Foxocracy: Inside the Network’s Playbook of Tribal Warfare

Read Foxocracy: Inside the Network’s Playbook of Tribal Warfare Storyline:

From a 14-year Fox News contributor, guest anchor, and two-time New York Times bestselling author comes an unprecedented insider’s account of the Fox News playbook—the production secrets and manipulation strategies Fox uses to influence viewers, divide families, weaponize the daily discourse of news and public opinion, and addict a core audience on right-wing rage and fear.
Fox News did not start America’s culture war—but they have the manipulative and destructive genius to exploit it. For the first time, a Fox News veteran—fourteen years as contributor and guest anchor—exposes and diagrams the pages within the Fox News playbook that the liberal and progressive candidates will be fighting against in 2020. This is the very same playbook that Fox News used to move 12% of Independents to vote Trump in 2016 and win the previous Democrat strongholds of Ohio, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
Author Tobin Smith takes readers behind the scenes of the actual production of the “Fair and Balanced” opinion pieces and panel segments that feed a ravenous right-wing audience. How are these productions rigged so that right-wing pundits always win? What techniques does Fox News use in manipulating its viewers’ tribal right-wing instincts: to addict them, to activate a hatred toward partisan enemies; and to hook them on feelings of intellectual and cultural superiority?
Filled with never revealed conversations with Fox News executives and opinion programming producers, breaking down the collateral damage among friends and family caused by the waging of an endless culture war, Foxocracy brings incendiary proof from an insider and on-air talent of audience manipulation psychology and production tactics. And perhaps even more frightening, this book reveals how that playbook is now being insidiously upgraded for maximum effect on all forms of social media and means of content delivery.
**Review
“Eye-opening…An erstwhile insider's broadside against Fox News…Revealing.”― Kirkus Reviews
“Pulls back all the blinds hiding the true nature of Fox News...Should be on the bedside of every American voter.”―National Compass
About the Author
Tobin Smith appeared in more than 2,000 opinion panel segments on Fox News during his tenure as a paid Fox News Channel Contributor and Guest Anchor. Contractually obligated to be at Fox News’ New York City studios at least 48 weeks a year, he was the only fulltime right-wing panelist always in the New York City studios, constantly asked by segment producers to play the role of the “hitman”―or the panel member counted on to make the final right wing argument for the right wing audience at home. He also guest hosted more than sixty episodes of Fox News and Fox Business Network programming from 2000-2013. While working with producers inside Fox News in New York City and socializing with Fox News staff at favorite watering holes after work, he learned never-before revealed strategies used to rig the outcomes of FNC opinion debate segments. Smith is also a New York Times bestselling author whose books include ChangeWave Investing 2.0 and Billion Dollar Green.