‘They Knew The Truth’: Brian Stelter on What Fox News Hosts Know But Don’t Say About Trump, His New Book, and His CNN Ouster
Brian Stelter, the prolific media reporter and former CNN host, is out with a new book about Fox News — Network of Lies The Epic Saga of Fox News, Donald Trump, and the Battle for American Democracy. He joined Mediaite’s podcast The Interview this week to discuss his book, the state of the media industry, and his ouster from CNN.
Stelter, who hosted CNN Sunday show Reliable Sources for nearly a decade before he was ousted at the network by former CEO Chris Licht, has since contributed media reporting to a number of outlets, joined Vanity Fair as a special correspondent and podcast host, appeared on air to offer media analysis, scored a fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School, and started writing a book.
Network of Lies is his third book, and his second about Fox News. Unlike his 2020 book Hoax, however, his latest draws on the unprecedented trove of evidence from inside Fox News revealed as part of Dominion Voting System’s defamation suit over 2020 election lies — a suit that ended with a major $787 million settlement. The internal communications, which included texts, emails and more from top Fox News hosts and executives, revealed the extent the network went to promote Donald Trump’s farcical claim the election was stolen from him — all to appease an audience that demanded its false beliefs be affirmed.
Watch our full, wide-ranging interview with Brian Stelter above, and read some highlights below.
On what Fox News hosts know but don’t say about Trump
I think it was really revealing how Tucker Carlson tried to have it both ways or all ways in the immediate aftermath of Biden’s election. He didn’t believe the voter fraud lies, but he knew he had to be open to it in order to appease his audience. And he’s texting with his producers about that dynamic. He hears his producer say, the audience is pissed that we’re not covering voter fraud. And he says, yeah, we should have, but I hate that stuff. And the next night he comes up with a way to cover it, talking about alleged dead people who might have voted. Of course, some of those people weren’t dead and real reporters from real outlets knocked on their doors and found out they were alive. Tucker had to make a tiny little baby correction in the middle of Friday. But those kinds of episodes, which Mediaite covers every single day, I thought it was important to put them all in one place, to let it all wash over people. There were other messages that have not been published before. Laura Ingraham saying that Donald Trump is on a grievance loop that just runs around and around and around. I’m struck by the fact that these hosts and executives, they knew the truth about Donald Trump. Rupert Murdoch sure did. When he was emailing people saying that Trump is damaging everybody, this is terrible. They knew the truth about the president. And yet for various reasons they couldn’t really express that on the air.
On whether Fox News has changed since the Dominion settlement
Change in a meaningful way? No. I think around the edges we can point to a couple of changes. Donald Trump’s not allowed to call in anymore. He’s not allowed to go on the network live for an interview. You all have written about how those interviews are now pre-taped, in part because of fears of further legal liability. But those are just changes around the edges. I think the most significant change at Fox is actually a change in a negative direction, a downward direction. And that is that I think they’re becoming a little more savvy about pushing misinformation. And what I mean by that is: you can you can get away with a lot without coming across the line of defaming a company or a person. You don’t have to go on the air, as they did in November 2020 and say, Dominion, Hugo Chavez, Venezuela. Right. Those are specific factual statements that can be rebutted. But what you can do and what I think we’re going to see in 2024 is a lot of euphemisms, a lot of hints, a lot of extreme rhetoric that tiptoes up to the line but doesn’t cross the line into legal exposure.
On his own ouster from CNN
This was the summer of 2022. And I had an inkling that summer that Reliable is on the chopping block. I say in the book, I even crafted a memo trying to defend the show. I cited its high ratings. I cited its low production costs. But look, by the time you’re writing a memo trying to keep your show alive, you’re pretty well aware that it’s dead. And by August of 2022, in my head, I was treating every show like it was my last. Even though I didn’t know for sure and I was hoping for a different outcome. By the time I was called into Chris Licht’s office, I knew what the meeting was about. I wasn’t told why it was canceled, but he was very respectful. He gave me a chance to sign off on the network, sign off on my own terms and say whatever I wanted to say to book whoever I wanted a book. Very different from Tucker Carlson’s situation, by the way. I offer a theory why in the book, which is there was mutual respect. I had known Licht and David Zaslav for for a very long time. I knew their wives. I knew their publicists. Relationships build mutual respect. And the difference for Tucker, which you mentioned earlier, is that he had no productive relationship with Suzanne Scott. There was no reason to trust that he wasn’t going to go on the air and light the network on fire. Licht knew I wasn’t a pyromaniac. We worked it out, and I think maybe that’s why I wasn’t bitter or angry.
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