Top 110 Quotes & Sayings by Brian Stelter

There are so many families that are divided by Fox and Trump. I think a lot of people have been surprised by just how deep and how corrupt the roots are - how there's been collusion between Fox and Trump right in plain sight the whole time, and yet it's not often recognized.

It's not as if Trump is addicted to the best-researched, most in-depth, meticulously sourced material in the world. If he were, we'd all be better off, right?

I am glad that 'Hoax' came out a couple weeks before Bob Woodward's book. We both have these one word titles. His is 'Rage,' mine is 'Hoax.' They do make for a great pairing, and I'm not saying that as a sales pitch!

These communities that are losing local news coverage are losing something deeper. They're losing a connection to American democracy. And those connections must be rebuilt. We need more of a bottom-up sense of what it means to produce news.

Trump's Fox News fixation was a major theme of his presidency. He hired people from Fox, fired people because of Fox, and gave most of his national TV interviews to Fox. Sometimes it was hard to tell where Trump ended and Fox began.

Of course, 'Fox & Friends' is more of an entertainment product than a newscast. The show's viewers know that the morning show promotes Trump and his agenda. Most of Trump's interviews are with boosterish shows like this.

I keep hearing from readers who say 'Hoax' helps them understand their own family a little bit better.

The broadcast networks - they are literally broad. They try to appeal to everyone. They try to reach all of America, all the time. Increasingly, they fail to do that, but they try.

The greatest hoax of all of the Trump years is that Donald Trump has convinced one-third of the country not to believe not anything but Sean Hannity and Fox and Trump.

Sean Hannity is a hypocrite!He's blasting anonymous sources and saying journalism is dead when he uses an anonymous source in the form of President Trump.

I was learning this from numerous sources, friends of Hannity, associates of Hannity, who say that off the record, Hannity is complaining about Trump, saying he's a crazy person... But Sean and these other stars of Fox, they're so committed to the business model, to their ratings, they want to make sure their viewers stay tuned.

Many people dismiss morning television as fluff, but the morning hours are where the money is.

Many Republicans knew that Trump's anti-media attacks were damaging, and they cringed when his White House was consumed by his own narcissism. They knew that the country deserved better.

Intelligence agencies, congressional leaders, and outside experts have all assessed that Russia was responsible for a sweeping attack on the US election in 2016. Trump has given lip service to this assessment, saying he accepts the intelligence community's conclusions, while acting like he does not.

It is hard to tell where Fox ends and Trump begins. But if I had to choose one side of this, I would say Fox drives Trump more than Trump drives Fox.

Biden's first day, and Psaki's first day, sent a message that functional government is back.

History suggests that big corporate maneuvers tend to coincide with changes in morning-TV fortunes, either because the new managers tinker with the product or fail to take it seriously.

Well, I think the public has been well-served by the increase in fact-checking. And I find it shocking that not all news outlets have invested in hiring fact-checkers because the line is so pervasive.

I would not leave the 'Times' for a television job.

There are networks now and websites that make Fox News blush, that, you know, people at Fox News say to me, well, those are radicals; those are extremists. And President Trump - if he does not win the election, he may well end up with a show on one of those networks.

I think I look at media differently than anyone older would.

I never covered Barack Obama watching ESPN at night, because he wasn't making life or death choices based on the basketball games.

Fox is great at making mountains out of molehills. Hannity is the best at it.

During the Trump years, many people felt that his antics were impossible to ignore.

Fox is Trump's safe space. It's where he's not going to be humiliated, where he's not going to hear uncomfortable truths.

If you want to understand why a minority of American voters are unplugged from the fact-based news that the rest of the country depends on, just imagine being told multiple times a day that real news is a hoax.

In this war on truth we are all living in, 'hoax' is a potent, malicious, ugly little word and Trump has been using it more every year. So has Fox.

Glenn Beck and others were pretty outrageous and extremely conspiratorial in the pre-Trump years. I don't mean to totally gloss over some of the nuttiness that was airing on Fox pre-Trump, but I do see a distinction between those years and the Trump years.

I think it's clear that Trump is usually in a reactive mode, reacting to what he sees and hears on Fox.

It is an honor to take the helm of 'Reliable Sources,' the very best of a very small number of programs about the media's role in society.

To be sure, every White House tries to limit its exposure to difficult and distracting questions. The Obama administration was scrutinized for its use of late night shows and YouTube chats to get the president's message across in low-risk situations.

Bill O'Reilly truly was always going to go to Italy when the scandal erupted about his secret settlements with women that accused him of harassment. So he decided to go on the vacation that he already scheduled, and then of course, he never came back.

As more and more Americans spend their earliest hours scrolling through news alerts and weather forecasts on their smartphones and tablets, morning shows have to adapt, too. And their biggest competitive advantage may be that, unlike an iPhone, they offer some form of companionship.

Trump granted pardons because of Fox... He raged against migrant 'caravans' because of Fox. He accused public servants of treason because of Fox. And he got the facts wrong again and again because of mistakes and misreporting by the network.

With regards to Trump's treatment of Putin and Russia, national security experts and journalists have been citing the fact pattern and saying there's something strange going on.

Writing is my favorite part of the job.

Chris Wallace is probably the most of an exception because his program, 'Fox News Sunday,' also airs on Fox broadcast stations. So he doesn't feel as many of the same ratings pressures to please the right wing audience versus all the rest of the programs.

Trump lies a whole lot more than Joe Biden or any other Democratic politician.

Everyone at Fox could see that the way to get attention, to get promoted, to get ahead was to hitch a ride with Trump and never look back.

What I always tell people about Trump, or Kellyanne Conway, or Sarah Sanders, is that when you are interviewing these people, it is really more about the interviewer than the interviewee. What I mean by that is that the interviewer has to be ready to interrupt, fact-check, challenge, rebut.

Rarely, if ever, has a cable news channel employed a host who has previously campaigned for the business goals of the channel's parent company. But as channels like MSNBC have moved to more opinionated formats, they have exposed themselves to potential conflicts.

There's a gender gap throughout television and it's very pronounced in morning TV since these shows are mostly meant for women.

News outlets use words like erratic, volatile, unstable but rarely are Trump's words and actions covered as a whole and rarely do news outlets take it to that next level.

One way to solve a mystery is by asking the right questions until answers start to emerge.

Trump has torn off America's Band-Aid. The stories we are covering are about fundamental American values. We are having debates about democracy versus autocracy, the rule of law, equality and diversity.

For a broad, star-powered picture like 'The Interview,' a big-tent release in 2,000 to 3,000 theaters is the top choice for a movie studio like Sony Pictures. It's the difference between a $1 million and a $10 million box office total.

The Internet creates more space for extremism, and the echo chamber effect accelerates the process.

I suppose my attitude is what's most important is that we surround the president's misleading information with accurate information and help people know what is true 'cause I think the biggest trend of the Trump years is that people are increasingly confused about what is real and what is made-up.

There is a war on truth raging every day, and journalists have been forced to fight some of those.

What Fox News has become in 2020 is a conclusion of decades of right wing media and rhetoric against the rest of the media. In the '90s it was about media bias. In the 2000s it was about media bias. Now, the rhetoric is so much more extreme. It's about enemies of the people.

There is a feedback loop between Trump and TV that is both good and bad.

We should always remember that Fox News will stick out like a sore thumb no matter what the other news outlets do, and that has to be recognized as an issue.

Journalists have to call out and correct the lies and smears polluting the air waves.

For all the talk about, and appeals to, Trump fans who wanted to watch the press corps bullied and bashed, most Americans don't want that. They never did. Most Americans want to know what is real and true so that they can make the best decisions for their families.

The Trump White House has employed several different strategies for sidestepping uncomfortable questions. There has been a rightward tilt at press conferences and briefings. At Q&A sessions with foreign heads of state, Trump has bypassed the country's biggest newsrooms and called on reporters from conservative outlets instead.

You can convince yourself of just about anything when you want to believe a conspiracy theory.

Trump forces us to ask questions we didn't used to ask.

One of the principles of White House coverage is that a wide variety of news outlets should be represented at briefings and press conferences.

Look, conspiracy theories are so much more interesting than the truth. But the last time I checked, Fox still has the word 'news' in its name.

Fox is described as a news operation, a news network, but it's also a political operation.