Slanted : how the news media taught us to love censorship and hate journalism /

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

USA Today Bestseller!

New York Times bestselling author Sharyl Attkisson takes on the media's misreporting on Black Lives Matter, coronavirus, Joe Biden, Silicon Valley censorship, and more.

When the facts don't fit their Narrative, the media abandons the facts, not the Narrative. Virtually every piece of information you get through the media has been massaged, shaped, curated, and manipulated before it reaches you. Some of it is censored entirely. The news can no longer be counted on to reflect all the facts. Instead of telling us what happened yesterday, they tell us what's new in the prepackaged soap opera they've been calling the news.

For the past four years, five-time Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist and New York Times bestselling author Sharyl Attkisson has been collecting and dissecting alarming incidents tracing the shocking devolution of what used to be the most respected news organizations on the planet. For the first time, top news executives and reporters representing every major national television news outlet--from ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN to FOX and MSNBC--speak frankly, confiding in Attkisson about the death of the news as they once knew it. Their concern transcends partisan divides.

Most frightening of all, a broad campaign in the media has convinced many Americans not only to accept but to demand censorship over journalism. It is a stroke of genius on the part of those seeking to influence public opinion: undermine public confidence in the news, then insist upon "curating" information and divining the "truth." The thinking is done for you. They'll decide which pesky facts shouldn't cross your desk by declaring them false, irrelevant, debunked, unsafe, or out-of-bounds.

We have reached a state of utter absurdity, where journalism schools teach students that their own, personal truth or chosen narratives matter more than reality. In Slanted, Attkisson digs into the language of propagandists, the persistence of false media narratives, the driving forces behind today's dangerous blend of facts and opinion, the abandonment of journalism ethics, and the new, Orwellian definition of what it means to report the news.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Introduction (p. 1)
• Chapter 1 CBS Tales: "Death by a Thousand Cuts" (p. 11)
• Chapter 2 The Narrative by Proxy (p. 47)
• Chapter 3 Weaponizing The Narrative: The #MeToo Poison Pen (p. 71)
• Chapter 4 When Narratives Collide (p. 85)
• Chapter 5 The New York Times: All the Narratives Fit to Print (p. 113)
• Chapter 6 The Verbiage of The Narrative: Lies, Evidence, and Bombshells (p. 138)
• Chapter 7 The Mother of All Narratives: Russia, Russia, Russia. (p. 169)
• Chapter 8 CNN: The Cable Narrative Network (p. 192)
• Chapter 9 Pundits and Polls: Hard to Believe (p. 207)
• Chapter 10 Media vs. Media (p. 220)
• Chapter 11 Media Mistakes (p. 240)
• Chapter 12 There's Hope (p. 256)
• Conclusion (p. 268)
• Appendix: Major Media Mistakes in the Era of Trump (p. 273)
• Index (p. 295)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

An Edward R. Murrow and five-time Emmy award recipient, the New York Times best-selling Attkisson (Stonewalled) looks at today's meager and manipulated media to discover what went wrong. Before fake news, she say, there was a push to call in the pundits and to create narrative news. But whose narratives? With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Publishers Weekly Review

Sinclair Broadcast Group journalist Attkisson continues her attack on media bias (after The Smear) in this unpersuasive polemic. Contending that news outlets "filter information on the front end to ensure that only the 'correct' view is presented in the first place," Attkisson details her battles in the 1990s and early 2000s against CBS News producers who killed her stories because, as she sees it, they didn't fit a "preconceived narrative'' about "the push to insert religion into public schools" or presidential candidate John Kerry's Vietnam War record. Attkisson's examples of "anti-Trump bias" in the media include an April 2020 Politico report alleging that the president owed the Bank of China tens of millions of dollars (the loan had been sold to a U.S. real estate firm in 2012) and claims that Trump flip-flopped on the length of the border wall (" had never wavered" on saying the wall wasn't needed where natural barriers already existed, Attkisson writes). In other instances, Attkisson castigates news outlets for views expressed on their opinion pages, and claims, without much evidence, that there is "a well-funded, well-organized effort" to smear her and other "media figures" as "coronavirus doubters." This one-sided critique doesn't land its punches. (Nov.)

Kirkus Book Review

A veteran journalist decries a lack of responsible reporting. Investigative journalist Attkisson, winner of five Emmy Awards, mounts a hard-hitting, if hardly novel, critique of the media, which she sees as manipulated and manipulative. Right now, "versions of history and current events are being written and revised in real time according to what powerful interests wish them to say." Facts that support "The Narrative" are deemed newsworthy while other facts are buried. Instead of doing research and presenting opposing views, writes the author, "a new breed of reporter" aims "to convince you to believe whatever they personally believe." Attkisson reports her own frustrating experiences at CBS, where her stories were repeatedly quashed and her reporting attacked; although executives wanted her to stay, she left before her contract expired in 2014. Areas where the author identifies egregious bias include the #MeToo movement, the Russia investigation, and biased pollsters; regarding the last, if results "are off trend," the media discount them. Trump, however, has become "the vehicle that the media at large has used to unleash its furor and redefine journalism in a way it was never defined before," and Attkisson finds much evidence for ways in which news outlets misquote or misconstrue Trump's statements. Rarely, though, does she take Trump to task for his many proven lies. The author appends a long list of "major mistakes" about Trump propagated by news sources. These include "photos of immigrant children in cages as if they were new photos taken during the Trump administration" when they were "from 2014 during the Obama administration." The media condemned Trump for saying, "It's not our problem," when referring to Turkey's assault on Syria, when he said, "It's not our border." Attkisson reveals that in 1999, "Gallup found trust in mass media at 55 percent. It had plummeted to 40 percent in 2014." To counter an even greater dip, the author includes a list of outlets and reporters that she considers trustworthy. A damning and depressing indictment sure to incite controversy. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Sharyl Attkisson has been a journalist for more than thirty years. She has covered controversies under the administrations of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. She received five Emmy Awards and an Edward R. Murrow Award for investigative reporting. Her work has appeared on the CBS Evening News, CBS Sunday Morning, 48 Hours, and CBS This Morning. She is the author of The Smear: How Shady Political Operatives and Fake News Control What You See, What You Think, and How You Vote.

(Bowker Author Biography)