A sweeping indictment of the news industry and the practitioners of post-journalism
A longtime political journalist and analyst, former Fox News Channel editor Chris Stirewalt knows the inner workings and pitfalls of the news business better than anyone. In Broken News: Why the Media Rage Machine Divides America & How to Fight Back (Center Street; on sale August 23, 2022), Stirewalt offers a timely critique of the news industry and media companies’ transformation into commanders in the culture war.
Stirewalt, who served on the Fox News Channel Decision Desk on Election Night of 2020, saw firsthand what happens when a news organization gives in to partisan impulses. Although he faced criticism and later termination from the network for calling Arizona in favor of Joe Biden, Stirewalt knew there were bigger problems at hand than just his job prospects.
In this unsparing analysis of the news business, Stirewalt takes a deep look at the history of the industry to explain how Americans ended up with a media that pits people against each other for profit. He chronicles how with every new political era, scandal, and technological innovation, the news industry drifted further into sensationalism and activism.
Broken News is both an in-depth study of how media outlets sell outrage to the public and a blueprint for how the media can once again serve the public. The book challenges those in the journalism business to examine their profession and live up to its higher calling of service to the American experiment. Stirewalt offers practical advice for how everyday readers, listeners, and viewers can become better consumers of news, for the sake of truth—for the sake of our nation.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Chris Stirewalt is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he focuses on American politics, public opinion, and the media. He is a political columnist at the Dispatch; the cohost of Ink Stained Wretches, a podcast on the media; and the author of Every Man a King: A Short, Colorful History of American Populists (Twelve Books, 2018), in which he looks at American populism through the lives of seven famous populists.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
BROKEN NEWS
Why the Media Rage Machine Divides America & How to Fight Back
By Chris Stirewalt
Published by Center Street (Hachette Book Group)
Publication date: August 23, 2022
ISBN: 9781546002635
“One of America’s most experienced and exemplary journalists has written an unsparing analysis of the dreadful consequences — for journalism and the nation — of ‘how the news lost a race to the bottom with itself.’ Readers of Stirewalt’s indispensable, mind-opening book-as-warning should remember this: There actually is no such thing as rock bottom.”
George F. Will
“Chris Stirewalt is an ideal guide to what has happened to the news business because he doesn’t just hate what it has become, but also loves what it ought to be. Free of nostalgia or partisan vitriol, and full of insight, experience, and clear-eyed realism, this book is an essential guide to repairing American journalism.”
Yuval Levin
Author of A Time to Build