Hoax : Donald Trump, Fox News, and the dangerous distortion of truth

Hoax Donald Trump, Fox News, and the dangerous distortion of truth

Brian Stelter

Book - 2020

The CNN correspondent examines Donald Trump's controversial relationship with the Fox News network and discusses the tensions at the network between Trump loyalists and the few remaining journalists.

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Subjects
Trump, Donald, > 1946-
Fox News.
Television and politics > United States.
Television broadcasting of news > Objectivity > United States.
Truthfulness and falsehood > Political aspects > United States.
Published
New York : One Signal Publishers/Atria 2020.
Language
English
Main Author
Brian Stelter (author)
Edition
First One Signal Publishers/Atria Books hardcover edition
Physical Description
ix, 350 pages ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 321-338) and index.
ISBN
9781982142445
  • Prologue
  • "Batshit crazy"
  • "We surrendered"
  • "Profit machine"
  • "Unforgivable"
  • The Creation
  • "Everybody can be bought"
  • "An invisible hand"
  • "Mayor of Crazytown"
  • "People don't care if it's right"
  • "Planet Trump"
  • "I thought you were my friend"
  • The Candidate
  • "He's out of control"
  • "Me too"
  • "Business suicide"
  • "It I stay here, I'm going to get cancer"
  • "I'm a newsman"
  • "Is this really happening?"
  • "Loyalty is good"
  • The Commander
  • "Self-brainwashing"
  • "The crowds were much, much smaller"
  • "You're getting much better"
  • "The bandwagon"
  • "I want the O'Reilly lighting"
  • "It's going to be a catastrophe"
  • "You should be talking to Fox, okay?"
  • "Stench"
  • "Tell Sean to knock it off"
  • "Wardrobe enforcer"
  • "It's all so complicated"
  • "Anti-journalism"
  • "Why all these lies?"
  • "Willing to be accomplices"
  • "Out of bounds"
  • "We print money in the basement"
  • The Cult
  • "Fake freak"
  • "Clueless"
  • "Shadow chief of staff"
  • "Desperate"
  • "Executive Time"
  • "Don't be a baby"
  • "No one can stop us"
  • "Fix this"
  • "Prostitutes"
  • The Control Freak
  • "Hate-for-profit racket"
  • "Iceberg problem"
  • "They'll fire me"
  • "The times ahead will test all of us"
  • "They owe you an apology"
  • "What do you think?"
  • "You're going to be called on, Sean"
  • "The truth will always matter"
  • The Crisis
  • "Complicit"
  • "Trump will never forgive you"
  • "Democracy at risk"
  • "Heat kills this virus"
  • "Don't rock the boat"
  • "The flu is so much worse"
  • "Hazardous to our viewers"
  • "No reason to go backwards"
  • "I've been watching you"
  • "Looking for a new outlet"
  • Epilogue
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Index
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A deep, dispiriting dive into the nefarious intersection of politics, conspiracy, lies, and money as served up by Donald Trump and Fox News. There are moments when one feels almost sorry for Trump: His niece has spilled nasty beans about him, and his sister has chided him for lying. It's all in a day's work for him. The feeling sorry bit comes when CNN host Stelter suggests that Trump isn't smart enough to concoct his bizarre gibberish. Instead, it comes straight from the "lie-laundering" Fox News, courtesy mostly of Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Laura Ingraham--and even Hannity, according to one of Stelter's sources, says "that Trump is a batshit crazy person." Trump lives by the TV, tuned to Fox unless some now-departed bête noire like Shepard Smith appears, and it's from Fox that he takes his cues. All of them: a circus of disinformation about lab-hatched viruses, caravans full of terrorists from Guatemala, the "Mueller crime family" that engineered Trump's scarcely mentioned impeachment, and a host of other alternative takes on reality. Stelter provides genealogies for each of Trump's peevish prevarications, not least of them the insistence that the truth is a "hoax," a word that "was uttered more than nine hundred times on Fox News in the first six months of 2020." That numbing repetition, notes the author, erodes the truth with each mantralike utterance. Fox has needed Trump for ratings--its average viewer is 67, an obviously declining demographic--and Trump has needed Fox to serve as echo chamber and think tank. Each obliges the other: "Fox was the gas station where Trump stopped to fill up his tank of resentment," and Trump lends Fox influence over U.S. policy. In a long, sordid, cheerless, and endlessly dishy narrative, Stelter indicts all parties involved for leaving the country "without a properly functioning chief executive." Those inclined to scorn the sitting president will have all the more reason to do so after reading this seething book. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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