Book Review: HOAX by Brian Stelter

HOAX: DONALD TRUMP, FOX NEWS, AND THE DANGEROUS DISTORTION OF TRUTH by Brian Stelter (Atria/One Signal Publishers, August 2020) Hardcover, 350 pages. ISBN #9781982142445 

My Four-Star Review on the Goodreads website . . . . .

I've believed for a long time that Fox News was just an arm of the Republican Party, going back to the Clinton years. It's gotten so much worse since then. It might as well be called Trump TV. 

However, if you believe in all things Trump then this is your news station. Your beliefs will be reinforced all day long. There is really not much in the way of straight news on Fox. Trump will be praised, his mistakes will be excused and defended, and the Democratic Party will be demonized. 

Brian Stelter's fascinating book goes behind the scenes to expose the collusion between Donald Trump and Fox News. The saddest bit of information to me is learning that Trump listens to the opinions of the prime time hosts on Fox News more than he does his own advisors. 

Stelter's book covers in detail the time before the 2016 elections up through April 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic created a shut-down.

Why write a book about it? Stelter gives his heartfelt reasons on Page 14:

"I'm writing this book as a citizen; as an advocate for factual journalism; and as a new dad who thinks about what kind of world my children are going to inherit. This story is about a rot at the core of our politics. It's about an ongoing attack on the very idea of a free and fair press. It's about the difference between news and propaganda. It's about the difference between state media and the fourth estate. So excuse me if I swear a little - - but I am alarmed, and you should be too."

I feel the same as Bob Reams, the protestor who maneuvered onto a Fox feel-good tv segment at a restaurant, held up a "FOX LIES" sign, and was escorted by security out of the building. His words:

"They (Fox) have brainwashed so many of my friends and believe in just conspiracy theories and buillcrap," he said. "It's sad to see my friends just turned into idiots."

The worst example of this is the hate-and-fear mongering spewed by prime time host Sean Hannity. 

Page 233: By 2019, Fox News was many things - a vitriolic virtual community, a beleaguered news operation, a thriving right-wing website - - but more than anything else it was a propaganda machines the likes of which the United States had never seen before. The pollution from this machine showed up in poll after poll. When NBC and Murdoch's Wall Street Journal asked if the president had been 'honest and truthful' about the Russia probe, only 1 percent of regular CNN viewers said yes. Among regular Fox viewers, 84 percent said yes, he'd been truthful. His lies were so voluminous and so well documented that only one thing could explain this gap: The omnipresence of TV hosts like Hannity. The propaganda worked."

Another prime example during the impeachment trials (page 281-282): Fox's defense team put on a show for Fox's airwaves. Hannity picked up where they left off in the evening, accompanied by graphics like 'DEMS VS. THE CONSTITUTION', and he pressured wayward Republican senators to stay in line. He addressed swing voters Susan Collins and Mitt Romney directly through the camera, threatening that their voters would not tolerate any dissent."It is not your Republican senators' job to bolster what are pathetically weak articles of impeachment from the House," Hannity lectured. "It is not your senators' duty to call witnesses that the House didn't even subpoena." Everyone got the message: No new witnesses. No new evidence. Let Trump get back to work. Maureen Dowd summed up the strategy perfectly: "The Democrats are relying on facts, but the Republicans are relying on Fox.”

Also, by downplaying the corona virus until it was too late, many lives were unnecessarily lost. Page 286-287: In March scores of Americans wrote to the FCC and argued that the network had blood on its hands. Hannity "has misled his elderly viewers on the risk of pandemic virus. They are most at risk" one Kansas City resident wrote. "My mother, who is 94 years old, believes that the virus threat is very overstated because Fox News and Sean Hannity say so," a Bluffton, South Carolina resident wrote. "Fox News is now costing the lives of Americans", a Russellville, Alabama resident wrote.

While it's true that CNN and MSNBC, NEWS NATION and other more liberal news outlets also have their share of opinions that serve to influence, they seem to be more factual-oriented, are less to rush to hasty conclusions, and back up their claims with evidence. If you want more objective news, stay away from these stations as well as FOX, NEWSMAX, OAN, etc and watch PBS News Hour and BBC News. Also, don't get your news from the internet and subscribe to daily newspapers. 

Here's one more alarming bit of information from HOAX, on Page 312: In the weeks before he died in 2017, Roger Ailes (former head of Fox News) told one of his mentees that Trump's win (in 2016) also applied to politics. When there were only a few broadcast networks, all sharing the same more or less genteel sensibility, politics had to be broad - - candidates had to appeal to the whole of the country. Provocation and extremism were turn-offs. But those same techniques were turn-ons in the cable model. Cable channels weren't for everyone, they were for specific demographics. The winners knew how to rabidly excite their base and blow off everyone else. Turn the levers just right and you ended up with the monstrosity at work at the end of the decade: an untouchable politician protected by his untouchable media apparatus.