FOX Report

 I have had the great good fortune(CUT!) I have had quite the experience (CUT!) I have been saddled by my boss with the burden of schlepping over to 1211 Avenue of the Americas, the worldwide headquarters of News Corporation, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal, and FOX Corporation, which includes the FOX Network, the Tubi ad-supported streaming service, (Full disclosure: I've binged "The Honeymooners" on that service, and there's still nobody like The Great Gleason! He was a sweet kid!)and, of course, FOX News Media, and whether it IS news media is open to debate.

One thing that's undeniably true, to borrow a phrase from one of Jackie's greatest hits, is that FOX turned a loud-mouthed reality show star named Trump, who just HAPPENED to dabble in real estate, into a rising star in the GOP and, much to the world's eternal regret, the 45th President of the United States of America. Although there have been a lot of books about the phenomenon that is FOX News (FOX Opinion or FOX Propaganda would be more accurate names!), the only one to fully examine the symbiotic relationship between the network some Americans trust for fair(?) and balanced (?) news(?)  is HOAX:DONALD TRUMP,FOX NEWS, AND THE DANGEROUS DISTORTION OF TRUTH, by the Chief Media Correspondent of a truly fair and balanced news channel ,CNN's Brian Stelter. Brian is currently promoting the heck out of its just-released paperback edition (Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and your favorite independent bookseller, so snap up your copy ASAP!), and rightly so, because while it was originally released last year, Brian treated the ending like a cliffhanger, because he had no idea whether FOX would guarantee Trump a return engagement at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but  a few months after that original release, FOX News called the election for our current President, Joseph R. Biden, Jr., and instead of, as is the tradition, conceding and congratulating Biden, Trump accused the Democrats of a fraudulent election, and called his acolytes to DC to protest the certification of all votes on January 6. As the events of 1/6 unfolded, Brian felt compelled to add additional chapters to his already fascinating book, and the results...well, if it didn't actually happen it would have made a great movie!

I DID have the pleasure to see Brian promote the re-release of HOAX on a ZOOM lecture introduced by New York Times Opinion writer Frank Bruni, and he did raise a lot of interesting points, especially about the 8 PM Eastern hour on FOX News which used to be occupied by Bill O'Reilly ("Remember, the spin stops here, 'cause WE'RE looking out for you!") and is now the domain of alarmist Tucker Carlson. ("NOBODY's looking out for you!") The long and short of it, as expressed in both the lecture and Brian's book, is that with Friends like FOX, you DON'T need enemies! But, if you believe in a free press, you DO need this book, and if you need to see this lecture for yourself, head over to http://www.emanuelnyc.org/broadcast and hit the arrow on the Streicker Center logo. It's free, just like the American press should be.

Take care and stay aware, as my friend David Anthony Kraft ,who, unfortunately, died of COVID on May 19, ironically my birthday, used to say!

Steve