Informed & Engaged Ep 11 [00:01:11] Hi, everyone. Welcome to the 11th edition of Informed & Engaged today. I am absolutely thrilled to have Brian Stelter join us. Brian Stelter, as many of you know, is the chief media correspondent for CNN Worldwide. He's the host of Sunday's Reliable Sources and he is the author with a wonderful team of the most reliable newsletter, daily newsletter for anyone in the media business or anyone who cares about the impact of media on our democracy. Welcome, Brian. Thank you for joining us. [00:01:51] Thank you for the plugs. Thank you for reading the newsletter. [00:01:55] Hey, hey. It is a must read. It must be with great links with really terrific links. Because what you do in the newsletter is you really help steer and direct your users to really important, not just your reporting, but other very important reporting taking place across the media landscape. So today, Brian, we're really thrilled to talk about your new book, Hoax. [00:02:25] And you wrote a book that The New York Times where full disclosure, Brian and I both worked together at The New York Times. In fact, we sat next to each other over a period of time at The New York Times. [00:02:43] So in The New York Times book review, it was described as this book provides a thorough and damning exploration of the incestuous relationship with Donald Trump and his favorite television channel, Fox News. So the author, the title of the book Hoax Donald Trump and Fox News and the Dangerous Distortions of the Truth is based on three years of reporting and interviews with more than 250 former Fox staff members and current Fox staff members. [00:03:22] And Brian, tell us, why did you write this book? Why did you feel compelled to write this story? [00:03:29] Well, there's two big reasons. The first is that nobody else has put together all the examples of the Fox Trump feedback loop. I've been covering it. Others have been covering this phenomenon. It's nothing we've ever seen before in modern media where there's such a revolving door and such a feedback loop between a president and as his preferred network. So I wanted to put all in one place for history. But the more urgent reason, the more urgent feeling I had was there were all these sources of Fox who were spilling their guts out to me, telling me the place had changed so much. Told me they were so concerned about the amount of pro Trump propaganda and misinformation that was on the air. And so, you know, they were leaking to me. I think they were linking to me, Jennifer, because I work in TV now. So I understand the business in a way that other reporters maybe don't. I don't know. But that was one of the reasons sources were citing were, you know, Brian, you're on to you get it. You know what we're going through. And so even though I work for a rival of Fox, people were willing to confide in me there. And I thought, this is the untold story of Fox and the Trump years. It's not all, you know, Sean Hannity up there making tens of millions of dollars, you know, spreading it raised with the president. It's also about the journalists and the assistance and the producers who are really disappointed in what the channel's become. So that's really what drove me to want to write this right now. [00:04:54] Because one of the things that you talk about in your book is that you felt it's very important as a citizen and as a journalist and as an advocate for truth and factual information. [00:05:08] And in the book, you trace the beginning of President Trump's relationship with Fox News dating back to 2012. So how did that get started and how did that help contribute to Donald Trump becoming a candidate? [00:05:24] Yeah, I didn't take this seriously enough. Back in 2012, doesn't 13 isn't 14, but most CNN 2015 before Trump entered the race. What Donald was doing, he was calling into Fox and Friends every week, every week, once a week, like usually on Monday morning, sometimes Thursday morning. He was doing these weekly chats with Fox and Friends. And look, I wrote a book about morning TV. So I know morning TV is really powerful. That connection viewers feel to morning TV is really powerful. So as much as The Apprentice helped introduce Trump to the country and portray him as a business man and effective businessman, what Fox and Friends did was it taught him about politics and it taught the Fox viewers about Trump. So it was, I think, just as important as The Apprentice in the foundation of Trump's political launch. Then in 2015, of course, he launches his campaign. He stops calling in once a week. But the truth is, he was calling in even more often because they were interviewing him as a candidate. And he had all those relationships at Fox thanks to his phone calls. So I think that was the foundation that was underappreciated when it comes to Trump as a candidate, because think about it like every week he was talking to the GOP voters, be a fox. Every week he was getting to know them. He was getting to know their priorities. And I think in many ways it was a political education for Trump. [00:06:47] So you, of course, describe in the book the very special relationship that Sean Hannity, Fox News anchor, has with the anchor of his own show. I bet he has with the president. But I must say, until I read the book, I didn't really fully understand how close their relationship is harmful and how at times it's actually, as your book reports, Sean Hannity sharing misinformation and disinformation with President Trump and President Trump sharing that on Twitter or the feedback loop back on on on FOX. So just tell us a little bit more about that relationship and how is it evolved over the presidency? [00:07:41] Right. I think Ukraine is a great example. The scheme that led to Trump's impeachment can be traced right back to Hannity show in 2017 and then in early twenty nineteen. And so I string that throughout the book because one of my arguments when my core argument is that when these stars on Fox are trying to help Trump, they end up hurting him. They end up misleading him, end up sending him down one way roads, which gets lost or stuck with conspiracy theories and culture war fights. And Hannity is an interesting example of this and this evolution, because before Trump came along, Hannity, so it was getting kind of stale. He was always like second or third banana, big time. Bill O'Reilly, Megan Kelly. You know, his stick was getting old. And then comes Trump. So he gets on the Trump train very early and starts to call himself a journalist. You know, this is a guy who always says journalism is dead, which is crazy. But then he started to call himself a journalist. He says, I'm an activist journalist. I'm an opinion journalist. Well. There's a lot of room for a lot of opinion journalism, and I'm a fan of a lot of it. But what he is doing is not journalistically sound. He doesn't have editors. He doesn't have fat. He doesn't have checks and balances. He doesn't have standards and practices. He doesn't have accountability when he screws up. So he's not functioning in that capacity. But his show looks like nightly news for Trump all. I mean, he even has those graphics over his shoulder that look like he's Lester Holt or Norah O'Donnell, even though he's definitely not. So I think what he's done he is he has taken a part of the country segment of them off from traditional news, and he's put them into Hannity work in the Trump world and Hannity world. And it's been very effective. But like I said, it also hurts Trump. You know, Hannity is on there saying you're trying to distract from the Russia probe, trying to distract from Russia's attack on the elections by saying, well, Ukraine did it to Ukraine, did it to Ukraine, tried to meddle, know. And that gets in Trump's head. It creates an anti Ukraine narrative. You can trace a lot of the breadcrumbs of the Ukraine scheme back to these TV shows. And that's why these TV shows matter now, because they are informing or misinforming the president. You know, I think, you know, for all of us, you know, who love the Knight Foundation, you all stand up for quality journalism, for quality and media, for accountability, for standards, for all these things that are missing from talk shows like candidates. [00:10:10] So the most recent example, of course, is the pandemic and how and you've documented that in the very opening of your book. And I thought it was so interesting how you reported that, that Suzanne Scott, CEO for FOX, just stop.