Is today's media universe making us despise each other? That's the claim of a brand new book from one of the smartest writers in the media business.

Welcome to this week's Reliable Sources Podcast.

I'm your host Brian Stelter,

and this weekly podcast is our chance to go more in-depth

with media leaders and newsmakers talking about how the news gets

made. Or in this case, how it gets manipulated. See there's this brand new book out from

Matt Taibi titled Hate Inc.

The subtitle is Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise Each Other.

Now Taibi has been a celebrated writer for years.

He's now a correspondent at Rolling Stone.

And he's out with this book trying to get people to think differently

about how the news works or doesn't work.

He says it's really more of a twisted wing of the entertainment

business. Well, Matt is here with me now. Matt, the book comes out on October 8th. We are

talking a few days ahead of time. Thanks for joining me.

Thanks a lot, Brian. I appreciate your having me on.

There are some elements here I disagree with. You've got quite a critique of cable news,

but I want to hear it. Tell me why you felt like you had to write this book now.

Well, I should probably say, and I do say this in the book,

that almost everything that's, that I talk about in the book in a negative way I've probably done myself. I, you know, and I think I started to get the idea for writing this, you know, three or four years ago when I was noticing trends in the business

that it was becoming more divided that we were employing a more directly commercial strategy to go after audience and it was becoming

more segmented anatomized.

...