The Fox Effect

March 5, 2012
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.

February 1, 2012
A thorough catalogue of Fox News president Roger Ailes' misdeeds as head of the controversial network. Brock, the founder and CEO of Media Matters, and Rabin-Havt, the organization's executive vice president, have reason to despise the man at the center of their new book. In the epilogue, they detail the well-publicized and vicious personal smears Ailes authorized in retaliation for their organization's critical coverage of Fox. According to a psychiatrist brought onto a Fox News talk show to assess his mental health, Brock is a "very dangerous man." Brock and Rabin-Havt paint Ailes as a petty, vindictive right-wing ideologue whose ruthlessness is untempered by any sense of obligation to truth, fairness or basic human decency. Given that their book draws on years of research and includes comprehensive footnotes, unlike Fox News' widely debunked on-air reporting, the authors' damning portrait of Ailes is quite a bit more credible than the assertions of various Fox News personalities that Brock is "full of self-hatred" and President Obama attended a radical madrassa and may not have been born in the United States. While the majority of the book is well-documented enough to be convincing, Brock and Rabin-Havt occasionally draw on sources of questionable merit--e.g., Gawker. Their most devastating source is Fox News itself, a network that makes little secret of its own bias. Worth reading for anyone who suspects Fox News of distorting the truth and is eager to spend hours sifting through the evidence. For those observant and literate enough to have seen through Fox from the beginning, this book feels like an exhaustively researched exercise in stating the obvious.

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March 1, 2012

This expose of Fox News comes out just in time for the 2012 presidential election campaign. Both high-level officers of the progressive watchdog group Media Matters, Brock (founder and CEO) and Rabin-Havt (vice president, research and communication) trace Roger Ailes's career from his work as a political media consultant to President Nixon to his shaping of Fox News into a conservative political force. His influence and the slant of the network are clearly demonstrated with a detailed analysis of the content of news programs, along with transcripts of leaked memoranda from network executives. For example, in Brock and Rabin-Havt's examination of Fox's coverage of the Tea Party movement, it becomes evident that the network played a major role in the party's creation. The authors' message is that objectivity can no longer be assumed to be a value held by news media organizations, and consumers should be on the alert for slanted coverage. VERDICT Liberals and media scholars already suspicious of Fox will appreciate this exposure of conservative bias. Fans of Fox will dismiss it as propaganda. General readers may be overwhelmed by the detail.--Judy Solberg, Seattle Univ. Lib.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2012
While Rupert Murdoch, owner of the media empire that includes Fox News, is more interested in profits than political ideology, the man in charge of the cable news network, Roger Ailes, is driven by partisan ideology. Brock, Rabin-Havt, and Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog organization, offer a highly revealing examination of Fox News, how it has evolved, and how its claim of fair and balanced reporting is a light covering for a political propaganda operation. Ailes has worked as media consultant to presidents Nixon, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush as well as Adolph Coors, developing a skill for spinning perspectives and challenging notions of fair reporting. Drawing on memos, interviews, and transcripts, the authors make the case that Fox News should not be treated as a news organization but as a propaganda machine. Their most compelling evidence is the transcripts of leaked memos from Fox News reporters and executives showing a conscious policy of slanting coverage against the Obama administration. This is enthralling reading as we enter the 2012 presidential election cycle.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)