Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth

Stelter does a public service with this book, though those who need to read it most very llkely won’t do so. It shows how the morally unsavory Roger Ailes was put in charge of Fox News by conservative Australian billionaire Rupert Murdoch and turned it into a rightwing propaganda machine. Stelter also shows how far back Ailes and Trump went–and Fox’s role, thanks to Ailes, in turning Trump into someone conservatives listened to about politics.

It was 2011 when Ailes started a weekly call-in feature every Monday with Trump on “Fox and Friends” As Stelter says “the show reflected Ailes’s hatred of Obama, fear of Muslims, and comfort with white male dominance.” Trump was a natural fit, and Ailes gave him a forum to share the so-called “birtherism” that would launch Trump’s political career and set the stage for his presidency.

Stelter shows how Fox found the big pile of money that was available to those who could convincingly peddle the attacks and defenses that their conservative audience wanted to hear. Sean Hannity–the college dropout who Ailes had plucked from a talk radio outlet and turned into a mega-star–was so influential with President Trump that White House aides called him the chief of staff. Sometimes Trump would ask for Fox’s Lou Dobbs to be patched in during meetings with his economic advisers.

They were all concerned with the same thing: popularity, ratings, money and power. Stelter shows that this was a dangerous relationship before the covid pandemic in America; after it, the relationship was literally deadly.. The more Trump spread misinformation and outright lies about the pandemic–it’s cause, spread and his handling of it–the more FOX championed his actions. It didn’t matter that the evening hosts’ pro-Trump commentaries were invariably false. What mattered was telling the Trump (and Fox) “base” what they wanted to hear.

Arguably, as Stelter writes, Trump and the Fox evening hosts and those on “Fox and Friends” have been complicit in a national tragedy that will see over 200,000 Americans killed by covid-19 by Election Day. Fox’s determination to keep Americans ignorant of the danger of the virus, of Trump’s gross negligence throughout the crisis, and of what people should be doing to stay safe, makes them also culpable for the deaths of thousands of people who would be alive today if they were wearing masks and social distancing. Instead of relying on experts, Trump and Hannity et al played politics–it was, after all, an election year–with devastating results. Surely, there should be some accountability, and a recognition that what Fox does–in the main–is not journalism.

[I deducted one star because his narrative of the Trump vendetta toward Megyn Kelly omits much essential information and a timeline that puts in perspective just how dangerous a man like Donald Trump would be if given great power. Kelly writes in her autobiography that Trump not only knew her questions ahead of time, but pressured her and her exec producer not to ask the one about his past insults to women. She refused and afterwards suspected that he had her driver slip something into a Starbucks he insisted on getting for her. She became so ill that she almost didn’t go on camera that night.

In her memoir, Kelly described how Trump targeted her for months in tweets and other public comments in an effort to get revenge Kelly received plenty of hate mail, and Fox was so worried for her safety that they hired a bodyguard. It ended when Ailes eventually brokered a truce–with Kelly conducting a softball interview of Trump and both of them making nice for the camera. It’s a revealing story about Trump’s character and relationship with Fox that Stelter’s narrative would have benefitted from including. In spite of this–and the way he shortchanges how negative Fox’s impact was from Bill Clinton’s last term through Obama’s presidency–his book does a service. It’s a sincere and detailed effort to help Americans see through the propaganda and essential dishonesty of the network and hosts they trust and turn to for an understanding of the world.]

journalistic offering…

Brian Stelter has penned a giant tattletale, nothing more. What he has posted in the back of the book for NOTES, is simply a listing of who said what to whom. Its certainly not any database of documentation a reader can research.

I purchased this book because of his credentials, with the hope of learning something new or new insight and all I got was the newsroom version of schoolyard one ups and sour grapes: my newsroom is better than your newsroom; GIANT SIGH

The book is written in a series of venues that actually lends itself to a miniseries. Since the book reads like fiction, perhaps turning it into a script for Saturday Night w/CNN would be a good use for these pages of fodder. Its easy reading but not particularly well written. The chapters are VERY long, repetitious and self aggrandizing.

The real HOAX here has been perpetrated against the reader. NOT RECOMMENDED

Brian Stelters Hoax is a strikingly informative source on current events. Quite a few books describing Trump and his failings have been churned out over the past four years, but this one doesnt belong with all the others, in my view.

True enough, it is not flattering to Donald Trump. But the thrust of the book is the Donald Trump-Fox News merger that has now, finally, come to full fruition. Stelter tells the story of this merger, tracking different points in its evolution with incisive and often gripping detail. The book is teeming with stories that deserve mention: the steady shifts to the right of Fox following the 9/11 attacks and the Iraq War, the increasing empowerment of prime time personalities like Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, the Gretchen Carlson-Megyn Kelly feminist revolt and – on a related note – the careful use of attractive females (and their legs) in newsroom shoots.

The careful, data-rich story he tells is so informative and compelling that I believe its long-term popularity is assured, not only for people like me who just want to keep up with things, but also for those with a professional interest in journalism.

Very briefly, the saga that unfolds in Hoax is that of a kind of incestuous love affair between Donald Trump and Fox News that culminates in a virtual marriage. Figuring most prominently in the story are, Trump himself (of course), but also Roger Ailes, Rupert Murdoch, Sean Hannity, and the hosts of Fox and Friends. The saga is a deeply troubling one for citizens who want to trust the media and dont regard reporters in general as enemies of the people. We do, after all, want to trust media figures to do their best to report the truth, even though, given ordinary human weaknesses, we often prefer some truths over others.

Ironically, toward the end of the story, a post-White House Trump is portrayed by one of Foxs personalities as a Frankensteinian monster. They helped make him and hes out of control. And no one knows how they will do once hes gone.

This nightmare scenario envisages a Trump media empire backed by multiple billionaires and encompassing both television and internet elements. As one source put it, With an entire network, Ivanka could have a show, and Don Jr. could have a show, and the Trump brand could span politics and culture and entertainment. Stelter himself is doubtful about this prospect, but many readers will take it in as startling food for thought. But of course, many people would argue that a Trump media empire would be a far sight better than having Trump and his family minions continuing to run the entire executive branch of U.S. government.

The most central concern of Stelters is the dissolution of the concept of media truth itself. He cites Peter Pomerantsovs Nothing Is True and Everything is Possible, which describes the corrosive influence of propaganda in Putins Russia. If a political leader can convince a large portion of the public that media stories are nothing more than weapons in an amoral information war, nothing justifies any individuals belief in any news item or any source. We are then simply left with the question of Who is winning the information war? This is the real nightmare we are facing, and the Fox-Trump merger has pushed us frighteningly close to its realization.

This book, pre-ordered, popped up on my Kindle just past midnight and then I read till my eyes gave out. The idea that a president of the United States ignores his official briefings and instead trusts Fox and Friends is both disgusting and frightening. Lives have been lost because Hannity fed Trump his lines (or is that ‘lies’) about Coronavirus. The behind the scenes machinations at Fox News are well documented. It’s not pretty but it makes for fascinating reading about a culture that is so totally foreign to most of us. Thank God.

A great read. An insiders reveal of the fox/trump/ new republican party.

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