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Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous
Distortion of Truth
by Brian Stelter
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
An NPR Best Book of the Year
"A thorough and damning exploration of the
incestuous relationship between Trump and his favorite channel." --The New
York Times
"A Rosetta Stone for stuff about this presidency
that doesn't otherwise make sense to normal humans." --Rachel Maddow,
MSNBC
"Stelter's
critique goes beyond salacious tidbits about extramarital affairs (though there
are plenty of those) to expose a collusion that threatens the pillars of our
democracy." --The Washington Post
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 a "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?
Hoax review: Fox News, Donald Trump and truth v
owning the libs
Brian Stelter of CNN has produced a well-sourced
portrait of the symbiotic relationship between president and presenters
Barr told Murdoch to ‘muzzle’ Trump critic, new book
says
Lloyd Green
Mon 24 Aug
2020 07.00 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/aug/24/hoax-review-fox-news-donald-trump-brian-stelter
On Saturday
night, the Washington Post reported that Mary Trump Barry had been caught on
tape accusing her brother, the president, of being an all-purpose piece of work
who even cheated his way into college. As framed by Trump’s older sister, a
federal judge who retired under an ethics cloud of her own, the president has
“no principles. None.”
As for his
relationship to truth: “The lying. Holy shit.”
Barry did
not, however, have the media to herself. As the Post’s scoop was breaking,
Jeanine Pirro was extolling Trump’s virtues in a primetime flight into fantasy.
According
to Pirro, “Trump made his own money and he hasn’t asked the government for it
and he doesn’t cut deals while he’s in the government for his son and his
family.”
According
to Barry, Trump was incredulous to be told she read books and didn’t watch Fox
News.
Welcome to
the parallel universe, where reality can take a backseat to ratings and
resentments. Into the morass dives Brian Stelter with his latest book, Hoax. Under
the subtitle Donald Trump, Fox News and the Dangerous Distortion of the Truth,
the CNN media critic chronicles the symbiotic relationship between the 45th
president and Rupert Murdoch’s most famous product.
Fox News has access and influence, Trump a megaphone,
both enjoy a devoted following
It has been
a win-win. Fox News has access and influence, Trump a megaphone, both enjoy a
devoted following.
To
illustrate: in the fall of 2019, Attorney General William Barr reportedly
traveled to New York to ask Murdoch to “muzzle” Andrew Napolitano, an in-house
critic of Trump. But according to Stelter, Barr was also there to discuss
“media consolidation”, at a time when the industry was rife with merger mania.
In other
words, the attorney general went to the mogul privately rather than having him
come to the justice department, where people could see him and notetakers could
be present.
Yes, Fox
News has given voice to those voters Barack Obama derided for clinging to their
guns and religion and Hillary Clinton branded as irredeemably deplorable. But
Fox News has also promoted baseless conspiracy theories and unhesitatingly
stoked racial and cultural animus – as Stelter makes clear.
Although
Fox News did not embrace Obama and “birtherism”, it did not discourage it,
offering Trump a platform to trash a sitting president. Stelter captures Steve
Doocy, a host of morning show Fox & Friends, egging the one-time reality
host on, describing him as someone “who we all know was born in this country”.
More
recently, host Jesse Watters has credited the QAnon conspiracy movement with
uncovering “great stuff”. Tucker Carlson, meanwhile, singled out Cardi B and
Megan Thee Stallion’s WAP for its vulgarity but a few years ago voiced his
approval of an email sent by his brother, Buckley Carlson, to a woman he
labeled “LabiaFace” while referring to “dick fright”, “spooge neck” and “pearl
necklacing”.
In
Carlson’s words, “I just talked to my brother about his response, and he
assures me he meant it in the nicest way.” Then again, Blake Neff, a Carlson
writer, was recently dismissed for posting racist and misogynist messages
online.
As narrated by Stelter, Fox News has deliberately and
repeatedly downplayed the threat posed by Covid-19
As narrated
by Stelter, Fox News has deliberately and repeatedly downplayed the threat
posed by Covid-19 for the sake of making Trump look good, even as the pandemic
took hold in Arizona, Florida, Georgia and Texas, ie: Trump’s base. Hoax
describes in granular detail internal measures taken in early March, as Covid’s
blight was descending, and contrasts them with the wisdom fed to viewers.
Hand
sanitizer stations were “added to every door at Fox”, in-person meetings were
scaled back, travel was curbed. Yet Sean Hannity and other hosts were talking
out of “both sides of their mouth” – this being the same Hannity who in moments
of candor reported by Stelter would label Trump “batshit crazy” or ask: “What
the fuck is wrong with him?”
In
Stelter’s telling, “one minute Hannity was saying the virus was ‘serious’” and
in the next breath he was “accusing other media outlets of ‘sowing fear’”.
Hannity also attacked Andrew Cuomo, New York’s governor, and Bill de Blasio,
New York City’s mayor, for “politicizing this national emergency”, admonishing
them to “stop”.
Pete
Hegseth, another host, announced that the more he learned about Covid, the
“less” there was to “worry about”.
Now, the US
death toll is approaching 180,000. Contrary to the president’s assurances, the
virus shows no signs of disappearing.
Viewers
have argued to the Federal Communications Commission that “the network had
blood on its hands”. In its successful defense of a Covid-induced lawsuit, Fox
rightly argued that first amendment free speech protections can also shield
misinformation.
Hoax is
amply documented, with 18 pages of notes, and in a sense it picks up where
Gabriel Sherman’s 2014 book, The Loudest Voice, left off. But there is a major
difference. Sherman made a single reference to Trump, and focused on Roger
Ailes, Fox News’ founder. Hoax is all about the Trump-Fox News alliance.
Fox News is
not a monolith. On election day 2016, Chris Wallace, its lead newsman, told
Brett Baier, another anchor, and Suzanne Scott, the chief executive, he was
“embarrassed” by Hannity and Pirro serving as on-air Trump auxiliaries.
Last month,
Wallace grilled Trump over his prediction Covid would disappear and challenged
the president over his erroneous contention that the US has the world’s
seventh-lowest mortality rate from the virus. Indeed, Fox’s polls have earned
the president’s ire for conveying where things stand as opposed to where Trump
wishes they were.
But the
fact-conscious Baier and Wallace are not dominant voices.
Fox News
will remain a counter to the mainstream media, however the election plays out.
Trump or no Trump, it is about owning the libs. And with the country’s social
cleavages continuing to widen and deepen, its hosts will have ample material.
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