Who can forget the enormous shock experienced by the Fox cult on election night in November 2012, when predictions of a landslide Romney victory over Obama -- made by Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Karl Rove, Dick Morris, Newt Gingrich, Steve Forbes, Ann Coulter, and Greta Van Susteren on Fox News -- came crashing down in flames? Did any member of the Fox cult learn his lesson? Or are they suffering from Stockholm syndrome?
As we will see later in this review essay, another 2020 Pew poll demonstrates that Fox News continues to render it viewers stupid - this time about facts associated with the coronavirus pandemic.
In his new book, HOAX: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth (Simon & Schuster, 2020), Brian Stelter tells us; "The entire history of Fox News is a series of turns to the right." The 2003 invasion of Iraq precipitated a turn to the right. But Fox's biggest turn to the right was "triggered" by the 2008 election of Barack Obama.
Sexual predator Roger Ailes, who ran Fox News, "was the prototypical viewer - an aging white male pissed off about progressives trying to change the aging-white-male-dominated country he cherished." Having already become the network of choice for racist Obama haters, Fox's number one sexual predator thought it would be a good idea to give another sexual predator, the corrupt businessman and serial lying con man Donald Trump, a weekly call-in session on Fox & Friends. Presumably, the objective was to further solidify the loyalty of the white trash element among Fox's Obama haters.
Trump initiated this task on March 28, 2011, when he raised questions about President Obama's place of birth. Trump's "birther" lie took center stage in this first episode of what was titled, "Monday Mornings with Trump." "The birther smear helped cement the impression of Obama as a foreigner in the mind of millions of viewers, wedded Trump to the Fox base, and foreshadowed Trump and Fox's full-throated embrace of white identity politics."
According to Mr. Stelter, it was "a weekly segment that changed the course of American politics."
The influence of Fox & Friends continues to this day. The three-hour weekday morning show is credited (and blamed) for planting many ideas into Donald Trump's vacuous, but twisted, mind. As a former producer of Fox & Friends told Stelter, "People think he's calling up Fox & Friends and telling us what to say. Hell no. It's the opposite. We tell him what to say."
Even worse, "as F&F goes, so goes the Fox audience, and so goes the GOP. Scandals are conceived on this couch. Conspiracy theories are floated and then amplified. The talking points that start here end up in Trump's mouth and in newspaper columns and fundraising emails and the Facebook feeds of countless Fox addicts."
Brian Stelter is the chief media correspondent for CNN worldwide. His reporting in Hoax is based on discussions with 140 plus staffers at Fox and another 180 former staffers or people with direct ties to the network - many of them just aching to get things off their chests.
There are a few heroes in the book, most notably Sheppard Smith, who attempted to report the news as would any decent, honorable, and competent journalist at other news organizations. To a lesser extent, Chris Wallace and Neil Cavuto are similarly credited. Even somewhat unpredictable Judge Andrew Napolitano is credited for occasionally rising on Fox to condemn crimes committed by Trump.
Mr. Stelter tells us that there are other people at Fox who desire to act like genuine news reporters, as well as people in the news room and executive suites who are convinced that Trump is mentally ill.
But the good news is far outweighed by the bad. Stelter writes, "It's worth stating the obvious here: Trump's entanglement with Fox has no historical precedent. Never before has a TV network effectively produced the president's intelligence briefing and staffed the federal bureaucracy. Never before has a president promoted a single TV channel, asked hosts for advice behind closed doors, and demanded for them to be fired when they step out of line. This story has all the makings of a farcical drama: a dysfunctional White House, a delusional president, and a drama-filled network misinforming him from morning through night."
Perhaps too much of the book is devoted to office gossip. Do we really need to know that Donald Trump Jr.'s lady friend, Kimberly Guilfoyle - the loud mouthed woman in the red dress shouting at the camera during the first night of the Republican convention - "would get on her knees for anyone" as Ailes is alleged to have said. Or that she supposedly "went around the office showing off dick pics on her phone." Or that she hooked up with Don Jr. in order to have her July 1st departure from Fox overturned.
Stelter reports that Fox & Friends Weekend cohost Clayton Morris quit TV altogether in the wake of the ugly neo-Nazi white supremacist march in Charlottesville. Why did he quit? Because his son asked: "Is Daddy a white supremacist?" Stelter also reports that Fox's sick defense of "kids in cages," the consequence of Trump's "Zero tolerance" family separations at the Mexican border, is what compelled Abby Huntsman to leave the network.
Stelter's sources told him what Rupert Murdock said about Trump. "Rupert calls him a f*cking idiot." "Rupert knows Trump is crazy." "Rupert's wife Jerry Hall was known to call Trump 'a pig.'" Nevertheless, Trump's media allies at Fox "worked to convince the base that everyone was a lying liar, so Trump's sins weren't that bad."
Stelter spends some time addressing Megyn Kelly's dispute with Trump and others at Fox. But he adds a nice touch when he notes that upon leaving Fox, Kelly left behind a sign that said, "You don't have to be crazy to work here. We have on the job training!" He also devotes space to explaining the rise and fall of Bill O'Reilly.
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