Slow Burn editorial director and host of Slow Burn: The Rise of Fox News. Author of NBCC winner THE QUEEN.
Sep 18 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The season premiere of Slow Burn: The Rise of Fox News is out today. It's about the moment when Fox really became itself, and became a bogeyman for the left: the 2000 election, when George W. Bush's cousin presided over the Fox decision desk slate.com/podcasts/slow-…
We taped interviews with around 50 people for this series, including Fox reporters, producers, and hosts who've never spoken publicly before. They have ... stories. And they also reckon with their experiences at Fox in a really open way.
Aug 25, 2019 • 34 tweets • 12 min read
Given the reporting about the “attribution issues” with the hit podcast Crime Junkie, I thought the time was right to talk about my experience with the comedy/history podcast @thedollop. A THREAD.
In 2013, I published a long feature in @Slate on Linda Taylor, aka the original “welfare queen.” It took a year of reporting -- deep dives with primary and secondary sources + a ton of original interviews slate.com/articles/news_…
Jul 19, 2019 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
This story, which was originally published in the Washington Star and then reprinted in the NYT, reveals a lot about the differences between Reagan and Trump + the problems with journalistic “fact-checking”
Reagan started telling the Linda Taylor story on the campaign trail in early 1976. He never mentioned her name, never discussed her race, and never used the phrase “welfare queen” (altho he would say it a couple times later, off the trail). He called her "a woman in Chicago"
