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

Brian Stelter's new book shows just dangerous Fox News has become in the war on truth

It’s no secret that Fox News has an enormous influence on American politics, with results that have been devastating for the nation as a whole. Most recently, as Brian Stelter notes in his new book Hoax: Donald Trump Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth, this skewing of reality has become dangerous not just for the viewers of Fox News but for the nation as a whole. As the pandemic continued to get worse and worse, the hosts at Fox News—including and especially Sean Hannity—continued to downplay it, presumably since giving it the sort of attention it deserved would run counter to his favorite political figure, Donald Trump. As reporting has recently shown, there are some pretty stark divides regarding the increasingly-available vaccines, and while it might be a bit simplistic to lay all of this at the door of Fox News, there’s no doubt that they have played an outsize role in poisoning the well of public opinion.

Of course, for those of us who study the media for a living, it’s no surprise that Fox News would end up distorting the worldview of its audience during a crisis; that’s what they’ve been doing from their inception. From the very beginning, under the (deeply misogynist and abusive) aegis of Roger Ailes, they’ve gone out of their way to court the conservative audience, and this accelerated under Obama, when Ailes and others in power realized just how much anti-Obama (and, speaking frankly, anti-Black) sentiment there was in the country. With the constant pressure to bash Obama and everything associated with his administration, what little was left of the desire for objectivity went right out the window. 

It was only with the rise of Donald Trump, and his eventual ascendance to the presidency, that Fox News became a truly toxic influence on American politics and culture. Very soon, it became clear that the top brass at the network saw Trump as the golden ticket, and those who wouldn’t fall in line with the candidate, and later president, found themselves squeezed out. Megyn Kelly, who had the temerity to ask Trump about his contempt for women during the Republican primary debates, was one of the most notable victims.  

Stelter’s portrait of Fox News is not all negative, however. He goes out of his way to point out that there are and have been those at the network who believe in the value of journalism, most notably Shep Smith and Chris Wallace. Unfortunately, Smith fell victim to the same pressures as Kelly and, overwhelmed by how demoralized he had become, eventually left. The culture of Fox had become so Trump-centric, and so invested in his disregard for and contempt of the truth, that there simply wasn’t space for his kind of journalism. 

Which brings us to the two villains of the book: the gang of Fox and Friends and Sean Hannity. Even before he became a candidate, Trump had his own segment on Fox and Friends and, after he became president, it would become one of his favorite news programs, so much so that he would often parrot things that he’d heard there and then they, of course, would continue to report on it. This pernicious feedback loop was dangerous for a number of reasons, not least because it blurred the boundaries between journalism and politics. Given that part of the purpose of a free press is to hold those in politics accountable, it’s easy to see where this could (and does) lead to a great deal of trouble for society at large. 

Sean Hannity was, in his own way, even more dangerous. For one thing, he occupies a prominent place in the primetime lineup and because he is one of the voices that has had the most influence on Trump, he has the power to influence public policy. Between the two of them, as Selter shows, they managed to convince a huge segment of the population that any voice that wasn’t theirs or refuse to support their claims was fake, fraudulent, an “enemy of the people>” 

Of course, Hannity and Fox and Friends are but the tip of the iceberg, and Stelter demonstrates that the entire network has become implicated in Trump’s war on the truth. Everyone from Jeanine Pirro to Laura Ingraham to Tucker Carlson are now complicit in the era of disinformation. Combined with the revolving door that existed between the Trump White House and Fox News, it’s easy to see why Stelter, and others, would refer to the network as little more than state propaganda. 

Now, there are those who will say that Stelter’s perspective is itself skewed by the fact that he is a host on CNN, one of Fox’s competitors. However, as you read the book you get the strong sense that he is genuinely dismayed by what he sees happening in the world of journalism and politics. That being said, he has a particularly snarky style that may be off-putting to some, precisely because it’s not the sort of unbiased reporting that we expect from journalists. What’s more, much of what he reveals is unsourced, which is hardly surprising, given how much of a risk it is for people at Fox News to reveal the inner workings of the network. Only by granting them anonymity was he able to give us this much-needed portrait. And, quite frankly, it’s both enjoyable and useful to understand exactly what happens behind-the-scenes at a major news network, and Hoax is full of juicy bits of gossip.

Indeed, it’s important to fight back against the both-sides-ism that often accompanies any criticism of Fox News. I’ve lost track of the number of times that people have responded to this sort of critique with something along the lines of: “yes, but MSNBC and CNN have their own biases, too.” That’s true, but neither of those networks have made it a point to so brazenly seek to undermine the very idea of truth. What’s more, they’ve now been joined in that effort by both OANN and Newsmax, which seem to be trying to outdo one another in their effort to court both Trump and his reality-denying supporters. As Hoax so powerfully reminds us, the lies and distortions that these networks propagate can and do have real-world consequences.

Let’s just hope that some heed his warning before it’s too late.