Publishers Weekly
10/26/2020
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.)
From the Publisher
From ‘mostly-peaceful protests’ to ignoring the lies that led to the Mueller investigation, the media increasingly gives us only the facts they want us to hear, packaged into the stories they need us to believe. Nobody explains this new dynamic better than Sharyl Attkisson. Throughout Slanted she exposes, based on speaking first hand with people at places she used to work, what is really happening at the biggest names in media. Prepared to be shocked and dismayed. It truly is worse than you think." — Jason Chaffetz
“Sharyl Attkisson left CBS News in search of a place that would not keep suppressing her work. She speaks from experience about the bias that dominates much of the news media today, and she writes about it with clarity and authority. Her latest book is a most interesting read.” — Brit Hume
"Sharyl has an uncanny knack to see the kernel of truth in the most convoluted story. In Slanted, she applies those skills to one of the biggest stories of our time: manipulation of information in the media. Democracies depend on an informed public. However, the public cannot learn about without fearless and honest reporting. Slanted is just that." — Marcel Reid, Whistleblower Summit and Film Festival
"Sharyl Attkisson is a force - and one of the bravest people I know. Those working to destroy journalism wield staggering power and the number of us willing to take them on are few. But she is one of them and she does it with meticulous investigative journalism, systematically breaking down the lies and exposing the ‘liars.'" — Lara Logan
"For decades now, Sharyl Attkisson has deftly navigated the world of establishment journalism, refusing to kowtow to ephemeral trends or prevailing biases, cutting through the noise from the bipartisan propaganda machine inside the D.C. beltway. Her latest efforts in Slanted remind us that while censorship and disinformation campaigns are nothing new in our history, the realm of social media and so-called fact-checkers has added another layer to the deception." — Mickey Huff; director of Project Censored and president of the Media Freedom Foundation; Chair of Journalism, Diablo Valley College
Jason Chaffetz
From ‘mostly-peaceful protests’ to ignoring the lies that led to the Mueller investigation, the media increasingly gives us only the facts they want us to hear, packaged into the stories they need us to believe. Nobody explains this new dynamic better than Sharyl Attkisson. Throughout Slanted she exposes, based on speaking first hand with people at places she used to work, what is really happening at the biggest names in media. Prepared to be shocked and dismayed. It truly is worse than you think."
Mickey Huff; director of Project Censored and president of the Media Freedom Foundation; Chair
"For decades now, Sharyl Attkisson has deftly navigated the world of establishment journalism, refusing to kowtow to ephemeral trends or prevailing biases, cutting through the noise from the bipartisan propaganda machine inside the D.C. beltway. Her latest efforts in Slanted remind us that while censorship and disinformation campaigns are nothing new in our history, the realm of social media and so-called fact-checkers has added another layer to the deception."
Lara Logan
"Sharyl Attkisson is a force - and one of the bravest people I know. Those working to destroy journalism wield staggering power and the number of us willing to take them on are few. But she is one of them and she does it with meticulous investigative journalism, systematically breaking down the lies and exposing the ‘liars.'"
Brit Hume
Sharyl Attkisson left CBS News in search of a place that would not keep suppressing her work. She speaks from experience about the bias that dominates much of the news media today, and she writes about it with clarity and authority. Her latest book is a most interesting read.
Marcel Reid
"Sharyl has an uncanny knack to see the kernel of truth in the most convoluted story. In Slanted, she applies those skills to one of the biggest stories of our time: manipulation of information in the media. Democracies depend on an informed public. However, the public cannot learn about without fearless and honest reporting. Slanted is just that."
Jeff Gerth
Attkisson offers a harrowing and gripping account of journalism as practiced these days in Washington. She skillfully unveils how she discovered the secret scheme to spy on her. The larger and more disturbing takeaway is how the mainstream are falling down on the job.”
Library Journal
06/01/2020
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.
Kirkus Reviews
2020-09-08
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.
