Brian Stelter on Fox, Trump, and His New Book, “Network of Lies”

When Dominion, the election tech company, sued Fox News for casting it as the bogeyman that “stole” the 2020 election from Donald Trump, it dealt the network a $787.5 million dollar blow — the largest-known defamation settlement in U.S. history. It also forced Fox to air out a lot of its dirty laundry. Hundreds of emails and personal texts sent from producers, executives, marquee talent like Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, and all the way up to Rupert Murdoch were suddenly thrust into public view through court filings.

The most salacious of those nuggets were seized on by the press earlier this year. They included tidbits like this from Carlson, publicly one of Trump’s most ardent fans, but who privately told his staff: “I hate him passionately.” Or this from Murdoch: “We want to make Trump a non person.”

The correspondence revealed the astonishing hypocrisy at the network, which fed its viewers the “big lie” night after night, though its leadership believed the conspiracy theory was, as Carlson put it, “absurd.” The revelation fueled one chaotic news cycle, but the media critic Brian Stelter thought there was a larger story to tell. Collectively, the Dominion suit and the Jan. 6 investigation unearthed a massive amount of information about what’s going on behind the scenes at Fox, much of which hasn’t been reported, Stelter tells us.

“I felt like my job was to go through the depositions and the text messages between White House aides and Fox producers — to take those hundreds of little puzzle pieces and arrange them to create a full picture,” he says. 

There’s probably no person better equipped for that job than Stelter, who often refers to himself as a “cable news nerd.” Since he was an undergrad at Towson University, Stelter has obsessively tracked American media, first as a popular blogger, then as a correspondent for the New York Times, and until last year as the host of CNN’s Reliable Sources. When his show was canceled, it freed Stelter up to sift through this deluge of primary source material and produce his third book, out this week.

Network of Lies is a meticulously reported account of how the big lie was born and broadcast to millions, and it provides an intimate view of the ideological war being waged at Fox, as told by its biggest stars. We spoke to Stelter about the book, his thoughts on the future of the network, what’s next for Carlson, and what he has planned post-CNN.

Katie Couric Media: You wrote about Fox and its “codependent” relationship with Trump in your previous book, Hoax. Why did you decide to return to Fox in this new book?

Stelter: Because this time, the most explosive quotes are on the record. Normally in my media reporting, I have to rely on anonymous sources, who are afraid to lose their jobs if they speak out. But because of Dominion’s lawsuit against Fox, so many emails and texts and memos have been exposed from the likes of Sean Hannity and Rupert Murdoch. This is the story of the “big lie” in their own words.

From your reporting, you believe that the hosts at Fox fall into two categories: Those who understood the election wasn’t stolen and those who bought the big lie.

I think Maria Bartiromo is the best example of a Fox host who really, truly believed that Trump was the rightful winner and it really shows the 180 she made from her days as a real, professional business journalist on CNBC. She banked on Trump winning. She cheered for Trump to win, and when he lost, she just couldn’t take it. That probably explains why she started the Dominion conspiracy theory. One of the Fox executives, who was supposedly in charge, even commented to a colleague that Maria had GOP conspiracy theorists in her ear but that she was completely unaware of it. 

She’s on one end, and I’d put Dana Perino, who’s now a co-host on The Five, on the other. She swung the other way. Before Perino came to journalism, she was a White House press secretary in the Bush administration and became one of Fox’s truth tellers. Perino knew the Dominion smears were crazy; she knew Rudy Giuliani’s lies were dangerous and she was sidelined for a period because she reported as much.

A lot was made of Rupert Murdoch’s directive to “make Trump a non person” on the network. For a while, Fox did seem to follow that guidance, but that doesn’t really seem to be the case anymore.

All throughout 2021, Trump was persona non grata across large segments of the Republican party. It’s easy to forget this, but he was really minimized by Fox and the GOP. But there was this effort to redefine the January 6 attack in the minds of the Trump base, so that the former president was recast as the victim as opposed to the instigator. It didn’t work at first, but after a few months of Tucker Carlson pushing this on air, this new narrative that maybe the feds were behind this, that the elites wanted this to happen to make Trump look bad, that this was a deep-state plot, takes hold. This alternative storyline gave enough cover for Republican voters to stand with Trump and helped draw him back to the center of the party. I think that’s what gets us to the point where Rupert’s desire to make Trump a “non person” is overwhelmed by Tucker Carlson’s storytelling about January 6. 

There have been a lot of theories flying around about why Tucker Carlson was ultimately booted from Fox. What do you think caused the breakup?

I think he was on very thin ice for a very long time, but he pretended to be untouchable. He bragged about his close relationship with Lachlan Murdoch, but in reality, the two men testified under oath that they rarely spoke. On top of that, he was a real jerk. Behind the scenes, he picked fights with producers and caused all sorts of headaches for management. He sowed conspiracy theories on air that were even too much for Lachlan to stand, and that was a giant problem, both for the country — because they were totally bogus — and for the business. Advertisers were repelled by Tucker, they didn’t want to be anywhere near his show. So there wasn’t any one reason for his cancellation; there were dozens of reasons. It’s like any bad breakup: By the time one party decides to dump the other, the resentments and grievances have been festering for years. 

Now that Rupert Murdoch is transitioning into “semi-retirement,” as you call it in the book, how involved do you think he’ll be at Fox?

Rupert Murdoch will never truly retire, but this week he is semi-retiring. He’s taking a step back in order to let his son take a step forward, because he wants the world to view Lachlan as the boss. I think he’s doing that, in part, because when Rupert dies, there will be a power struggle over his companies. So he wants to empower Lachlan as much as he can. That’s how I view the situation. The reality is that Rupert Murdoch still has control, because he has voting power over his media companies.

Post-Dominion, Fox has trimmed its news division and shed some of its respected journalists. What do you think that means for Fox’s future? Do you think the network will become more extreme in the years to come?

I think what’s happening at Fox is also what’s happening to the Republican party. The radicalization of the GOP and Fox are happening in harmony, and often because of one another. Republican lawmakers are catering to the far right, to the people who will vote in primaries — the same people who are glued to Fox all day — instead of trying to appeal to a wider array of voters. I’m dancing around your question, but I think the direct answer is yes, the content on Fox is gonna continue to move to the right, to continue to move further away from a shared reality. That is making this country a far more polarized place, a place where it’s harder for neighbors to talk to neighbors. A place where it’s harder for families to relate to one another at Thanksgiving.

What do you think is next for Tucker Carlson?

He’s building a new media company. He wants to rebuild what he lost when his show was canceled and to create a more digitally oriented platform for his far-right commentary. He’s now seeking investors and advertisers to do that. I wouldn’t count him out, but I would be surprised if he’s ever as popular or powerful as he was on Fox.

What about you? Do you hope to return to TV?

I’m having the best year of my life off TV. I didn’t know this would happen when I was canned at CNN, but stay-at-home-dad life has been an absolute dream, and I don’t want it to end anytime soon. My kids are six and four, which means they still really like me. I’m not sure that’ll be the case when they’re teenagers, but right now I’m having a blast being class dad. I didn’t think it’d be this way, I thought I’d be covering the primaries everyday on CNN talking about the media coverage of the primaries. But this is a really good life. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.