The Fox Effect
How Roger Ailes Turned a Network into a Propaganda Machine
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
Here is comprehensive overview of the tumultuous career of former Fox News president Roger Ailes and a must-read for anyone looking to understand his legacy and impact on news media.
Based on the meticulous research of the news watchdog organization Media Matters for America, David Brock and Ari Rabin-Havt show how Fox News, under its president Roger Ailes, changed from a right-leaning news network into a partisan advocate for the Republican Party.
The Fox Effect follows the career of Ailes from his early work as a television producer and media consultant for Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush. Consequently, when he was hired in 1996 as the president of Rupert Murdoch’s flagship conservative cable news network, Ailes had little journalism experience, but brought to the job the mindset of a political operative. As Brock and Rabin-Havt demonstrate through numerous examples, Ailes used his extraordinary power and influence to spread a partisan political agenda that is at odds with long-established, widely held standards of fairness and objectivity in news reporting.
Featuring transcripts of leaked audio and memos from Fox News reporters and executives, The Fox Effect is a damning indictment of how the network’s news coverage and commentators have biased reporting, drummed up marginal stories, and even consciously manipulated established facts in their efforts to attack the Obama administration.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fox News gets subjected to a strong dose of investigative journalism in this book by the leaders of "news watchdog organization" Media Matters for America; the resulting portrait is at best unflattering and at worst sinister. Brock (The Republican Noise Machine) and Rabin-Havt present their evidence, beginning with the "Rise of Roger" Ailes, Fox president and, according to the authors, the driving force behind the network's transformation from conservative news source to mouthpiece for the Republican Party. The instances of fear-mongering are so absurd they would be funny if they weren't so pernicious: Glenn Beck saying to Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the House of Representatives, "Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies;" comparisons of liberals to Hitler and Nazis; the spread of the claim that President Obama's health care reform included "death panels;" Beck saying on air that Obama has a "deep-seated hatred for white people; and so on. In this diligently documented book, Brock and Rabin-Havt leave us with the warning that "the single most important player" in the upcoming election will be none other than Fox News. Photos.
Customer Reviews
I don't know what I was expecting
I don't know why I read this even though it was clear as day the depth of research in the description, but reading a book that relies on media matters for a fox news critique is like reading about msNBC backed on newsbusters or newsmax research
Backed up by actual research and citation(s)! GREAT STUFF!
Now I know why FOX has been slandering MMA and Brock so relentlessly and vehemently over the last several weeks … this book is a FANTASTICALLY HARD and DETAILED LOOK at the SHAM-FEST that is FOX NEWS. PAINSTAKINGLY backed up with research and CITED WORKS, this exposé excoriates the FOLLY ridden drivel/bile vehicle that is this faux news FOX organization! Brock exposes it (FOX) as an ideologically/money driven political mouthpiece of the hard corporate RIGHTWING DANGEOUS-FRINGE that it actually is … the tail that waves the elephant! "SOME PEOPLE SAY" that FOX should maybe try some documentation use, citation(s), and neutral research out for themselves! "THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ALL feel" that they should really give it a try! Read it and lean! AN INCREDIBLY POWERFUL, exposed, jolting, ENDING … as the scab is RIPPED off the sore! LEARN!
So important that the sycophantic foxnews dittoheads are already trying to discredit it
The greatest compliment this book could get is not from a fan of Media Matters' work like me. The greatest response that could possibly come from this book is the frightened, threatened, insecure, and ignorant responses it elicits from foxnews viewers who are constantly threatened by the truth that the network they get their news from is fabricating a fictional reality for them to comfortably rest in. Books like this, and organizations like MM tell a cold hard truth, a truth they don't want to hear because it tears down this comfortable version of reality they've managed to composite for themselves out of lies, exaggerations, and sociopathic fantasies.
Indeed foxnews viewers are consistently rated the most misinformed news viewers in the country (one recent university study even showed that they are more misinformed than people who don't watch or read the news at all). That is one of the many truths outlined in this book, and that foxnews viewers will never accept, or acknowledge. They plug their ears and close their eyes and pretend these studies don't exist, but they do, and MM is ready to show you all of these things that foxnews would do anything in their power to make sure you don't see.
The importance of this book can not be underestimated. I can't recommend it highly enough. And remember, the more foxnews fans it riles up into an angry tizzy, the better you know it is.