On any given day, it's pretty easy to find all the ways in which modern media has substituted politicization for truth and/or serious reflection. Today, you could take the so-called Santa Barbara killing spree by Elliot Rodger. After the usual first round of back and forth sniping about the availability of weapons.
A debate, if you can call it that, has sprung up about whether it's Rodger's resentments that were fueled by frat boy movies about schlubby guys like Seth Rogan who nevertheless get access to sex and fun. So now, in a complete vacuum of corroborating information, two sides are flailing about this proposition while Rupert Murdoch's New York Post helpfully located bathing suit photos of a girl who may have spurned Elliot Rodger many years ago, when she was 10. Somebody help us.
Today, meet Joe Muto, who tried to step into all this madness and hold onto his core beliefs while, for 8 years, living a lie as a secret liberal working inside FOX News. When he became a mole for the website Gawker, he was outed and fired.
Before he left, Muto collected enough about the inner workings of FOX to write An Atheist in the FOXhole: A Liberal's Eight-Year Odyssey Inside the Heart of the Right-Wing Media.
Learn about Muto's experiences, and take a wider look at the vastness of the new media landscape, how it can inform, as well as manipulate, the masses.
Muto will be at the Mark Twain House and Museum on Tuesday at 7:00 pm to talk about his experiences. Book signing to follow, and it's all free.
What do you think? Comment below, email Colin@wnpr.org, or tweet @wnprcolin.
GUEST:
- Joe Muto is the author of An Atheist in the FOXhole: A Liberal's Eight-Year Odyssey Inside the Heart of the Right-Wing Media
