Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another by Matt Taibbi (PDF)

Description

In this characteristically turbocharged new book, now in a new post-election edition, 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. After a 2020 election season that proved to be a Great Giza Pyramid Complex of invective and digital ugliness, Hate Inc. is an invaluable antidote to the hidden poisons dished up by those we rely on to tell us what is happening in the world.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐With the exception of live events such as 9/11 and the January 6th assault on the Capitol, I have avoided commercial television news for decades because it is too sensationalistic, lacks depth, and it’s mostly punditry disguised as news. It is geared to inflame but not inform viewers about usually complex issues. My information diet usually consists of reading our local newspaper the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, tidbits of the Washington Post, the Atlantic, nonfiction books on a wide variety of topics, a couple of news websites such as NPR and Vox, and watching a few articles a week on PBS’s News Hour. I know many people who consume only liberal or conservative commercial television and simply parrot what their respective side broadcasts. I’ve lost count how often I’ve suggested they back off in watching so much television news, especially the pundit programs, because it is not healthy for their mental well-being. ‘Hate Inc.’ argues the same thing but with a lot more interesting details and valid points.Mr. Taibbi lambasts reporters and pundits for using denigrating labels about people but the dude sure isn’t shy about calling certain people in his book “clowns,” some news magazines “schlock,” and other snarky designations. If you are not familiar with the author’s prior work, he mixes his reporting with heavy doses of sarcasm, some profanity, and biting wit. Mr. Taibbi stresses the influence ‘Manufacturing Consent; The Political Economy of the Mass Media’ by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman had on him and includes an interview with Dr. Chomsky about the media landscape today. While newspapers and news magazines receive their fair share of raspberries, ‘Hate Inc’ focuses most of its criticism on national television and internet news. Mr. Taibbi explains such things as how viewers are kept away from understanding an issue’s complexity or even addressing important issues at all; the commercial television news formats are based upon ginning up your anger and anxiety towards the other political side; reinforcing conformity and groupthink to a certain political perspective; how commercial television news is geared towards theater instead of incisive news; systemic avoidance in investigating paying clients with deep pockets; rush to judgments about new events; how class affects news; the vapid nature of television debates; polls; fabricating moral panic; a business format designed to addict you to sensationalism and to make you feel that you’re informed and superior over the other side’s views; how most national news outlets have resorted to tabloid exaggeration; and how today’s news delivery is a contributor to our political polarization.‘Hate Inc.’ appears to be a half-hearted attempt at mea culpa by the word-acerbic Mr. Taibbi. What he writes is, in my humble opinion, informative and depressing. He makes it sound like he did not and does not play well with the other reporters. Well, if those fellow reporters read ‘Hate Inc.,’ Mr. Taibbi shouldn’t bet on those same people sending him chocolates, a dozen red roses, or being asked to the prom. You’ll find the book illuminating if you can tolerate all the snarky writing. Maybe it’ll even help you step away from the media cult Kool-Aid, take a chill pill, and digest news in a healthier manner.(P.S. Another insightful book about the media that I highly recommend is an old work published way before the internet and 24-hour commercial news. It was written by the late historian Daniel J. Boorstin. The 1962 book is entitled ‘The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America.’)

⭐Matt Taibbi’s introduction is an endearing confession. He tells us what he was paid to do – write poignant political putdowns. He came to my attention when a former girlfriend sent an article including the sentence “The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” Liberal or conservative (I’m the latter) you have to applaud this wonderful characterization of Goldman Sachs. Which, by the way, is neither liberal nor conservative, but twists its blood funnel whichever way the prevailing political winds are blowing.Many astute reporters have noted that we are becoming more vitriolic by the year. See Douglas Murray’s

⭐. We don’t know about Murray’s politics, but he is a conservative in that he takes on the madness that he identifies in his title. One has to feel that the overlapping waves of political correctness that radiate from the huge splash of the 1960s are finally cresting. We have reached peak absurdity. There is nobody who has more sharply honed the tools to write about it than Taibbi. This is a welcome book.He writes “I despair at the blame-a-thon of modern political media and wonder all the time if I didn’t help construct this new attitude with the flamboyant insults I put in print for years. Worse, today’s media debate has left its sense of humor behind, and we now argue even minor issues as life-or-death matters, despite not even knowing each other. People who would certainly engage in courteous chats at their kids’ birthday parties freely trade horrific threats on Twitter. It’s insane.”Taibbi paints a picture of a halcyon era in which the news was mostly unbiased. He writes “Whereas the task was once to report the facts as honestly as we could – down the middle of the ‘fairway’ of acceptable thought…”He does not go into who defined “acceptable thought.” The fact is that there were few Gentile press barons between the eras of William Randolph Hearst and Rupert Murdoch. Print media were dominated by men such as Eugene Meyer of the Washington Post, the Sulzbergers and Ochs of the New York Times, the Pritzkers of Chicago. Broadcast media were dominated by William Paley and Robert Sarnoff.”Acceptable thought” embraced civil rights for racial minorities, sexual minorities and women. Moreover, they wanted it now. There were pejoratives for people who might say “Slow down a bit – it’s not that simple.” Acceptable thought welcomed immigrants. Acceptable thought embraced all of the changes underway in Europe – guestworkers, the expansion of the European Union, the adoption of the euro, and the full United Nations platform.For Taibbi to claim that Fox News invented the silo is a little bit disingenuous. The men who dominated the press had their own silo, one that did not include the bulk of their audience – Gentiles. Rupert Murdoch made a lot of money by figuring that out. Taibbi says that Roger Ailes claimed that his target demographic was “white men between 55 and dead.” It was broader than that.Another dimension that Taibbi does not mention is television entertainment. Fox was equally successful in figuring out what this broad demographic wanted in the way of humor. They did not all want to have their minds expanded by programs such as “All in the Family” or “Star Trek.”As an amusing side note, white people who are not Gentiles, the ones who dominate American academia, finance and media, can be defined by a single word. That word does not appear anywhere in this book. Coincidence?The most valuable material is in the last few chapters. Government officials always have a narrative that they want to push. Reporters have a professional duty to be skeptical. Yet, they are not. They suppress their curiosity in order to maintain access.Taibbi devote a lot of text to two major fiascoes. The first was the second Iraq war, the WMD question. The intelligence community wanted a war, and they had a perfect villain in Saddam Hussein. They spent years putting together the case for taking him down. Saddam was not a nice man, but there was no need for war. Beating the drums for war was the entire Bush apparatus – the usual heavies, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Poindexter and the like – but also a great many liberal and neocon outfits. Taibbi is tough with all of them.In the end, the Republicans were the strongest proponents of the Iraq war. Therefore it is easier to get the press to be honest with itself on the subject. Another advantage is that the British Chilcot Report does a thorough and honest job of analyzing how the British press was co-opted into supporting this ill-advised war.The second, Russiagate, on the other hand, is a Democrat operation. Democrats dominate the press. It appears that they dominate the intelligence agencies as well – the “Deep State”, although Taibbi doesn’t call it that. It will be harder to do a postmortem on Russiagate because the information sources for such an investigation would be too highly compromised.Taibbi’s book itself will be an excellent start. While he has no love for Republicans or for Trump, he does seem to like the truth. May the truth win out.Among the other things to like about Matt Taibbi is that he is a straight white man. His Amazon portrait photograph shows him holding his son. How amazing! He is one of the few who is writing about the current state of affairs in the world who has a stake in its future. He has to care how his son will grow up and whether he has grandchildren. A look around will indicate that relatively few of the world’s leaders share these concerns. A majority in Europe are childless. I hope Taibbi starts a trend.Taibbi’s arch sense of humor expresses itself even then his chapter titles.1. The Beauty Contest: Press Coverage of the 2016 Election…2. The Ten Rules of Hate3. The Church of Averageness4. The High Priests of Averageness, on the Campaign Trail…5. More Priests: The Pollsters6. The Invisible Primary: or, How We Decide Ele…7. How the News Media Stole From Pro Wrestling8. How Reading the News is Like Smoking9. Scare Tactics: All the Folk Devils Are Here10. The Media’s Great Factual Loophole11. The Class Taboo12. How We Turned the News Into Sports13. Turn it Off14. The Scarlet Letter Club15. Why Russiagate is This Generation’s WMDAppendix 1: Why Rachel Maddow is on the Coy…Appendix 2: An Interview with Noam ChomskyAcknowledgmentsThat’s enough of a brief review for the moment. I will add chapter reviews as I have time to write them. Without a doubt, a five-star effort.

⭐This is a collection of articles that were published by Taibbi on the media in the US. It highlights a number of key trends over the last few decades as well as some major debacles (Iraqi WMD, the rise of Trump and Russiagate). Overall it’s a very interesting read although I was hoping for bibliography or footnotes for the examples he references.There are some takeaways for the media in other countries too as similar trends are playing out.

⭐Not one of his best. Originally written as a serial, it invariably suffers from being repetitive, and his usual dry, acerbic wit is replaced with a soapbox to rail against journalism (curiously, despite his pointed criticisms of the misleading tendencies of the industry, the dust jacket quote he uses from Publishers Weekly actually refers to his previous book, Insane Clown President – which was indeed hilarious. This book, less so). He may be on a confessional tour, but I prefer the old hits.

⭐Incredibly insightful deep dive into all that’s wrong with today’s journalism (should I put that word in quotes?), and a worthy successor to the media criticism of Chomsky. Greatly readable too.

⭐Well written and full of interesting insights on the media since Trump. You’ll seldom go wrong with Matt Taibbi.

⭐A brilliant, insightful look at the (often sorry) state of the news media and journalism in the US. Witty and entertaining too. Highly recommended.

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