Its most egregious contribution has been the 2016 presidential election of Donald Trump, a man who has almost single-handedly tried to destroy our nation’s democratic institutions and who has the blood of almost a quarter-million American lives that were unnecessarily lost to the Covid-19 pandemic on his hands. In any other given time in American history, a president like Trump would be accountable for his actions (or inactions), but this is a very weird time in American history.
Brian Stelter’s book “Hoax: Donald Trump, FOX News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth” maps out the meteoric rise of the late Roger Ailes’s cable news network, its extremely successful marriage with far-Right extremism, and its eventual re-shaping of itself as the official mouthpiece of the Trump Administration. The key players in this drama are admitted non-journalists who have garnered a following of gullible Americans (including the president) into believing their partisan agenda.
These key players are, of course, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Tucker Carlson: a triumvirate juggernaut of anti-science anti-intellectual white nationalists who have taken over FOX News in a bloodless coup, gradually ousting the few people in the news organization (Shepard Smith, Bill O’Reilly, Megyn Kelly, just to name a few) who provided any ounce of self-regulation and moderate counterpoint.
Even Roger Ailes—-yes, the man who was brought down by numerous angry women fed up with his sexual improprieties—-provided some semblance of balance and objectivity when he was in charge. The current CEO, Suzanne Scott, has, unfairly or not, been accused of letting the inmates take over the asylum.
Stelter’s book is entertaining and informative, but it is not until the latter half that it becomes important. It is here that Stelter makes the case that our president—-a man who has bragged about not reading his morning intelligence briefings, a man who claims to not want to listen to experts because he knows more than they do, a man who considers watching Fox&Friends every morning an important part of his job, a man who once called the coronavirus a “hoax” and that it would “disappear by Easter”, a man that once advocated for the injection of bleach into the bloodstream (NOT sarcastically, as he claims), a man who (after testing positive) flung off his mask on-screen and told Americans to not let the virus dominate them, and a man who now refuses to concede after the election results irrefutably show that the American people voted him out—-blatantly lied to the American people and put the entire country at risk by downplaying, misinforming, or simply denying the seriousness of the disease.
I have yet to see anyone point out the frightening parallels between Trump and every single Bond villain ever. Stelter’s book comes the closest, in a way that is not meant to be humorous.
Brian Stelter’s book “Hoax: Donald Trump, FOX News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth” maps out the meteoric rise of the late Roger Ailes’s cable news network, its extremely successful marriage with far-Right extremism, and its eventual re-shaping of itself as the official mouthpiece of the Trump Administration. The key players in this drama are admitted non-journalists who have garnered a following of gullible Americans (including the president) into believing their partisan agenda.
These key players are, of course, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Tucker Carlson: a triumvirate juggernaut of anti-science anti-intellectual white nationalists who have taken over FOX News in a bloodless coup, gradually ousting the few people in the news organization (Shepard Smith, Bill O’Reilly, Megyn Kelly, just to name a few) who provided any ounce of self-regulation and moderate counterpoint.
Even Roger Ailes—-yes, the man who was brought down by numerous angry women fed up with his sexual improprieties—-provided some semblance of balance and objectivity when he was in charge. The current CEO, Suzanne Scott, has, unfairly or not, been accused of letting the inmates take over the asylum.
Stelter’s book is entertaining and informative, but it is not until the latter half that it becomes important. It is here that Stelter makes the case that our president—-a man who has bragged about not reading his morning intelligence briefings, a man who claims to not want to listen to experts because he knows more than they do, a man who considers watching Fox&Friends every morning an important part of his job, a man who once called the coronavirus a “hoax” and that it would “disappear by Easter”, a man that once advocated for the injection of bleach into the bloodstream (NOT sarcastically, as he claims), a man who (after testing positive) flung off his mask on-screen and told Americans to not let the virus dominate them, and a man who now refuses to concede after the election results irrefutably show that the American people voted him out—-blatantly lied to the American people and put the entire country at risk by downplaying, misinforming, or simply denying the seriousness of the disease.
I have yet to see anyone point out the frightening parallels between Trump and every single Bond villain ever. Stelter’s book comes the closest, in a way that is not meant to be humorous.
September 2, 2020
A fresh addition to my #IndividualOne bookshelf. Stelter sets himself a task and does not waver. He doesn't go back over the excruciatingly painful details of Trump's first years in office. Instead he chews off a very specific story...the connections between Trump and FOX new. Who influences whom? Where some of their shared lines originated. This book (at least the epilogue) was written soon after the horrific murder of George Floyd, and the teargassing of protesters so Trump could have his photo-op in front of a church, holding a Bible upside down. It is fresh.
Stelter investigates how closely aligned Trump and FOX were on talking points for Covid 19...he traces the first mentions of HCQ, from FOX guest to Trump's horrifying daily Coronavirus Task Force briefings...Stelter calls them DJT's daily campaign rallies.
He covers many of the personalities on the network...those opinion commentators who seem to enjoy unfettered access to the man who is SUPPOSED to be working. In fact, he watches FOX all morning, and during the briefings, would share whatever the party line was in the morning, and then he'd retreat to the residence to watch the reviews of his performances. I've always been torn about his lack of serious work...on one hand, it's scandalous. On the other, he's like a child...if he's distracted, he can't create havoc.
This book should make us all weep in despair. Elect a TV personality with a hungry ego, and get a media nightmare.
I appreciated Stelter's deep knowledge, his research, and his personal observations. It's even worse than we feared.
Stelter investigates how closely aligned Trump and FOX were on talking points for Covid 19...he traces the first mentions of HCQ, from FOX guest to Trump's horrifying daily Coronavirus Task Force briefings...Stelter calls them DJT's daily campaign rallies.
He covers many of the personalities on the network...those opinion commentators who seem to enjoy unfettered access to the man who is SUPPOSED to be working. In fact, he watches FOX all morning, and during the briefings, would share whatever the party line was in the morning, and then he'd retreat to the residence to watch the reviews of his performances. I've always been torn about his lack of serious work...on one hand, it's scandalous. On the other, he's like a child...if he's distracted, he can't create havoc.
This book should make us all weep in despair. Elect a TV personality with a hungry ego, and get a media nightmare.
I appreciated Stelter's deep knowledge, his research, and his personal observations. It's even worse than we feared.
September 14, 2020
I heard about this book on NPR, and I felt it was something that really needed to be read and discussed in this very divisive political climate. I am 41 years old, and I wasn’t really as politically aware twenty years ago as I am now. But then it didn’t feel nearly as necessary. George W. Bush was president, and while it came out that he lied (or was misinformed) about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction, it wasn’t the constant stream of lies and misinformation and propaganda coming out of the current White House. I’d always known that Fox News was anything but “fair and balanced,” and instead more of an “entertainment” channel, as described by its founder, but it’s very clear how far off the rails that channel has gone since Trump’s election and the death of Roger Ailes.
I can understand why Stelter doesn’t reveal all of his sources. Trump himself is extremely vengeful to anyone who disagrees with him, and most people have families and retirement funds to think of. Is it worth losing your job and any chance of working elsewhere (since it seems that other stations want nothing to do with most Fox News employees) just to be on record for this book? I think not.
I have a few friends on my Facebook timeline who are Fox News watchers, and I also have friends whose friends consume only Fox News as their media diet. It’s mind-blowing to read this book and see exactly where all of their conspiracy theories and false information has come from. They’re literally parroting what Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity has told them to say and to think, just like Trump parrots exactly what those men say.
What angers me the most is the degradation of the ethics of journalism in today’s America. Journalists as part of their training are taught ethics; they can’t just sit at their desks and make up stories. They have to go out and observe and take notes and report with as little bias as possible — what they have been doing since journalism became a profession. Obviously we have some sources of yellow journalism, but most in the profession hew to an ethical line. But with Hannity and Carlson screaming about FAKE NEWS and calling less propaganda-filled news stations FAKE and full of hoaxes, they’ve convinced their viewers that their news is the only truth to be had, when it’s full of lies and misinformation. They’ve denigrated their own profession so much, and it’s infuriating when it’s they who are engaging in fake news and hoaxes.
Now with COVID-19 having killed nearly 200,000 Americans as of today, one has to wonder how many would still be alive had the President and Fox News not continually said this was just the flu, that it was nothing to worry about, that it was more important to worry about the economy than about people’s lives.
I really hope Stelter can update this book after the election, especially if Trump does not win re-election. And I hope that once Trump leaves office, Fox News will somehow find its way back from the swamp of misinformation and lies and sycophancy it finds itself in now.
I can understand why Stelter doesn’t reveal all of his sources. Trump himself is extremely vengeful to anyone who disagrees with him, and most people have families and retirement funds to think of. Is it worth losing your job and any chance of working elsewhere (since it seems that other stations want nothing to do with most Fox News employees) just to be on record for this book? I think not.
I have a few friends on my Facebook timeline who are Fox News watchers, and I also have friends whose friends consume only Fox News as their media diet. It’s mind-blowing to read this book and see exactly where all of their conspiracy theories and false information has come from. They’re literally parroting what Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity has told them to say and to think, just like Trump parrots exactly what those men say.
What angers me the most is the degradation of the ethics of journalism in today’s America. Journalists as part of their training are taught ethics; they can’t just sit at their desks and make up stories. They have to go out and observe and take notes and report with as little bias as possible — what they have been doing since journalism became a profession. Obviously we have some sources of yellow journalism, but most in the profession hew to an ethical line. But with Hannity and Carlson screaming about FAKE NEWS and calling less propaganda-filled news stations FAKE and full of hoaxes, they’ve convinced their viewers that their news is the only truth to be had, when it’s full of lies and misinformation. They’ve denigrated their own profession so much, and it’s infuriating when it’s they who are engaging in fake news and hoaxes.
Now with COVID-19 having killed nearly 200,000 Americans as of today, one has to wonder how many would still be alive had the President and Fox News not continually said this was just the flu, that it was nothing to worry about, that it was more important to worry about the economy than about people’s lives.
I really hope Stelter can update this book after the election, especially if Trump does not win re-election. And I hope that once Trump leaves office, Fox News will somehow find its way back from the swamp of misinformation and lies and sycophancy it finds itself in now.
September 21, 2020
Well-sourced book that helped me understand how Fox News and it's watchers have evolved over the years. It's so reminiscent of The Third Reich's "big lie" 'fake news" gaslighting tactics. It scared me, rather than comforted me, but I believe it's a must read.
August 27, 2020
Biased? Maybe, some. However, there isn't much you'll hear that isn't true. That's a bit contradictory, but there it is, and if you listen, I believe you'll agree. This book names names. Hannity, Ingrahm, Carlson, Dobbs, even AG Barr. Where are the lawsuits for libel? Crickets. It's all true.
His base will not believe a word.
Hoax covers the Trump/Fox relationship well before his inauguration, early in the campaign, through the COVID pandemic. Slowly, insidiously, the entire staff of Fox became completely obsessed with getting the ear of Trump, repeating whatever they said, propaganda or not, lies or not, in Tweets and policy. Ratings rule. Nothing else matters. NOTHING. The poison at Fox is the reason why legitimate broadcasters left the station, like Shep Smith and others, many behind the scenes. Commentator access to Trump makes you indispensable. Hello, Hannity. Daily phone buddies.
America is governed by Fox commentators, Trump is an obsessive viewer and they know it, as they often speak directly to him, and he usually does what they suggest. President Trump is the president of Fox News listeners - NOT America, he never has been. Fox viewers are 24/7 watchers, hear no other viewpoints, and are deeply Indoctrinated into a cult-like obsession. Frightening.
Jim Jones or David Koresh have nothing on Trump. He's the same type of leader and has created a zombie-like following, using the Fox commentators and viewers..
Shame on you, Fox. Shame.
His base will not believe a word.
Hoax covers the Trump/Fox relationship well before his inauguration, early in the campaign, through the COVID pandemic. Slowly, insidiously, the entire staff of Fox became completely obsessed with getting the ear of Trump, repeating whatever they said, propaganda or not, lies or not, in Tweets and policy. Ratings rule. Nothing else matters. NOTHING. The poison at Fox is the reason why legitimate broadcasters left the station, like Shep Smith and others, many behind the scenes. Commentator access to Trump makes you indispensable. Hello, Hannity. Daily phone buddies.
America is governed by Fox commentators, Trump is an obsessive viewer and they know it, as they often speak directly to him, and he usually does what they suggest. President Trump is the president of Fox News listeners - NOT America, he never has been. Fox viewers are 24/7 watchers, hear no other viewpoints, and are deeply Indoctrinated into a cult-like obsession. Frightening.
Jim Jones or David Koresh have nothing on Trump. He's the same type of leader and has created a zombie-like following, using the Fox commentators and viewers..
Shame on you, Fox. Shame.
August 30, 2020
I feel like I need about a dozen scalding-hot showers. I mean, I could also write a whole manifesto about how Fox News has been party (or even instrumental) to ripping apart the fabric of American democracy, all in the name of profit — but who has that kind of time?
November 16, 2020
An account of Fox News when Roger Ailes was ousted andTrump’s personality took over the network without much resistance. As time went on,those who resisted were fired or pushed. Out Rupert Murdoch initially resisted, saw the profit and relented.
September 4, 2020
the author's beat is the media, thus he has many sources in Fox News and has gotten to see first-hand the machinations, misinterpretations, misrepresentations, mishugas...there
so Trump does not attend or read intelligence briefings, working papers, the minutia necessary to govern
instead, "Executive Time", 6 hours daily of nothing but Fox
he exists in a bubble and not only does Fox lie to us, but it lies to Trump and those lies are what he bases his "decision-making" on
this is scary and sad
Fox News reporters (not the opinionators) can leave the network in disgust, but those who shape and misshape the molding of policy don't leave
not only are they taking Trump for a ride, they're also doing it to the US and the world
as an example, telling all that Covid 19 is a hoax while simultaneously taking every precaution possible at the network to keep it away from its employees serves whom?!
so Trump does not attend or read intelligence briefings, working papers, the minutia necessary to govern
instead, "Executive Time", 6 hours daily of nothing but Fox
he exists in a bubble and not only does Fox lie to us, but it lies to Trump and those lies are what he bases his "decision-making" on
this is scary and sad
Fox News reporters (not the opinionators) can leave the network in disgust, but those who shape and misshape the molding of policy don't leave
not only are they taking Trump for a ride, they're also doing it to the US and the world
as an example, telling all that Covid 19 is a hoax while simultaneously taking every precaution possible at the network to keep it away from its employees serves whom?!
February 4, 2021
First of all, this review will be much shorter than it would have been if Trump were still in office, but since he is blessedly now out of office, the information in this book becomes less urgent than it once was. Secondly, a word about the 3-star rating. Since much of the information in this book comes from "unnamed sources close to the president" or "unnamed sources at Fox News," I don't feel that I can in fairness give it a higher rating, since "unnamed sources" are always somewhat suspect. That said, it's clear that most of these sources would have quickly lost their jobs if they had spoken on the record, and so it's reasonable and necessary for the author to keep them anonymous. The reader has to proceed in good faith based on the trust he or she has in the author, an anchor and chief media consultant (at the time of writing) for CNN. So, here is what I learned from the book:
1. At the same time that Fox News pundits were calling the appearance of the coronavirus a "hoax" and telling their listening audience that Covid-19 was no more dangerous than the flu, contractors were busy building off-site mini-studios for all of Fox's highest profile anchors and pundits to keep them safe, sometimes converting home offices into recording studios for them. (Sean Hannity already has a high-end home television studio as part of his contract, so he was never in any danger of contagion, whether the virus was a "hoax"or not.) For those unfortunate employees lowly enough to have to stay in the main Fox News studio, management hired a high-end cleaning service to disinfect offices and studios.
2. President Trump had an entanglement with Fox News that had no modern historic precedent. (The historian Jon Meacham -- who was willing to go on the record -- said that one would have to return to the 19th century before finding anything similar to Trump's relationship between a president and a single media news outlet. And of course, it should go without saying that the media of that day were confined to print media that took time to disseminate.) Not only did Trump have immediate access to airtime, many of the ideas promoted by his administration originated in the mind of Sean Hannity, who received almost daily phone calls from the president who wanted Hannity to "advise" him. (A "pr00f" of sorts was offered by the fact that some of the president's most outrageous tweets and comments were spoken in only slightly different form by Hannity during his evening show 1-2 days PRIOR to the president's comments. Stelter took the time to research this by reviewing past Hannity shows and the president's tweet thread. I took the author at his word, but a really ambitious reader could fact check this himself.)
3. Fox News is ruled by a profit motive that is more extreme than mainstream news outlets. Profit, of course, means keeping viewership high, and so they give their audience exactly what they want to hear. Mainstream news can also fall into this trap too, of course, but Stetler's point is that Fox does not require the same level of factual underpinning to its reporting. And they require absolutely NO factual underpinning to anything said in their opinion shows, e.g., Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham. (This assertion seems consistent with what I have seen on Tucker Carlson, a show I watched for a brief time at the request of my brother, but in truth, I watched too few shows to have a firm grip on content.)
Stelter makes clear that Fox News did not begin this way, that its claim upon its founding to present "fair and balanced" news reporting was as true as any other station's, but Fox's had a slant right rather than a slant left. At the time, this was refreshing to many people. (My very conservative brothers have convinced me that most mainstream reporting is slanted -- to a greater or lesser degree, depending upon the network -- to the left side of the political divide.) However, the author makes very clear that this is no longer the case. Note that the most professionally respected of the Fox news anchors, Shepherd Smith, has left Fox News for CNN. And Stetler notes that while most networks have an ethics department that serves as watchdog for both reporters and opinion pundits, Fox News disbanded their ethics team as a department and made ethics oversight the red-haired stepchild of other, more financially driven departments. (Given the large lawsuits recently filed by Dominion and Smartmatic against Fox News and various "friends," they may want to reconsider that decision.)
In conclusion, Trump's presidency is behind us, and so this book may be unnecessary reading now, though I will say it was interesting reading, especially as I was reading it while spending most of my time in my house due to the pandemic. If you are so inclined, get the book from the library and read just the last chapter titled "The Crisis." You will be even more appalled at how very badly the Trump administration handled this crisis and the level to which Fox News was involved. (And I'm laughing at myself now since I predicted this review would be short. But I felt I had important things to say, so here it is. If you made it this far, I thank you!)
1. At the same time that Fox News pundits were calling the appearance of the coronavirus a "hoax" and telling their listening audience that Covid-19 was no more dangerous than the flu, contractors were busy building off-site mini-studios for all of Fox's highest profile anchors and pundits to keep them safe, sometimes converting home offices into recording studios for them. (Sean Hannity already has a high-end home television studio as part of his contract, so he was never in any danger of contagion, whether the virus was a "hoax"or not.) For those unfortunate employees lowly enough to have to stay in the main Fox News studio, management hired a high-end cleaning service to disinfect offices and studios.
2. President Trump had an entanglement with Fox News that had no modern historic precedent. (The historian Jon Meacham -- who was willing to go on the record -- said that one would have to return to the 19th century before finding anything similar to Trump's relationship between a president and a single media news outlet. And of course, it should go without saying that the media of that day were confined to print media that took time to disseminate.) Not only did Trump have immediate access to airtime, many of the ideas promoted by his administration originated in the mind of Sean Hannity, who received almost daily phone calls from the president who wanted Hannity to "advise" him. (A "pr00f" of sorts was offered by the fact that some of the president's most outrageous tweets and comments were spoken in only slightly different form by Hannity during his evening show 1-2 days PRIOR to the president's comments. Stelter took the time to research this by reviewing past Hannity shows and the president's tweet thread. I took the author at his word, but a really ambitious reader could fact check this himself.)
3. Fox News is ruled by a profit motive that is more extreme than mainstream news outlets. Profit, of course, means keeping viewership high, and so they give their audience exactly what they want to hear. Mainstream news can also fall into this trap too, of course, but Stetler's point is that Fox does not require the same level of factual underpinning to its reporting. And they require absolutely NO factual underpinning to anything said in their opinion shows, e.g., Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham. (This assertion seems consistent with what I have seen on Tucker Carlson, a show I watched for a brief time at the request of my brother, but in truth, I watched too few shows to have a firm grip on content.)
Stelter makes clear that Fox News did not begin this way, that its claim upon its founding to present "fair and balanced" news reporting was as true as any other station's, but Fox's had a slant right rather than a slant left. At the time, this was refreshing to many people. (My very conservative brothers have convinced me that most mainstream reporting is slanted -- to a greater or lesser degree, depending upon the network -- to the left side of the political divide.) However, the author makes very clear that this is no longer the case. Note that the most professionally respected of the Fox news anchors, Shepherd Smith, has left Fox News for CNN. And Stetler notes that while most networks have an ethics department that serves as watchdog for both reporters and opinion pundits, Fox News disbanded their ethics team as a department and made ethics oversight the red-haired stepchild of other, more financially driven departments. (Given the large lawsuits recently filed by Dominion and Smartmatic against Fox News and various "friends," they may want to reconsider that decision.)
In conclusion, Trump's presidency is behind us, and so this book may be unnecessary reading now, though I will say it was interesting reading, especially as I was reading it while spending most of my time in my house due to the pandemic. If you are so inclined, get the book from the library and read just the last chapter titled "The Crisis." You will be even more appalled at how very badly the Trump administration handled this crisis and the level to which Fox News was involved. (And I'm laughing at myself now since I predicted this review would be short. But I felt I had important things to say, so here it is. If you made it this far, I thank you!)
November 9, 2020
Terrifying read. I wish there was a way to get the people who really need it, Fox “News” watchers, to read this.
August 29, 2020
Fox News is a dangerous cult that radicalizes it’s viewers into puppets for the right. It’s a cult because it’s viewers believe it is the one and only truth, even though it bends the truth to fit its narratives. It’s a cult because it’s brainwashed viewers become followers who not only can’t recognize the truth about Donald Trump, they refuse to acknowledge truth when it is presented to them. I’ve seen family members, friends, and fellow church members succumb again and again to this cult. They have their own code words, they speak the same language, and they are all convinced that men like Donald Trump are Saviors, failing today see that they are charlatans. It’s a cult because it makes their viewers believe they can’t trust anyone else and it’s a cult because it has watered down religion for its viewers and has created a new religion where Donald Trump is the Bulwark of truth agains the powers and principalities of darkness, when he is in fact a failed businessman and charlatan. This is an important book in helping us understand how things got so bad. If only the people who need to read it would, but I’m afraid they are already so far gone that it would never make a difference.
December 16, 2020
“To be clear, Trump didn’t jabber about Fox out of the goodness of his own heart. He needed Fox. He depended on propagandists like Hannity to tell him what he wanted to hear. He depended on Fox to keep the walls of his alternative reality intact.”
Hoax was the book I needed to show me the entire country hasn’t gone crazy. I couldn’t read it fast enough.
The language was concise and straightforward, and the writing was engaging and well-structured.
It was sickening, frustrating, and scary to read about Fox and Trump’s relationship, but not surprising.
(This review has all the adjectives!)
Highly recommended.
Hoax was the book I needed to show me the entire country hasn’t gone crazy. I couldn’t read it fast enough.
The language was concise and straightforward, and the writing was engaging and well-structured.
It was sickening, frustrating, and scary to read about Fox and Trump’s relationship, but not surprising.
(This review has all the adjectives!)
Highly recommended.
September 27, 2020
This is my favorite cheesy Trump tell all. Fox and Trump. Ailes, O'Reilly, et al.
"Tits up. Hair back" Female news people sit at the ends so their legs show.
"People claim Putin is Trump's puppet master. The role is ...... occupied by Fox & Friends."
Trump said:
"Don't believe what you hear and read. Journalists are enemies of the people."
"What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening."
Stelter seems to have a lot of friends in the business who want to dish but not for attribution. Who would!
Again, this is a book I read and now I want to listen to the audio book.
"Tits up. Hair back" Female news people sit at the ends so their legs show.
"People claim Putin is Trump's puppet master. The role is ...... occupied by Fox & Friends."
Trump said:
"Don't believe what you hear and read. Journalists are enemies of the people."
"What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening."
Stelter seems to have a lot of friends in the business who want to dish but not for attribution. Who would!
Again, this is a book I read and now I want to listen to the audio book.
August 30, 2020
Highly recommended. Equal parts fascinating and horrifying. Some of what's contained within made me shake my head in shock. The Trump loyalists won't like this, but it's a damning indictment of the Trump-FOX News relationship. As close to state-run TV as you get in a country that isn't a dictatorship.
August 29, 2020
This is a knowledgeable and disturbing account of President Trump's relationship with Fox News. A MUST read!
November 12, 2020
I’ve never been a Fox News viewer since a news network identifying themselves as fair and balanced is too similar to a used car dealer calling himself honest for my taste. My instinct is to trust neither. Similarly, it escapes me how the top-rated network can be anything but mainstream. My exposure to Fox is limited to seeing it on in the gym in the morning with the sound off and seeing their headlines in my Google feed. I did, therefore, learn about how Fox has become so pro-Trump (and anti-truth and common sense) through this book. I used to consider myself a moderate Republican based on ideas such as minimizing the size of government, keeping our national defense strong while engaging fully with our traditional allies, encouraging business, maintaining a sense of fiscal conservatism, and emphasizing the rule of law. For this reason, I continue to be dismayed by Trump’s ongoing popularity and disappointed by what the Republican party has become. This book helped me to understand more of where his popularity comes from and why the election was as close as it was despite Trump’s fundamental lack of qualifications or any suitability for office.
I rated it four vice five stars because the frequent swearing seemed gratuitous and dullened the message. I also found it to be a bit dumbed down (I think it’s safe to presume most readers know what a eunuch is, especially since that’s the collective identity of today’s Republican Party). Finally, Stelter never reconciled Fox’ median viewer age of 67 with their strength in the 25-54 age group. Seeing their advertising focus it’s clear that Fox & Friends is targeting an older viewership, but despite mentioning the criticality of the 25-54 age group ratings-wise, at least twice, Stelter never connects these apparently disparate numbers.
Overall, a useful and informative book for anyone desiring a greater understanding of how we got here. It also helps clarify the idea that Trump is more symptom than illness, despite the frequent nausea, headaches, and general poor feeling he inspires.
I rated it four vice five stars because the frequent swearing seemed gratuitous and dullened the message. I also found it to be a bit dumbed down (I think it’s safe to presume most readers know what a eunuch is, especially since that’s the collective identity of today’s Republican Party). Finally, Stelter never reconciled Fox’ median viewer age of 67 with their strength in the 25-54 age group. Seeing their advertising focus it’s clear that Fox & Friends is targeting an older viewership, but despite mentioning the criticality of the 25-54 age group ratings-wise, at least twice, Stelter never connects these apparently disparate numbers.
Overall, a useful and informative book for anyone desiring a greater understanding of how we got here. It also helps clarify the idea that Trump is more symptom than illness, despite the frequent nausea, headaches, and general poor feeling he inspires.
September 14, 2020
The night of the 2016 election, a commentator noted that the Republican party would have to change. Its mostly white members were growing older while the country was becoming more diverse. At that point, everyone figured the election was in the bag for Hillary Clinton. The commentator could not have been more wrong.
This book shows exactly what went sideways for Clinton, via Trump's use of Fox news to essentially carry water for his whims and needs. Fox, in the interest of viewership and money, became the second part of this symbiotic relationship by manipulating the racial and economic fears of its own elderly voter audience into Trump worshippers.
The author had no shortage of uncomfortable sources from Fox news itself feeling revolted and even having to go to therapy over the Trump/Fox relationship.
This book was a little slow at times but a very good examination of how one television network became a kind of state-run media for a politician willing to do anything for success.
This book shows exactly what went sideways for Clinton, via Trump's use of Fox news to essentially carry water for his whims and needs. Fox, in the interest of viewership and money, became the second part of this symbiotic relationship by manipulating the racial and economic fears of its own elderly voter audience into Trump worshippers.
The author had no shortage of uncomfortable sources from Fox news itself feeling revolted and even having to go to therapy over the Trump/Fox relationship.
This book was a little slow at times but a very good examination of how one television network became a kind of state-run media for a politician willing to do anything for success.
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