The Listening Post

Blaze of fire and fury: Trump insight or fiction?

A look at the book that has set tongues wagging across the media landscape. Plus, Egypt’s Sisi talk show bias.

On The Listening Post this week: Michael Wolff’s fly-on-the-wall expose sets the White House scrambling and divides US media. Plus, the Egyptian talk show hosts humming Sisi’s tune.

The book that shook the White House

As copies of Fire and Fury: Inside The Trump White House are flying off the shelves, we look at author Michael Wolff’s approach to sourcing and the facts, as well as the American mainstream media’s continued obsession with a spectacle they did much to create.

Contributors:

Pete Vernon, Columbia Journalism Review
John Ziegler, columnist, Mediaite
Hamid Dabashi, Columbia University
Sarah Kendzior, writer

On our radar:

  • Iran has faced its largest anti-government protests in nearly a decade, and social media is among the places where the fight is being fought.
  • In India, the government has filed a criminal complaint against a journalist who reported on a data breach of a controversial government initiative – the “Aadhar” biometric identity scheme.

Spinning for Sisi: Egypt’s talk show hosts

Egyptians call them “emperors”, and every night millions tune in to watch them lecture, entertain and rant their way through hours of television output. We look at the talk show hosts on the front lines of Abdel Fattah El Sisi‘s government’s propaganda efforts.

Contributors:

Marwan Kraidy, director, Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication and author of The Naked Blogger of Cairo
Fatima El Issawi, senior lecturer in Journalism, University of Essex and author of Arab National Media and Political Change