Tobin Smith - Foxocracy: Inside the Networks Playbook of Tribal Warfare

ALSO BY TOBIN SMITH

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(New York Times Bestseller)

ChangeWave Investing 2.0

Billion Dollar Green: Profit from the ECO Revolution

Copyright 2019 by Tobin Smith

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. The moral right of the author has been asserted.

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For Brenda, Leslie, Marjorie,
and John Sydney McCain II.

I held off publishing this book out of respect for my dear friend Brenda Buttner, who was also host of my weekly weekend Fox News opinion program Bulls & Bears . Brenda passed away in early 2016 after a long and courageous fight against cancer.

Frankly, with all the firsthand observations, secrets, and stories I accumulated as a fourteen-year insider within Foxs Sixth Avenue New York headquarters, I was also more than a little afraid of Roger Ailes, until his passing in May of 2017.

Ultimately, when I discovered how what we were doing affected the millions of folks who fell down the Foxhole, I became ashamed of what I had helped Fox News accomplish. I am hopeful that more former Fox News opinion-program producers and contributors will add their stories to the record. Already, brave reporters like my old friend and longtime FNC reporter Adam Housley, Col. Ralph Peters, and recently Carl Cameron have quit Fox News in protest.

For the good of our country and its democracy, I hope more come forward.

Now listen upif you are a self-identified conservative or a proud card-carrying Republican or simply a proud Deplorabletake a deep breathits going to be ok, and you are going to learn to love my book (ok, you will learn to tolerate it).

First lets be truthful with each other: If you self-identify as a proud Republican, proud conservative Evangelical, or proud Deplorable, I am going to assume a loved one or friend suggested you read my book. They very well may have bought this book for you, shoved it in your hands, and said Dad/Mom/Brother/Sister/Aunt/Uncle, you need to read this book .

Or maybe as a committed conservative, you may have watched me on Fox News from 2000 to 2013, and maybe youre just darn curious about what I have to offer that has never been written before by anyone about Fox News.

So listen, friendthis is important. If someone you love suggested you read this book, I must warn you that you will reflexively find these lessons and insights of mine into Fox News tribal warfare strategies and tactics to be fake news.

To this, all I can say to you is buck up, buttercupyou arent a snowflake, are you? I can assure you that these disclosures I am sharing are not fake news or made upthey are very, very real because as a paid Fox News contributor, part-time guest host, and full-time after work drinking buddy to the Foxeratti staff, I lived each and every one of these experiences and lessons.

FNCs Rigged Opinion-Segment-Scam:
Confessions of a Fox News Hit Man

Americas sense of reality is dictated by what it is trying to avoid.

James Baldwin

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

Voltaire

To begin to tell the story of how a little right-wing niche cable channel became the most politically powerful force in America (and the free world), lets first disperse with the label cable news channel. In the grand scheme of things, the traditional concept of a conservative cable news channel is now mostly irrelevant.

Let me give you a little play-by-play on the recent Mueller Report to illustrate my point. As we all now know all too well these days, creating and controlling the first twenty-four-hour narrative of any national political story is now decidedly in the hands of a certain right-wing $3 billion a year for-profit public company. But the real yet almost unimaginable power of Fox News is how it operates as an entire media and non-secular ecosystem that I have come to describe as the American Foxocracy.

Why? Because with Fox Newss now one hundred million-plus monthly audience reach for its emotionally overpowering content, the contest to be the first to own the Mueller story was never in doubt. More importantly, by the time Robert Muellers report on Russian interference landed on Attorney General Barrs desk, the battle to spin it had already been won.

My point here is that narrative spin contest was not won within the confines of what many people still see as a cable news channel.

It is very true that in todays digital device ecosphere, the battle to own the dominant twenty-four-hour news cycle narrative is professional life and death for digital media publishers. Whatever media complex gets the most views, clicks, likes, shares, and streams wins the day (and the enormous ad dollars). For Fox News and its phalanx of White House insiders, Trumpism sycophants, and highly paid spin-doctor contributors like me all spinning the same mutually agreed upon fifth-grade language catchphrase twenty million timesNo collusion, no obstruction, complete exoneration.the game to own the political narrative was over after just a few hours.

In reality, it was over before the attorney general started to speak.

Why? Because with the twenty times larger audience reach on Facebook and YouTube than the other competitors fighting to win the narrative, there was only going to be one clear winner: Fox News. What almost all the media still misses is the crucial lynchpin, the enormous political and cultural power Ive dubbed the Foxocracy. With the introduction in 2008 of what we now call digital surveillance capitalism, aka Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter social media platforms, the audience reach and daily audience engagement time of FNCs white tribal identity content exploded thirty times bigger than FNCs primordial three million prime-time cable-only audience pre-2008.

Fox News provides its content consumers with what they absolutely value more than almost life itself: the most emotionally engaging and satisfying content on the planetwith the exception of kitty and puppy videosfor free.

Social media platforms know what clicks/shares/comments best because every second of every day they digitally surveil their audience to measure and identify the most emotionally engaging content on their digital platform. According to the social media traffic and engagement ratings/metrics, the most engageable content on social media is Fox Newss material. They have algorithmically targeted the white folks aged fifty years and older who have shown themselves to be the most emotionally vulnerable and likely to engage with what I call Foxs white tribal activation content.

And guess what? Starting in 2012, fifty-plus-year-old social media users became the largest and most active segment of Facebooks 240 million American users.