Jane Mayer on the Revolving Door Between Fox News and the White House

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2019

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Donald Trump has made no secret of his great admiration for Fox News -- which he praises by tweet nearly constantly -- and his disdain for other, “fake news” outlets that he regards as “enemies of the people.” But the closeness of the relationship between Fox News and the White House is unprecedented in modern times, Jane Mayer tells David Remnick. In a recent article, Mayer, a staff writer since 1995, analyzes a symbiotic relationship that boosts both Trump’s poll numbers and Rupert Murdoch’s bottom line. “I was trying to figure out who sets the tune that everybody plays during the course of the day. If the news on Fox is all about some kind of caravan of immigrants supposedly invading America, whose idea is that? It turns out that it is this continual feedback loop,” Mayer says. She pays particular attention to the role of Bill Shine, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications and a former Fox News executive, who has helped create a revolving door where those who create the Administration’s political messaging and those who broadcast it regularly trade places. Jane also discovered that Shine was linked to the intimidation of employees who were sexually harassed at Fox News.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios.
0:09.8	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. It's certainly no secret that nearly all politicians prefer some media outlets to others. They tend to like places where the journalists ask them easier questions.
0:23.7	And it's no secret that the president hates nearly all of the media, with one big exception.
0:29.3	Donald Trump loves Fox News, and he tweets its praises all the time.
0:34.5	But something big and something quite rare in modern times happened between Fox and the
0:38.9	president during the midterm campaign. Sean Hannity, come on up. Sean Hannity. Hannity appeared at a
0:45.5	rally not as an observer, not as a commentator, but as a speaker on the podium for the president.
0:52.5	By the way, all those people in the back are fake news.
0:57.0	I did an opening monologue today, and I had no idea you were going to invite me up here.
1:01.9	And the one thing that has made and defined your presidency more than anything else,
1:08.1	promises made,ises kept.
1:11.6	The President trusts Hannity and others on the Fox News evening lineup more than he trusts his own advisors, it seems.
1:19.6	Jane Mayer has been reporting for us on how this unique symbiotic relationship came about.
1:25.6	Jane's been a New Yorker staff writer since 1995, and she
1:29.3	first went to the White House as a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in 1984.
1:34.9	So, Jane, you refer in a way to Fox News as state television, as if somehow Fox News has
1:42.4	become in the United States what exists in Russia or other authoritarian
1:47.5	and totalitarian states. You don't mean that exactly, but what do you mean?
1:52.2	What I mean is that it has increasingly removed from the airwaves at Fox News anyone who is challenging President Trump. There's still a couple
2:04.5	really good reporters for Fox News itself, for the news side, but the opinion side, which
2:10.5	dominates Fox News in the morning and the evening, is dominated more and more by voices that are
2:16.4	completely pro-Trump and coordinating with Trump.
	...

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