Review of David Brock's New Book The Fox Effect
I bought The Fox Effect the other day and posted a five-star review on Amazon.com:
Every American Should Read This Shocking Book
This book is a perfect complement to the Media Matters for America web site. The web site is good because it gives daily updates on right-wing media disinformation (contrary to right-wing critics, the web site gives the full context of the right-wing misinformation then it explains the error, smear, distortion, etc.) The book is good in that it gives a good historical overview of Fox News and how it has evolved into a political propaganda operation for the reactionary right. The book devotes over 300 pages to the lies, smears, and political paranoia of Ailes' political operation.
Due to space limitations, the book didn't include some important information about Fox News CEO Roger Ailes and Bill Sammon, the man Ailes chose to be Washington deputy managing editor (who job it is to oversee the news content of the network). I was amused to read that in the 1970's, Ailes worked on a Fox News prototype: the Coors-funded Television News Incorporated which included in its ideology the belief that Martin Luther King was a communist. The book also noted that right after 9/11, Ailes gave political advice to the Bush administration. What the book didn't have the space to mention was Ailes' habit of helping the Bush administration was a stark contrast to Ailes' relationship to the Clinton administration; Ailes was a proponent of the view that the Clintons murdered Vince Foster. Ailes even lauded the reporting on Foster's death by Christopher Ruddy (whose work was so shoddy that he was fired from Murdoch's tabloid The New York Post). When independent counsel Robert Fiske determined that Foster's death was a suicide, the Foster family issued a public statement imploring Ailes and the other conspiracy theorists to stop their baseless rumor-mongering and allow them to mourn in peace. Ailes callously ignores their pleas. Even after four investigations--including Ken Starr's--found that Foster's death was a suicide, Fox news commentators such as Sean Hannity and Andrew Napolitano continue to spread rumors about the possible involvement of the Cintons in Foster's death. This epitomizes what historian Richard Hofstadter called the paranoid style and it explains why Fox News is a source for birther, deather, and tenther misinformation.
Similarly, the book addresses Sammon's journalistic misconduct as a Fox News employee. It didn't have the space to elaborate on Sammon's background. Sammon worked as a reporter for Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times prior to working for Fox. During the 2000 campaign, Sammon was the author of the "floodgate" smear against Al Gore (the Rolling Stone article, "The Press Vs. Al Gore" gives the full story of the smear). Also, reporting on the Florida recount, Sammon cited a Washington Post article and butchered quotes from the article to give the exact opposite impression about what Gore was communicating to his staff (the Post story clearly pointed out that Gore indicated that the country was his top priority; Sammon doctored quotes to falsely claim that Gore was indicating that the country was his last priority). The online article "Journalistic Misconduct by Two Fox News Analysts" gives the full story. These two examples are serious violations of journalistic ethics. Accordingly, Sammon's prior misconduct made him a good fit for Fox News.
