 Hi, everyone. Welcome to the 11th edition of Enform Gen Engaged. Today, I am absolutely thrilled to have Brian Stelter join us. Brian Stelter, as many of you know, is the chief media correspondent for CNN Worldwide. He's the host of Sunday's Reliable Sources, and he is the author with a wonderful team of the most reliable newsletter, daily newsletter, for anyone in the media business or anyone who cares about the impact of media on our democracy. Welcome, Brian. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for the plugs. Thank you for reading the newsletter. Hey, hey, it is a must read. It's a must read with great links, with really terrific links. Because what you do in the newsletter is you really help steer and direct your users to really important, not just your reporting, but other very important reporting taking place across the media landscape. So today, Brian, we're really thrilled to talk about your new book, Hoax. And you wrote a book that the New York Times wear full disclosure. Brian and I both worked together at the New York Times, in fact, sat next to each other for a period of time at the New York Times. So in the New York Times book review, it was described as this book provides a thorough and damning exploration of the incestuous relationship with Donald Trump and his favorite television channel, Fox News. So the author, the title of the book, Hoax, Donald Trump, and Fox News, and the dangerous distortions of the truth is based on three years of reporting and interviews with more than 250 former Fox staff members and current Fox staff members. And Brian, tell us, why did you write this book? Why did you feel compelled to write the story? There's two big reasons. The first is that nobody has put together all the examples of the Fox-Trump feedback loop. I've been covering it. Others have been covering this phenomenon. It's nothing we've ever seen before in modern media, where there's such a revolving door and such a feedback loop between a president and his preferred network. So I wanted to put all of it in one place for history. But the more urgent reason, the more urgent feeling I had was that there were all these sources of Fox who were spilling their guts out to me, telling me the place had changed so much, telling me they were so concerned about the amount of pro-Trump propaganda and misinformation that was on the air. And so, they were leaking to me. I think they were leaking to me, Jennifer, because I work in TV now, so I understand the business in a way the other reporters maybe don't, I don't know, but that was one of the reasons sources were citing were, Brian, you're on TV, you get it, you know what we're going through. And so even though I work kind of for a rival of Fox, people were willing to confide in me there. And I thought, this is the untold story of Fox in the Trump years. It's not all, you know, Sean Hannity up there making tens of millions of dollars, you know, spreading information with the president. It's also about the journalists and the assistants and the producers who are really disappointed in what the channel's become. So that's really what drove me to want to write this right now. One of the things that you talk about in your book is that you felt it was very important as a citizen and as a journalist and as an advocate for truth and factual information. And in the book, you trace the beginning of President Trump's relationship with Fox News dating back to 2012. So how did that get started? And how did that help contribute to Donald Trump becoming a candidate? Yeah, I didn't take this seriously enough. Back in 2012, 2013, 2014, by the time I was at CNN, probably 15 before Trump entered the race. What Donald was doing, he was calling into Fox and friends every week, once a week. Like usually on Monday morning and sometimes Thursday morning. He was doing these weekly chats with Fox and friends. And look, I wrote a book about morning TV. So I know morning TV is really powerful. That connection viewers feel to morning TV is really powerful. So as much as the apprentice helped introduce Trump to the country and portray him as a businessman and effective businessman, what Fox and friends did was it taught him about politics and it taught the Fox viewers about Trump. So it was, I think just as important as the apprentice in the foundation of Trump's political launch, then in 2015, of course, he launches his campaign. He stops calling in once a week. But the truth is he was calling in even more often because they were interviewing him as a candidate and he had all those relationships at Fox thanks to his phone calls. So I think that was the foundation that was underappreciated when it comes to Trump as a candidate. Just think about it, like every week he was talking to the GOP voters via Fox. Every week he was getting to know them. He was getting to know their priorities. And I think in many ways it was a political education for Trump. So you of course described in the book the very special relationship that Sean Hannity, Fox News anchor has with anchor of his own show that he has with the president. But I must say until I read the book, I didn't really fully understand how close their relationship is and how at times it's actually, as your book reports, Sean Hannity sharing misinformation, disinformation with President Trump and President Trump sharing that on Twitter or the feedback loop back on Fox. So just tell us a little bit more about that relationship and how has it evolved over the presidency? Right, I think Ukraine's a great example. The scheme that led to Trump's impeachment can be traced right back to Hannity's show in 2017 and then in early 2019. And so I string that throughout the book because one of my arguments, one of my core arguments is that when these stars on Fox are trying to help Trump, they end up hurting him. They end up misleading him. They end up sending him down one way roads where he gets lost or stuck with conspiracy theories and culture war fights. And Hannity is an interesting example of this and this evolution because before Trump came along, Hannity's show was getting kind of stale. He was always like second or third Nana between Bill O'Reilly and Megan Kelly. You know, his stick was getting old and then comes Trump. So he gets on the Trump train very early and starts to call himself a journalist. You know, this is a guy who always says journalism is dead, which is crazy. But then he started to call himself a journalist. He says, I'm an activist journalist. I'm an opinion journalist. Well, there's a lot of room for a lot of opinion journalism and I'm a fan of a lot of it. But what he's doing is not journalistically sound. He doesn't have editors. He doesn't have check some balances. He doesn't have centers and practices. He doesn't have accountability when he screws up. So he's not functioning in that capacity, but his show looks like nightly news for Trump or all. I mean, he even has those graphics over his shoulder that look like he's Lester Holt or Norio Donald, even though he's definitely not. So I think what he's done is he has taken a part of the country segmented them off from traditional news and he's put them into Hannity world, into Trump world and Hannity world. And it's been very effective. But like I said, it also hurts Trump. You know, Hannity's on there saying, trying to distract from the Russia probe, trying to distract from Russia's attack on the election by saying, well, Ukraine did it too. Ukraine did it too. Ukraine tried to meddle. And that gets in Trump's head. It creates an anti-Ukraine narrative. You can trace a lot of the breadcrumbs of the Ukraine scheme back to these TV shows. And that's why these TV shows matter now because they are informing or misinforming the president. You know, I think, for all of us who love the Knight Foundation, you all stand up for quality journalism, for quality in media, for accountability, for standards, for all these things that are missing from talk shows like Hannity's. So the most recent example, of course, is the pandemic and how, and you've documented that in the very opening of your book. And I thought it so interesting how you reported that Suzanne Scott, CEO for Fox, just said no more denials. Yes, yeah, Friday the 13th. Let's go back to March, okay? Like February, March, when I reproduced the timeline of Fox and Trump's rhetoric about the pandemic, it was even worse than I thought. There were moments in January where he was asked about the pandemic by Fox. There were moments in February where there were commentators and doctors taking it seriously, but there was way too much denialism and downplaying of the disease, people comparing it to the flu on Fox. And this was even in early March. I mean, this was up until Friday the 13th, March 13th. That's when both Fox and Trump took a U-turn. Lindsey Graham was on the record saying he thinks that's the day Trump took the virus more seriously. What, do you think it's a coincidence that that's the day Fox all of a sudden got a lot more serious? I don't think so. I think these two entities moved in concert, Trump and Fox. So Friday the 13th, which by then New York City is starting to shut down, we can feel the country grinding to a halt. The sports leagues, the Broadway theaters, everything's already stopped by the Friday the 13th. Friday the 13th, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott calls the producers of Fox and Friends into her office, shuts the proverbial door and says, what you all were doing this morning was irresponsible. You cannot have Jerry Falwell Jr. on the air with conspiracy theories. You can't have Ainsley Earhart saying it's a great time to fly. We're not allowing you guys to fly. We're not allowing our staff to fly. So she can't be on the air, promoting air travel. So basically what she said that day was no more this stuff, this BS. From now on, you're gonna have a doctor on your show every day. She was taking really smart steps. The problem is it was two or three weeks too late. The problem with all of these reactions was it was two or three weeks too late, just like the president was two or three weeks too late. This virus was silently getting thousands of people sick all across New York City. And finally, Fox started taking more seriously but after the damage had been done. Sorry for the long answer, but I'm fired up about this. This is why the book is called Hoaxes because the pandemic is proof of why cable news can have really serious consequences. So of course you report how Fox News is like many cable television shows is driven by ratings and ratings drive revenue and so what's different about what Fox is doing to present a catered, tailored content to a partisan audience? How is it different than what we're seeing on MSNBC? And some would say CNN, yes, CNN, CNN. Chief media correspondent of CNN. I think the difference at Fox is that there is more of an obsession with the ratings. There's more of a culture that's profit oriented. And I think I know why. I think you go back to 2001, 2002, Fox News started to beat CNN and the ratings. And this was, of course, Roger Ells's goal for years. Now they've been winning for 18 years. I say winning like it's a Trump word, like this focus on winning. They've been winning in the ratings race for so long. They can't afford to stop. There's a real fear about letting the ratings slip. They wanna keep delivering with the audience once. And in my interviews with sources there, it just seemed to me there was much more of an obsession with ratings than I've ever experienced at CNN. Obviously I care about ratings because I want everybody to watch me, right? Of course I'm gonna look at my ratings, but there's not that same level of intensity, devotion to the ratings that I found at Fox. For example, about booking, Judge Andrew Napolitano is a great legal analyst at Fox, who also is sometimes very critical of Trump and calls out Trump's conduct. And shows don't wanna book him because he'll turn off the viewers. The viewers will turn the channel, they'll turn off the channel. I know as a host at CNN, we don't make decisions that way. In fact, if I have a Trump supporter on, like Jenna Ellis, a Trump aide, or if I have the ultimate Trump critic, we're not thinking about the ratings game in that same way. So I think that's the difference at Fox. It's also so profitable that there's such a focus on keeping it that way. And that I think is what's caused this process of more and more extreme content on the air. And, you know, Brian, so much of cable TV news, like with MSNBC, they're also catering to a partisan audience. And we just said in the same way, you know, parts of CNN. So it's business. It's business to create a- But here's one of the other differences. I think one of the other differences on MSNBC's biggest star is Rachel Maddow. And Rachel oftentimes promotes local newspapers. She'll show from pages of local papers. She'll tell her viewers to subscribe to local news. What you hear on Fox is the opposite. You hear the failing New York Times is a lie. You hear these attacks against the media every day. So instead of encouraging people to have a healthy balanced news diet, you know, with vegetables and steak or whatever, what Fox is saying is don't trust anything else but us. And that's a highly cynical strategy. What they're saying is everything could be a hoax. It's the same rhetoric from the president. And I think that's damaging. I think that's one of the reasons why Fox is different than MSNBC. It's much more intense. The messaging is much more intense and much more like us against the world. And so recently, Night Foundation with Gallup released its most, a new survey. And Americans on both sides, the survey found see increasing biased media. And I not surprisingly, given the strategic battering of the traditional news. Great term, strategic battering, I might borrow that. 75% of Republicans have an unfavorable view of the media. And 61% of Republicans say the attacks on the media are fair. On the Democratic side, you know, it's quite the opposite, 22% have an unfavorable view. And most people do not think that the battering, the strategic battering is fair. So that's where we are now in America. I mean, we are so polarized. How do we get anybody to listen to anything when, or views that do not represent their own when that's the view of the traditional news media by 75% of Republicans? Right, right. I do think this is about changing hearts and minds one on one, one at a time, which is not necessarily scalable and not necessarily a very satisfying answer and definitely not a full answer to the problem. But I do know that the more I can relate to the audience one-on-one, the more I'm, once in a while, I'll try to engage with the so-called trolls and show them I'm a real human being and show them that I'm not just a made-up CNN anchor. I do think it has an impact on the edges, at least, on the margins. I'm not claiming it changes everything, but for this book, for example, I asked Fox, I said I'd love to have Sean Hannity on my show and I'd be willing to go over on his show. You don't see a lot of that in television anymore. Apparently he didn't wanna do it because there was no follow-up, but the offer still stands. I think we're gonna need more of that, not less of that. Not because we're gonna agree on everything, but because we can show we're human beings who can have a conversation. But I do think around the edges, showing that we're real human beings, showing our process, showing our work, showing the attempts to get it right does count for something. Not with everybody, but I do think it counts with some people. You know, I got this great email yesterday from a producer at Fox who said, he doesn't think he shares my politics. He thinks he's a very, you know, I'm not sure where he stands, but he thinks we're very different. But he said, I read your book and I liked it a lot and I came away thinking you kind of understood our place really well. You got to the heart of what Fox is. And I liked that feedback because I want, whether he thinks he and I have different politics, the point is about reporting. Can we get the reporting accurate and get to the truth and then we can fight about politics. But I'd like to think that if we can have more reporting that can get us directionally toward what you're talking about. But I know that's not a very, it's not a great answer, right? Because it doesn't, it's not a full solution. Well, it's building trust. It's one way to build trust. The survey found was to really focus on, you know, just what you said, what people do want and they do want accurate news and information. There is widespread agreement about accurate news and information, which is our North Star certainly at Knight Foundation. Yeah, and when you go past political news, when we get out of the political noise, what we see is that people are hungry for news. They wanna know what's going on and when there's an emergency in their town, whether there's severe weather or a disaster or something scary or something wonderful that happens. Whether there's really bad news or really good news, people do come to trusted old fashioned brands because they know where the most likely ones to get it right. It's just the political noise is so nasty, you know, so hateful that I think it drowns out almost everything else. I loved in the Knight and Gallup study the findings about news overload because I think that is so real and underappreciated that a lot of people just tune it out because they're overwhelmed. There's too much news. It comes at them too quickly. It's overwhelming. I think that's a real issue for this business, but I also think it's solvable, you know? There's ways to design new products and solutions and apps and ways to help with the news overload problem too. Well, I'll share with you the way that I now deal with the news overload problem. I get the blue bag and the driveway in the morning and that is my app, the printed version of the New York Times and I find during this COVID-19 pandemic, how much I enjoy network news. I love the network news show. I love those summaries. What do you want? CBS, ABC, NBC, CBS, what's your pick? I flip back and forth. Oh my goodness, can I admit this? I guess so, between Lester and Nora and Nora and I'm a major, major Gail King fan, like a major, I am like a Gail King fan girl. I love CBS morning news. You've had this, yeah. 10 years ago when we were sharing an office at the New York Times, if we had said, you know, how many people are gonna be watching the nightly news in 2020? I would have said, well, the CBS show will be canceled and the NBC show will be on its last life, but you know, these shows are still doing so well. ABC's World News Tonight is usually the number one show in the country beating all the entertainment stuff that's on TV. You know, you're talking about 25 million people, these shows together are reaching. That's an amazing thing. It was to remind us that as much as digital is upending everything, these mainline brands that have been around for decades, they've got some staying power. Well, the other thing I wanted to mention is of course your first book, Top of the Morning, inspired, inspired the morning show, which had a lot to do with Apple subscriptions starring Reeth Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston and for anyone who really wants to peek inside the morning show business, it's a terrific, terrific read. Thank you. But you know, getting back to polarization and the spread of misinformation and disinformation in the book, it's very well reported, how that is happening on Fox. But let's talk a little bit about how that is happening on social and online and just the impact as yesterday of Reliable Sources, you had Kevin Roos, you know, talking about Facebook. So based on your work, are you seeing, do you see Fox or do you see Facebook or that Twitter as being the major forces behind the spread of misinformation or disinformation or YouTube, everyone seems to always exclude YouTube, which of course has been a home for major conspiracy theories for years. Yeah, look, I would start by saying people are watching this, some of them on Twitter, Periscope or on Facebook, you know, these platforms have provided immense opportunities and I never want to discount that. I don't think I'd be where I am today at CNN, writing books if not for Twitter. Giving me a chance to connect people around the world and break lots of stories and get to know people. So I always want to just acknowledge that up front. But that said, you know, these sites have giant sewers, massive sewers and Twitter, Facebook and talk all day about how hard they are to clean up and I get that it's very hard to clean up the wasteland that is on these social media sites, but it is their responsibility, it is their platform. And I do think it's very discouraging to see, you know, all these recent examples this summer of pandemic misinformation that doesn't get stomped out on Twitter or Facebook until the fire is already raging, you know, I guess I'm mixing my metaphors, but yes, they have a fire department, yes, they show up, but it takes them so long to sometimes detect the smoke or the fire and that's baffling to me as a user, as someone who's on these platforms and frankly creating lots of content for the platforms, like we're all of course feeding them in all the time. So what do we do in that environment? You know, what do we do in that situation? No one's withholding their content, I know that. Almost nobody's leaving the platforms. Well, of course, there's lots of robust debate now about Section 230 which allows platforms not to be responsible for the content published. They're in the same way that publishers are responsible and then the value and importance of reporting, like to hold the platforms to account. I mean, just what you shared over the weekend on your show just about what was allowed like with the fact checkers. Right. Wow, so much, you know, like obvious, like obvious, obvious conspiracy theory videos to just continue to share. Maybe I'm feeling generous to the sites today, maybe I'm feeling too generous, but part of this is also really is about human nature and I never wanna forget that. Why is it that there's a meme of me claiming I was on Jeffrey Epstein's plane? Like that's insane, but why is there that meme? Why does someone hate so much? Why does someone feel so isolated and alienated from society that they're going around posting lies like that? That's not entirely Facebook's fault. It's partly Facebook's fault, but not entirely. What I wish Twitter and Facebook would do is when that lie of an image starts spreading, do something, you know, acknowledge that it's crazy, but it's not entirely their responsibility. What I think we need a lot more of Jennifer is proportionality. We need to have a sense of proportion and perspective when it comes to what we are all consuming on these platforms. Because when I look at my feed sometimes, if I look at my red feed, my kind of right wing view of the world, it's terrifying. It seems like there's mobs on every corner and riots on every street. And obviously there's no, obviously New York has some real problems, but that's not exaggerate them. Portland has some real problems, but let's not exaggerate them. There's a lot of exaggeration and hyper partisanship going on. And what we all need are those journalistic fundamentals that we learned in school that I wish everyone else would be able to learn about proportionality and perspective. Well, I think also there's a huge opportunity for Facebook and Google have done some, but to really help support an increase in the quality of accurate news and information. And we know and we've had so many conversations about the impact of the consumer changing behavior on the traditional business model, especially for local newspapers. And so so much has been lost in terms of local news, original reporting sources, like what else can be done to improve it? And that of course is work that we're supporting here at Knight Foundation. So I want everyone to know you are welcome to jump into the conversation. You can add your questions to the chat we also use the hashtag at night live. You can share your questions on Twitter. And for anyone who's worried that they might miss a moment of this call, no worries at all because we are recording it and we will share the video for you to peruse at your leisure. So let's just jump to the questions, Brian just some of the questions. Wow, okay, because they are pouring in. All right, so would you consider, this is from Kimberly Bliss, would you consider the ability of Fox to convince people of a false reality? Similar to how cult leaders control the minds of their subjects and so how has that been accomplished with so many people in our country? I have a follow-up question to that. One of those provocative words that yesterday I talked about fascism on Reliable Sorrows. Yes, yes. I talked about authoritarianism. The issues that I didn't used to cover during the last few years, let's put it that way. I'll tell you what's interesting when it comes to reporting for my book hopes. I've been covering Fox 16 years. I was thinking about this book for at least three of those years, definitely the last two years I was taking notes in purpose. The word cult didn't start to come up toward the end of my reporting. And I think that's because there is this growing sense inside Fox that the place some viewers have become more radicalized. You don't wanna say everybody, you don't wanna paint with a broad brush, you wanna have a really fine delicate brush for these conversations. But there has been a process of radicalization and toward the end of my reporting, some staffers did talk about feeling like there's something cult-like about the network. In the same way that we're hearing those warnings about Trump and some of his supporters, again, not all of his supporters, but I think you've got psychologists and others who have said there's something cult-like about some of his support. Now I'm sure Trump would say there's something cult-like about Obama too. These words get thrown around in every direction. But I do think it merits study, it merits honest conversation because I interviewed folks for the book, commentators, guests, a host on the show, they would get off the air and then they would look at their phone and they'd look at their Twitter mentions and they would just be stunned by how vitriolic and hateful the replies were. And again, not entirely Fox's fault, not entirely Twitter's fault, but there's something real going on there and it doesn't seem to be getting better. In terms of if you look at the last three and a half years of the Trump era, I don't think we're moving in the right direction in terms of that amount of vitriol, that kind of venom out there. Well, just a twist on that follow-up question to that is why are people watching Fox? Clearly Fox is addressing concerns and issues. They're not watching CNN, they're not watching MSNBC. So I do worry as Ben Bradley Jr. reported in his book, The Forgotten, which looked at a county in northeastern Pennsylvania that had voted for Obama in 2008 and four years later and then voted for Donald Trump in 2016. And he did this really, really good reporting job listening to why so many people voted for Donald Trump. So what is it that CNN mainstream media is missing, is not delivering? Well, I try to say early on in the book to call Fox News a cable channel misses it. It's so much more than a channel. It's almost a way of life. It's a community. It is a family. It's like a senior center or a city hall. And that is pivotal to understand because that's why it has such a monopoly on the right wing audience. And a monopoly is a word that multiple sources and staffers use saying like, we have a monopoly now. That's what we have. There aren't a lot of others serving this marketplace void. I think there's something to be really, there's something to respect about Fox covering issues that other networks don't focus as much on. I think I would point to religion as one of those, specifically Christianity. It's not as if Fox is doing big specials about the Muslim faith, but certainly a focus on Christianity. Where it gets twisted though, and where it gets troubling is where the network has appeals to white identity politics, where the network seems to be so focused on white conservative Christians to the exclusion of others. And where the network gets into real backwards, kind of commentary and coverage, it would seem to be a reaction to a multicultural browning America. A lot of what the network is doing feels like a reaction to what is happening in the country and the progress that's being made in other areas. So I always think about this stat. It's the audience is almost entirely white. Fox has about 1% African-American viewership, small slivers of Hispanic and Asian-American viewership. It's almost an entirely white audience, very old skewing audience as television, which generally is, but Fox skews older than the others. So there are reasons why it appeals to elderly viewers who feel like nothing else speaks to them. And some of it is very deep as you were referring to Bradley's book. I was at the store today and a guy next to me in his pickup truck had one of those Trump flags where it has a depiction of Trump as this really muscular, tough guy superhero. And obviously the president, not that fit nor are many people his age. But that iconography of Trump as the superhero, the hyper-masculine figure that's saving the country, that comes from a place that's really deep, right? In terms of what's happening in our politics, that's coming from a really deep place. And I think we need to hear a lot more from voters and a lot less from the talking heads on Fox and sometimes CNN as well. And I know I'm guilty of having a talking head sometimes myself, but I'd much rather hear from that driver than from Dan Bongino or Janine Pirro on Fox. So here's a question from Regina Lawrence, which is a perfect follow-up. So on your show, you talked yesterday about the need for a more citizen-driven way of covering this election. So can you tell us more about that? And are you worried? Are you worried? I'm worried that once again, the Beltway journalist and New York City journalists are missing it. Yeah, this is the citizen's agenda. If you Google citizen's agenda, you'll find Jay Rosen and others have written about this for many years. And it's a concept that you start with asking the audience what they want the candidates to talk about. And then you focus on covering that and asking those questions to the candidates. Once you've heard from your public that they are focused on healthcare and schools, then you can focus the candidates on those issues by questioning them and asking for their plans and their proposals. I think it's a, that's certainly ambitious and we don't see newsrooms oftentimes taking that approach. Rosen's tried to instill this in newsrooms. But I brought up yesterday from the perspective of, how can we help the public set the agenda and not Trump? When I look at the president's Twitter feed, I know exactly what he wants me to cover, right? Law and order and fake news and, you know, these memes and videos and all this propaganda. And there are weeks where I fall for it. And I know it. And I look back at 2017 and transcripts of my show and I feel like I was led around too much by what he was tweeting. Now that was new at the time. It was scary at the time. It was shocking at the time. Now a lot of us are more numb to what he posts. But the point is, don't let him set the agenda all the time. He is one of many players in the political universe. Let's try to help the public set the agenda more. And that's really what I wanted to put out there and see how viewers reacted to that idea yesterday. By the way, we do that through polling. You know, you mentioned Gallup earlier. Gallup has great data on what issues do voters care about? I think that should help us focus our coverage. It's the economy, it's healthcare, it's the pandemic. Because oftentimes we can get, and I say we, I mean, the collective national news media at large, not everybody, but we can get really focused on what the president happens to be talking about and not on what issues voters are telling us to talk about more. Yes, absolutely. And I know that there's even deeper concern with fewer reporters on the ground now listening and really listening to what are the concerns. And you cited a story yesterday in the Washington Post about unemployment and families from Ohio and across the country. Yeah, I'm just getting so angry with the lack of coverage about this. You know what happened, Jennifer? I was driving into, I was driving into work and I had a whole other segment planned to start the show. And you know, on my drive, there's mansions and there's trailers. And there's a lot of things in between. Like I'm always looking into people's houses thinking, what do they care about? Like what, how do they consume media? What do they want to know? And just feels to me like the unemployment story is so big and so uncomfortable and so sad and so scary that kind of like COVID, that sometimes it's easier to talk about, I don't know, Trump's tweets. I'm just picking on Trump's tweets, but there's lots of examples of that. We just can't let go of the COVID story and the related economic crisis, even though it is dreadful, Tom, sometimes. It's like a nightmare, but the nightmare is the biggest story. Yes, no, absolutely, absolutely. And now that produces, you know, nine o'clock, we're on in two hours and I like rip up the show, but that's what we do sometimes. Hey, it's called journalism. TV, yep. That's right. It's called TV and journalism. So just getting back to some of the questions. So can you talk a little bit about the current position of the Fox News owners, the Murnox and what are they doing about, about what you documented in your book about the lack of legitimate news? I would describe them as pretty hands-off owners. Rupert the father, Lachlan the son, Lachlan runs the company. It's on a path to $2 billion in profits from the Fox News division. That's an extraordinary number. They care about the profits. They're less interested in the content. Rupert is more interested. Rupert talks to Trump frequently. You know, he views the network as a political machine as well as a news network. Lachlan, I would argue, is even indifferent to the content, which is a problem when there's a pandemic and your network is downplaying the disease. But look, he doesn't talk about it very much. I would have loved to interview Rupert or Lachlan for the book. I would love to quote other interviews they've given. They don't talk about Fox News very much. I think they are largely happy with the way things are. If they weren't, you would expect them to change it. And a lot of the journalists at Fox who confided in me, you know, they wish for the road not traveled. The road not traveled would have been when Roger Ells was forced out, hire more journalists, build up the newsroom, add more bureaus around the world. They don't have a bureau in Asia, no bureau in China, no bureau to cover the pandemic in China. So there's a lot of staffers there who wish for that road not traveled, but choose to stay because they wanna improve it from the inside, you know? They wanna make it better from the inside. They want to have the network be as diverse and strong as possible. Others, however, choose to leave. And one of the through lines and hoaxes, I tell the stories of about a dozen staffers who chose to leave over the years and why. Yeah, that was very compelling. And also when you count up the number of people who left Fox, left to go work in the White House. So that's- Yeah, that's the other avenue. You leave- The other avenue. You're frustrated with the journalism and you don't think you fit in. Or you leave because you got an offer from the administration. And sometimes being on Fox is the job interview. Literally, I know this sounds unbelievable, but the president will look at the TV and say, I want that person working for me. And that's how people like Morgan Ortegas who's the State Department spokesperson, you know? It's a big part of the reason why these people get these jobs. So, Ryan, we're close to wrapping up now. There's just a couple of more quick questions and quick answers from Barbara Rabb. Barbara says that in today's climate, your message cannot survive the perception of the messenger. In other words, those who you presumably want to reach see you as merely part of the fake news. I guess that goes back to what we discussed earlier. How do we come together and talk about facts, talk about verifiable facts, make informed decisions? And I'm not gonna claim that Hannity's biggest fans are gonna read hoax, but I did try to reach out a hand by opening the book, by telling my own story, talking about my parents and, you know, talking about my life, talking about my kids, just trying to reach people where they are and show what we have in common before we talk about what we disagree on. Because I get that when I talk about the president being a serial liar, that it is a turnoff to some people. But the record is what it is. The record is Google-able. The record's undeniable. And although there's interesting ways people try. So I hope that, you know, we can connect to each other on human personal levels. That's why I give out my Gmail address on the air sometimes. It's why I try to seem as accessible as I can, even to the so-called haters. Haters, I guess that's detractors is a nicer word. And another question is, how does a democracy survive with such a powerful propaganda apparatus? I think we're showing how every day. You know, I remember saying in 2017, the first time Trump called the press the enemy. It's interesting to say. I remember saying on the air, America's press is stronger than any demagogue. And I think we've proved that. I think three years later, we've proved the press is stronger than any demagogue. Democracy is stronger than any demagogue. And I think that remains true. I think we're in this, you know, there's a war on truth going on, but I think the truth is still winning most of the fights. Look at how many Americans in polling say they can't trust their own president when it comes to the pandemic. It's sad, but most Americans say they can't trust him. The reason the book is called hoax is because he referred to the Democrats focused on COVID as a hoax back in February and handed to use that word in March. You know, that word is poisonous. It gets down in the bloodstream and it's like poison, but most people are not being affected by it. Most people have an immunity built in, I guess it's built up from all those years of reporting and journalism. So I'm an optimist no matter what, I can't help but be an optimist at the end of the day that journalists are standing up for decency and democracy. I actually love today's announcement by CNN. What a sign of the times. We hired five analysts. You know how we have lots of contributors and analysts who are on the air explaining the news. These are five new analysts with a very specific specialty, election law. So we are getting ready for the fall. And I do think part of understanding election law and having those analysts is about defending the basics of this democracy. I know we're out of time, but I'm gonna put my email address in the chat. So any other questions, email me. I'm B. Stelter at June, and I'm happy to take more. Fine, thank you very much. And again, congratulations on hoax. And I read in an Axios that Simon and Chuster had to go back and print 100,000 additional copies. I mean- It's a good problem to have. It's a good problem to have. We're printing them as fast as we can. Well, you can also order it for your phone and for your Kindle. And it's not only an excellent read, it's an important read. So fasten your seat belts for the next couple of months. It's gonna be a wild ride. And thank you very much, Brian, for joining us today on Informed and Engaged. Thank you. Thanks.