You can relate to fake news and Trump’s issues with the media better if you understand the concept of The Narrative. That is the most important revelation in Sharyl Atkisson’s latest book, Slanted. Unfortunately, the rest of the book consists of apologies and misdirection for Trump’s acts, actions, and behavior while she attacks the news media herself.

Atkisson is a former CBS News star. She has decades of experience, all the best connections in the business, and the smarts to earn her solid reputation. She is also a staunch Conservative in what she sees as a sea of liberals and left wingers, which raises her hackles and fears for her field. The results get crazier as the book goes on.

The main, true and important point she makes is that the news is a shadow of its former self. It has become sloppy. Fact-checking is becoming a lost art. Journalists have long abandoned the rules of the game, like having solid proof and unimpeachable confirmation of claims they report. Instead, she says, journalists have made themselves the story. They make the claims themselves, and insist you trust them rather than the original sources. “Reporters routinely declare information to be fact as if they had personally confirmed it, when they could not possibly have done so,” she says at various points and in various ways. Journalists no longer present the story and let the viewer/reader decide. They feel they must hammer it home as their own firsthand experience and analysis. Until recently, that would have been called editorializing and left to editorialists. Today, it is considered reporting the news, and everyone is encouraged to do it.

To no one’s shock or surprise, they get it wrong a lot. They apologize a lot (later, when the story is well past its prime, ie. forgotten). Or, they stand their ground despite all findings to the contrary. The result is falsehoods making their way into viewers’ minds, and staying there even when they are demonstrably false. It is shameful, an ugly development in what used to be a reliable and important service, and in Atkisson’s mind, a terrible disservice to the innocent victim, Donald Trump.

The Narrative she speaks of is the preset attitude that journalists have on various topics. Russia manipulating Trump. Trump as racist. Trump as selfish, self-centered, greedy, in it purely for himself, narcissistic, uninformed, operating alone, dismantling national institutions he swore to uphold, etc. etc. etc. Any reporter who brings a story that doesn’t follow this line of thinking, will find their story rejected everywhere they try to place it. That is the chokehold The Narrative holds over the news and therefore the populace at large.

Fairness has no place at, say The New York Times, which gets a lot of scolding from Atkisson in its own chapter of shame. Arrogant reporters refuse to retract false accusations, editors demand even more severe and direct criticism of Trump, and lots of negative adjectives in otherwise anodyne paragraphs tilt the story against the common good, common decency or the Trump administration.

She gives the example of the #metoo era, in which men’s careers are destroyed by sexual assault charges. It doesn’t matter that the charges might be fraudulent. It doesn’t matter that there might be no evidence whatsoever, or that timeframes prove they are false, or that they are later withdrawn. Or that the accuser is simply seeking the spotlight. The damage is done: automatically guilty as charged. As one top CBS news executive realized, there was no point defending himself; it would only make things worse and drag it out for years. Better to just take retirement and get on with life. The media does not investigate the accusations; it feeds on them. The media have become the problem instead of the solution in a system where innocent until proven guilty is the supposed rule.

All of these media charges are true, and Atkisson assembles them in a way that makes clear just how far journalism has fallen. With them in mind, readers can see plainly for themselves how badly they are served on a daily basis, and not just from the obvious and self-declared biases of an MSNBC or a Fox News. It includes everything else too, from The Wall Street Journal, to The New York Times, to Time Magazine and all the online services, blogs and podcasts. It is inescapable. Finding the real news is a challenge and most are not up to it.

She devotes an entire chapter to the fall into disrepute of CNN, which she quotes insiders as calling unrecognizable any more. No one researches the news; they just talk about its implications for various interests, live, off the cuff and without any backup evidence. It has become an embarrassment of talking heads, providing little or no usable information, 24 hours a day.

Atkisson shows the power of journalists to frame anything or anyone however they choose, altering public perception. She lists some fake obituaries from #wapodeathnotices to prove it, easily. For example: “Adolf Hitler, passionate community planner and dynamic public speaker, dies at 56.” All true, and all totally removed from the reality and the importance of the event and the man. But framed the way the reporter wanted it, it stands as its own truth.

But does that make the news industry “the enemy of the people?”

It does make working for these outlets soul-selling. Editors instruct reporters to produce stories that will specifically make the administration look bad. Anything that could be deemed criticism of an investor or advertiser could get the journalist in hot water. Rogue middle managers can hold up production, order changes that make no sense, and induce “death by a thousand cuts” until the story is outdated, useless, or incomprehensible any more. She cites one of her own stories where editors made her take out certain key facts, only to be told months later that she should consider adding those facts if she ever wanted it aired.

Honestly, I think most Americans see themselves in that same situation every day of their working lives, with irrational managers, irrational demands, oppressive working conditions, and the total destruction of self-respect, pride in work, or sense of accomplishment. CBS might be hell, but it is far from an isolated case. Rather than being shocked, readers will simply relate directly to Atkisson’s frustrations.

Back in the book, things start to deteriorate as Atkisson reveals her own Conservative bona fides.

She writes a lot about Trump’s lying, and how the news likes to tack on the words “with no evidence” to claims he makes. Even if the reporters have no evidence to the contrary. Eventually, she begins to put quotation marks around the word “lies”. She questions why Biden is accused merely of making gaffes, but when it comes to Trump, they are lies. (The answer of course, is that if Biden makes a gaffe, he does not take action based on it. Nothing happens. When Trump lies, people die.) She says “Even if two, five or ten of these stories about Trump were true, how could they all be true?” A very odd defense of a huge issue In America today.

She defends Trump as just using his own, very successful Narratives. Simply calling Elizabeth Warren Pocahontas all the time worked wonders, according to Atkisson. Or The Failing New York Times to try to damage its credibility. She says he calls Congressman Adam Schiff Pencil Neck, which I confess I have never seen or heard before and which means nothing to me. But I have seen Trump write Little Adam Schitt, which is disgusting enough to make me question Trump’s qualifications to be president of the USA. It is not helped by his use of the Narratives of Deep State and QAnon. Or “very good people – on both sides.” Or shithole countries. Or suckers and losers. But Atkisson doesn’t examine any of those Narratives.

She is even more selective with numbers. She writes about Trump having 72 million Twitter followers in his own name, plus an additional 28 million for the White House account giving him “a neat hundred million” followers. I can’t imagine a journalist with 40 years’ experience making that claim. The duplication factor is almost certainly close to 100%. Everyone who follows the White House also follows Trump, probably because they have to, or miss out on something. She has absolutely no information that the two lists are mutually exclusive, but she makes that claim anyway, doing precisely what she criticizes – making herself the expert regardless of the facts she has no knowledge of.

The same goes for her sources. One of the most galling things reporters do is not name sources. Anonymous sources are suspect. But Atkisson hides almost all her sources as “a former insider” or “a top TV news executive,” once again doing precisely what she rails against for everyone else. This kind of hypocrisy, ironically, is why few trust the news media.

Towards the end, Atkisson gets so granular it becomes silly. She heavily criticizes Comedy Central’s The Daily Show for going after Trump so intensely. She dissects a particular episode until it becomes almost unrecognizable. But The Daily Show is not and never has been journalism. It is an entertainment vehicle. A comedy. A satire. Its whole job is to bite at the ankles of the bloviated state. She questions why it doesn’t go after others. The answer is because they aren’t the president. That’s all. I would have thought it was obvious.

She then puts headlines under a microscope, getting way off track in a Conservative rant on the news. Her rewriting of the news simply lowers her to the level of the scribes she criticizes as out of scope for their mission.

She concludes her book with her personal collection 131 times the media were wrong (“Major Mistakes”) about something, mostly Trump, during this term of office. Some are famous incidents readers will recognize, but most are errors like this:
28. September 7, 2017: The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman reports that Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called President Trump about an immigration issue. Actually, Trump made the call to Pelosi.

I have reviewed several Conservative books, because I am ever hopeful of appreciating a new argument. (I did not know this would be one of them when I began reading it.) They all seem to suffer the same bizarre malaise. They begin strongly, with a central claim that is valid, makes total sense, and changes the way readers will think going forward. That is most welcome, powerful and valuable: an alternative viewpoint that is dramatically true and overlooked. But then they all get bogged down in half-truths, hypocrisy, selective facts and head-scratching tangents, shooting down everything they had accomplished off the top.

It’s too bad.

David Wineberg

This book was a super in-depth look at how the media has really gone from objective to subjective. It only pushes the narrative that the bosses want to show. Sharyl Attkisson was speaking from experience in the media and it was very eye opening. It was also very well-written so I never felt like I was lost.

Slanted, by Sharyl Attkisson is a frightening look at what media has become in the last 20 or so years, with many of the influence makers roaring onto the scene within the last 12 years.
We've become so lazy, that we allow thinking to be done for us. Facts are decided by invisible unknown fact checkers.
Personal narratives are more relevant than the who what where when why and have 3 sources to back up your article.
In Slanted, Attkisson teaches us how to recognize propagandists, resist the persistence of false media narratives, and who is behind the driving forces behind today's dangerous blend of facts and opinion.

A must read for every parent, every student.