CNN’s Stelter book ‘Hoax’ due out in August

CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter will publish a new book detailing Fox News’s coverage of the coronavirus pandemic in August, publisher Simon & Schuster said.

The book, which is available for preorder, examines Fox News coverage of the coronavirus from January through the spring as Fox News hosts such as Sean Hannity accused other news networks of playing up the threat of the virus in order to damage President Trump’s reelection chances.

“In March, as the deadly virus spiraled out of control, Sean Hannity mocked ‘coronavirus hysteria’ as [the] ‘new hoax’ from the left. Millions of Americans took Hannity and Trump’s words as truth—until some of them started to get sick,” reads a description of the book on Simon & Schuster’s website.

“From the moment Trump glided down the golden escalator to announce his candidacy in the 2016 presidential election to his acquittal on two articles of impeachment in early 2020, Fox hosts spread his lies and smeared his enemies. Over the course of two years, Stelter spoke with over 250 current and former Fox insiders in an effort to understand the inner workings of Rupert Murdoch’s multibillion-dollar media empire,” it continues.

Stelter, a top critic of Fox News at rival CNN, inked a deal for the book last year before the pandemic began and was initially set to look at the president’s sometimes-fraught relationship with his favorite news network, which aides have said he watches for hours every day.

The scope of the book eventually evolved to focus on Fox’s coverage of the coronavirus pandemic and how that may have affected the president’s judgment on the issue.

White House officials have maintained that the president took early action to prevent the spread of the coronavirus in the U.S., though the president said in January that the outbreak of the virus was “under control,” weeks before the worst of the pandemic hit U.S. shores.