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.
Author
David Brock
DAVID BROCK is a Democratic activist and widely published author. In 2004, Brock founded Media Matters for America, the nation’s premiere progressive media watchdog group. Following the 2010 elections, Brock founded the Super PAC American Bridge, which works to elect Democrats. Brock is a New York Times best-selling author. Among his books are the memoir Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative, Killing the Messenger: The Right Wing Plot to Hijack Your Government, The Republican Noise Machine and The Fox Effect. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, USA Today, Huffington Post, Daily Beast, and Salon. Politico deemed him one of the 30 most powerful people in Trump’s Washington.
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Ari Rabin-Havt
ARI RABIN-HAVT is host of The Agenda, a national radio show airing Monday through Friday on SiriusXM. His writing has been featured in USA Today, The New Republic, The Nation, The New York Observer, Salon, and The American Prospect, and he has appeared on MSNBC, CNBC, Al Jazeera, and HuffPost Live. Along with David Brock, he coauthored The Fox Effect: How Roger Ailes Turned a Network into a Propaganda Machine and The Benghazi Hoax. He previously served as executive vice president of Media Matters for America and as an adviser to Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid and former vice president Al Gore.
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Media Matters for America
MEDIA MATTERS FOR AMERICA is a Web-based, not-for-profit, progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.
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