"The Study of How That Right-Wing Ecosystem Works"

"The core of the book is the study of how that right-wing ecosystem works. According to the authors, false stories are launched on a series of extreme Web sites, such as InfoWars (the home of Alex Jones), 'none of which claim to follow the norms or processes of professional journalistic objectivity.' Those stories are then transmitted to outlets such as Fox News and the Daily Caller, which, according to the authors, 'do claim to follow journalistic norms,' but often fail in that function when it comes to tales from the Web sites. Notably, the authors write, 'this pattern is not mirrored on the left wing.' There are no significant Web sites on the left that parallel the chronic falsity of those on the right, and the upstream sources do follow traditional journalistic standards, and serve 'as a consistent check on the dissemination and validation of the most extreme stories when they do emerge on the left, and have no parallels in the levels of visibility or trust that can perform the same function on the right.'"

Jeffrey Toobin at The New Yorker reviews Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics by Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, and Hal Roberts.