In this characteristically turbocharged new book, celebrated Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi provides an insider's guide to the variety of ways today's mainstream media tells us lies. Part tirade, part confessional, it reveals that what most people think of as "the news" is, in fact, a twisted wing of the entertainment business.
In the Internet age, the press have mastered the art of monetizing anger, paranoia, and distrust. Taibbi, who has spent much of his career covering elections in which this kind of manipulative activity is most egregious, provides a rich taxonomic survey of American political journalism's dirty tricks.
Heading into a 2020 election season that promises to be a Great Giza Pyramid Complex of invective and digital ugliness, Hate Inc. will be an invaluable antidote to the hidden poisons dished up by those we rely on to tell us what is happening in the world.
-
Creators
-
Publisher
-
Release date
March 10, 2020 -
Formats
-
OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781705206218
- File size: 337126 KB
- Duration: 11:42:20
-
-
Languages
- English
-
Reviews
-
Publisher's Weekly
August 26, 2019
This pox-on-both-their-houses screed from Taibbi (The Great Derangement) posits that the mainstream media stokes dopamine-pumping fury rather than reporting on depressing truths such as systemic inequality. Acknowledging that his book is “more confessional than academic study,” Taibbi vents about what he believes are journalists’ lazy assumptions, clichés, and elitism. One of his primary arguments—that TV news is a vast wasteland of stories that are at best trivial and at worst fuel anger about “someone else”—is powerfully and cogently rendered. Effectively skewering the tribal-panic approaches of both Fox’s “rectum-faced blowhard” Sean Hannity and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, he inverts the old media dictum of Noam Chomsky (whom he interviews at length here) to “manufacturing discontent.” A longtime campaign road reporter, Taibbi shares stories about how he sees journalists’ vapid cynicism skewing election coverage by discussing vagaries like “electability” while studiously avoiding substantive talk about policy. Despite occasionally veering off his main thesis into less focused complaints, Taibbi incisively details how herd mentality led to media acceptance of the WMD narrative behind the Iraq War in 2003, and calls to task such reputable editors as Judith Miller from the New York Times, the Washington Post’s Fred Hiatt, and the New Yorker’s David Remnick. The result is a smart dissection of a grim media landscape.
-
Formats
- OverDrive Listen audiobook
subjects
Languages
- English
Loading
Why is availability limited?
×Availability can change throughout the month based on the library's budget. You can still place a hold on the title, and your hold will be automatically filled as soon as the title is available again.
The Kindle Book format for this title is not supported on:
×Read-along ebook
×The OverDrive Read format of this ebook has professional narration that plays while you read in your browser. Learn more here.