calling in itch appreciate it. and as we continue here from miami, we're pleased to be joined by journal gist and awe their, sharyl attkisson, i think you had a chance to listen to those final few calls that we heard, and lizan in santa rosa,

california, thinks that people were duped often into voting for donald trump. >> guest: there is that view out there but as i talk about in "the smear" if you actually watched the rallies of hillary clinton and donald trump issue tried to watch almost every one. you talk to people outside the big cities, which i did a lot of, that's what led me to predict in advance that donald trump would be president when so many others cooperate see that. think you get a different picture than the stereotype that it bandied about. >> host: tie the spear into into election 2016. were there campaigns going on sub rosa? >> guest: totally. 2016 was the emit my of all the factors, whether it's emotional media, smear industry in washington, dc, that's grown to this huge level, all the tack tactics. everything claim into play in

2016. more money was spent -- gazillions -- more by hillary clinton and her supporters than on donald trump, far more, and i guess the lesson is even though, as i say in the book, the liberal side and the hillary clinton side tented to permeate the press, and the narrative against trump was upick questionout and yet he won. the commentary is disease spit me money and the democrats and media against donald trump he defied the smear and that's why i called them the wild card candidate in the book. >> host: what is the smear industry? >> guest: the smear industry is a collection of groups that i've defined and some of them are paid groups, nonprofits. i'll give examples. pr firms that have crisis management functions. llcs, global law firms. they're nonprofits, charities in some cases. they're web sites. they all work together, they all

have components that are designed to take down ideas that they oppose, often by personally attacking the people most eloquent at expressing the ideas they oppose. what differentiates a smear from the truth, because there are often elements of trouble within the smear, but its purpose its rooted in annihilation and those who are directing the smear, often hidden from the public, want to remain inindividualible and want it to look like there's an organic grassroots effort going on when they're actually pulling the strings, often in a very organized and well-financed way to smear an idea or people or group. >> host: can you put a dollar figure on what the industry has grown into? i think it's multibillions but because it's not broken down that way, let's say every p.r. firm has a come opinion next of crisis management but it's not broken down that way. how much they spend on that. but it's big money. everybody node when the call

goes in, when someone has to defend themselves or deflect or wants to attack and a call goes into the crisis management folks 0 their strategic communications people, these are often elements of smears at the most basic level. and there are also many hidden ways that smear goes on, whether they're paid people making comments on the federal register, whether there are people that are paid to rent the use of their anytime to sign op-eds. i would say huge number of op-eds if not the majority are now orchestrated and written by somebody else but signed by someone su. the newspapers know this and the publications onknow this. it's an open secret. that's part of how ideas are sometimes either forwarded or stopped and/or people are smeared. >> host: we have also been hearing recently about opposition research firms and their role in smearing. is this also a growing industry? >> guest: absolutely. opposition research is key to nearly every serious campaign,

unfortunately. if you're just an average american that doesn't want to think that there is -- i guess candidates have to do due diligence. this want to find out what -- sometimes they offer research themselves to find about out whats findable about themselves and that is a big industry and those people are paid a lot of my. >> host: we want to take calls in case you're interested in talking about this topic. 202-748-8200 east and central time zone. 202-748-8201 for those in the mountain and pacific time zone. so what's your day job these day snooze my time is largely consumed producing my weekly show called "full measure" and it's on sinclair stations nationwide. we're expanding to more spaces. we in 43 million households. and it's basically a straight news show that is going to do

stories that have not been done to death all week. for example, my lead story this week, i visit a three countries, the philippines, singapore, and korea to talk about china's bun belt, one road economic policy, which threatens to put the united states in a back seat. in southeast asia. why should we care? aspent a lot of time trying have people explain that and explained in fairly simple terms so people can grasp these concepts they don't have time to research for themselves. >> host: is there a tie-in between your first book, "stone wail possessed and your second book" the smear. "in consider" the smear "a seek squall. stonewalled covered the time when i was as cnbc and saw the moms to control the news and groups becoming very good at getting their nose under the tent of news organization to influence what we do and don't put on tv. i left cbs and this book takes it further and looks deeply in

the industry, inside the industry in a way i don't thing has been done before that has developed largely unseen by the american public but a multibillion dollar industry that hat the smear its roots. what i call the smear. >> host: i don't think you have publicly discussed your personal politics, but in many levels you're presumed to be a conservative. >> guest: i think now that's definitely the propaganda that has been put out, which is fine if people want to think that. i used to be call largely liberal. the think you can pick peeks of what i have done and make the argue. i'm anticorporate, pro corporate, liberal, whatever you want to cherry pick. try to look at stories that are underserved, maybe others aren't doing to death, or angles underserved on stories and just take common sense look at it and ask questions. i have many devote liberal and conservative fans of the

program. have served investigative emmy -- awards -- my recent one for investigating republicans and not liberal bud at follows investigating liberals. most of my reporting, i'm not very interested in politics. don't like it. seems to come into my and people want to pigeon hole what you do but most of what i do is nonpolitical, just watch-dogging whatever the powers may be. >> host: in the smear, thetivebrock plays a large hole. >> guest: dave brock is a fascinating character. the people i interviewed, both the conservative smear artists and the liberal smear artists alike name him as someone who is uniquely successful at what he has done with his network of nonprofits, llcs, web sites, under many different names to appear that though they're neutral sometimes authorities, to appear as those there's many people behind him and it's really a small group.

they've been successful in campaigns who got against hillary clinton or other idea that david brock supports and this billionaire donor is fascinating because he began as a conservative shire artest going after the clintons and then switched sides and became someone who work nor clintons, smearing people on the other side. >> host: sharyl is attkisson is our gust. es per ran a is calling in locally. >> caller: thank you for taking my call if don't consider miss either a republican or depcrat or independent. i have vote for both parties accordingly. i do any own research and go with who i think is the best for this great country that i love,

and i arrived being -- [inaudible] -- in 1967. i find this great country i strongly love so much. after i finish my time here i went to europe, went around europe and different countries because my major is languages so i could see the big difference between those countries and the united states of america. -- >> host: thank you for calling in. we appreciate hearing your voice and your view. let hit the other coast and let's hear from guillermo in los angeles. >> caller: good morning, sir. thank you. for this enlightened program. i'm a yellow dog democrat, and i've voted straight democrat

since jimmy carter, and when donald trump came down the elevator -- the escalator -- i'm sorry -- i knew he was going to win. he touched something in me i never voted for him, would never vote for him. i despise the man. but he touch a nerve. i knew he was going to win. i predicted it. used to have a show on the spanish radio. even told people, i'm hispanic, immigrant, but he -- so i'm quite disagree with the author. i don't think it's so much the smear, is that people did not realize that donald trump represented -- he was touching a nerve -- the immigration issue was organic. knew somebody who would touch the immigration issue will win, and -- >> host: all right. guillermo, thank you very much. does the smear cover the 2016

campaign and whether or not there were forces working for either hillary clinton or donald trump? >> guest: that's a big part of the book in the end. we planned to just sort of wrap it up after the election with the results, and then that happened and the fake news trend happened and i dug into the origin of fake news and the phrase, which i considered propaganda, and i wanted to say, yellow dog democrat means he has maybe some left liberal tendencies. trying to remember, maybe fiscally conservative -- >> host: no, yellow dog democrat is somebody who will vote for the democrat even if it's a yell dough dog. the blue dog democrat is the more moderate democrat. >> guest: when it was the other caller. we asked people about their political leanings and the gentleman that just spoke -- said he would vote for trump even though he is a yellow dog. >> host: he would not vote for him unless the touched a nerve

-- but he touched a nerve. >> guest: many americans are not in a box. if you say are you liberal or conservative, democrat or republican, many americans are on a sliding scale. may feel one way on some issues and another at other issues and are in a bit of a frustration depending on -- in a state of flux depending on their experience, and people are booked in and i talk to a lot of people who don't feel comfortable in those boxes. >> you talked about looking for the origin of fake news. >> guest: when it rolled out felt look the rollout of a pop began da campaign. when from -- i googled this, almost never in use as a phrase to suddenly every headline every day and i remember when president obama first introduced this, not by chance ex-spoke at carnegie melon and he said there was a need for people to curate the news. said no one is clamoring for

curating the news. so i did some investigation and learned i create the origins of the efforts in september 13, 2016, when a nonprofit called "first draft" came up with the idea to go after news hopes and fake news and then the rollout. president obama got on were the news every day was talking about it, hillary clinton got on order and initiated as a liberal effort to steer panel away from stories they didn't like and some were blatantly false. some conservative misinformation web sites for example. but at the heart feel like it was possibly an effort to reiner to information, the last place where it's free, and people can go on the internet and the immediate use doesn't control and it the democrats or republicans don't control. i looked into who funded "first draft" because i like to follow the money, and they're tax filings were not filed even though they're a nonprofit.

they told me their funding came from google, and google's parent company is run by eric smitted who started this first draft initiative around the beginning of the election cycle, and eric i eric smitted smitted was a top hillary donor and looked like a coordinated effort to folk accuse people on fake news. ... >> host: could take a phrase and it would reach president obama. i mean, there had to be a line there, and you see that line as

going through google and eric schmidt, correct? >> guest: yes. i see that there was an effort on a broad scale among the people that shape narratives every day in the news the put fake news on the plate of americans. there was a plan, there was a rollout of this campaign. but it got out of their hands, and i think donald trump may be the only politician that could have done what he did. every time they called him that, he called them that. and pretty soon, "the washington post" -- who loved that phrase for a while -- was crying uncle and saying we need to stop using that phrase. so, you know, part of the mastery of donald trump in his own ability to turn around propaganda or initiate his own propaganda. >> host: sheryl atkinson's most recent book is called "the smear," and martha is calling in from wichita, kansas. >> caller: hello, ms. attkisson. i'm calling because i recently

saw a program on hbo called last week tonight with john oliver, and on that program he was giving a story of the one-sided kind of national feed that was sent through sinclair stations to their local networks on their local news programs and showing that the story was not changed in any way and read exactly the same on each station. and i don't remember the story, but it was rather one-sided. and i don't know if you're familiar with that program. but my question, i think, is relationed to sinclair -- related to sinclair broadcasting. and you may not know their politics too much, but do you think that sinclair broadcasting is supporting a bill to release

various companies in local markets in the control of multi-local stations and newspapers? if you understand that question. [laughter] it was, again -- >> host: martha, i think you're referring to the media ownership changes that the fcc is looking at currently. >> caller: exactly. >> host: sinclair is looking at a merger with the tribune broadcasting company. sheryl attkisson, anything there that you can or will address. >> >> guest: yes. i can't tell you about corporate policy. my program is done under sinclair, and there's been a large propaganda movement, people who normally wouldn't hear about owners, now comedy shows that are part of the propaganda campaign to attack sinclair which is seen as a threat by the people who dominate the media landscape and people of certain political

affiliations. sinclair's owner is a conservative wealthy, i think, billionaire, just as i worked for liberal billionaires when i worked at cnn and cbs, there are people connected politically who work at the top of these organizations who contribute money to democrats and republicans. i don't remember everybody questioning it when i worked for the liberal people for 30 years. it didn't really impact, as i saw, our news on a daily basis. those corporate bosses did not get intertwined with our daily news coverage. now, there were other issues that did happen that i write about, but it's not as though sumner redstone or ted turner came into the newsroom and influence ared our coverage. in fact, i think ted turner worked really hard at cnn to make us stay factual at the time. likewise, sinclair at the top, the conservative who does head sinclair has not interfered with my program. i've had no interference compared to cnn's -- i'm sorry,

cbs toward the end had a great deal of interference. it's been a freshness that i can't describe to be able to go into another independent program that doesn't try to shape the news and put out narratives. these are legitimate questions to be asked. i certainly don't blame people for saying, gosh, sinclair is own by a conservative guy, what does that do for your news, but i would say in fairness, liberal networks send out one-sided information that are seen by more people than the sinclair station. you have to dig in and wonder why only one station owner is getting all this press on comedy talk shows and on capitol hill when the others have existed in that same bailiwick for so long kind of unquestioningly, at least by the same people. >> host: who is the owner of

sinclair? what's his name? >> guest: david smith. he's probably not the owner, he's just the one i dealt with when i was being hired. we discussed about my program being independent, and i said, you know, i wasn't really planning to work again in the business necessarily. and when they propossessed an idea for me -- proposed an idea for me just like a program i used to do at cbs, i said it cannot be conservative. it cannot be any more conservative than any stories at cbs were conservative or liberal. and he said you don't worry about that. he goes if you just tell people the truth, they'll probably be conservative. [laughter] i said, well, we can tell the truth and haven't had really a bit of interference. so, again, less interference working for the conservative billionaires than i certainly had at cbs the last two years working for the liberal billionaires. >> host: thus the book, "stonewalled," your first book. you alluded to this, but the power of the internet when it comes to the smear campaign. >> guest: you know, i almost got

chills when i was speaking with one operator who's a military guy who said, you know, we can start a whole movement in 140 characters and a handful of fake twitter accounts. and you look at the solicitations the government has put online, we're soliciting software for people to maintain social media accounts, fake social media accounts, but it looks like they each have individual ip addresses that rotate. they do it with connections where if you look up these people, they'll have friends that look real, and they'll be friends with people you know. they look like they do things and go places. why are the government, political forces maintaining these fake accounts? well, they know social media's the number one way to influence opinion right now whether it's votes or whatever ideas they may want to go out. and they virtually control that dynamic in many ways. when he talked about that, it kind of gave me chills. i also say that, you know, a

rumor or innuendo or fake news if you want to call it that, that would have been seen by relatively few people and died quickly before the internet can now develop a global following overnight and manipulating images in photography and video to make it look like something happened that didn't, this stuff has just been, you know, kind of vomited out there on our landscape and is, you know, hard to separate fact from fiction. very difficult. >> host: let's hear from another caller, and this is elizabeth in crested butte, colorado. hi, blood test. >> caller: hello. you know, i'm about to lose my mind. i'm tired of being patient with everybody. i think donald trump is a depraved moral coward and his supporters are deliberately ignorant and dumb as a box of rocks. thank you. >> host: and that was elizabeth in crested butte, colorado. barbie is in newark, new jersey. bar by, you're on -- barbie,

you're on with sheryl attkisson. >> caller: hi. my brother once told me, barbara, you have enemies, and then he wouldn't tell me who my enemies are, so maybe my own brother is my enemy. plus, i've been banned from academic associations, and they wouldn't tell me why i was banned, just that i made people uncomfortable in my presentations. and i just wanted to know how does a person, an individual who doesn't have much money, how do they find out if they do have enemies if they're laughed at and called crazy and paranoid? you know, a lot of paranoid people are called paranoid, and then they find out we're telling the truth, you know? people are trying to kill me, and then they get killed. and the other thing i wanted to know, do you know what newsstands for?

and then the final thing, do you know anything about dark social -- >> host: okay, barbie? >> caller: yeah. >> host: barbie, tell us what does newsstand for via ben franklin? >> caller: north, east, west and south. >> host: very good. thank you, barbie, for calling in. without addressing whatever barbie's situation is directly, have you ever been the target of a smear campaign, high level, low level? >> guest: well, yes. i mean, that's kind of the genesis of "stonewalled" and "the smear," that i saw these organized groups going against not just me, but pulitzer prize winners, new york times expert reporters when they would get too close. it almost is as if you can expect more organized blowback from them calling the station, calling corporate forces, working on social media against you to controversialize you and your reporting. the closer you get to an important truth, the more of that you'll see.

and i remember saying to a lawyer some years ago, i said this industry that's manipulating the news and calling and pressuring us, i said they've got nothing but time. this is their job, time and money. and is we're ill-equipped to kind of fight back. we're always playing defense after the fact which isn't very effective. shouldn't we be developing some sort of strategy so that we though this exists, we know what's going to happen on social media when we get close to a good story, but nobody had the time. you know, we're just busy covering the news and doing our job against these industries who are well connected. they will do questionable things and perfectly legal things, but they have a lot of money and time to controversialize reporters and stories to try to stop reporting on a line of inquiry. so, yes, i've been targeted with many smears, but when i go to the investigative reporter conferences and i have other journalists complain of the same thing but in a fearful sense because it's not as though they fear the groups like media matters or the conservative

equivalents that try to do that, but they fear that their bosses listen to them. they know that these are astroturf efforts that don't genuinely represent a segment of the public the way they pretend. they know what it's all about, but they're afraid their bosses are moved and motivated by these social media campaigns and by all the pushback and the quasi-news blogosphere that's largely controlled by these people that will write articles that support them. it's a beat network. so, yes. and the woman was talking about being called paranoid and all of that. those are key words that are used that have been tested that are very effective to use against your enemy if you're a propagandist. you call them mentally unstable. there's certain words that you'll see over and over again when you, when -- kind of a way to detect that a smear might be going on because there's key phrases and words they use against people and ideas. >> host: so earlier on today here at the miami book fair we were talking with author jefferson morley about his new

biography on james angleton of the cia. he was talking about how mr. angleton had developed kind of a deep state within the state. when it comes to this smear campaign and politics, do you believe that there is a deep state, a subrosa state within the state controlling? >> guest: i guess it fends on how you -- it depends on how you define it, but i know because i had many great sources under the obama administration, many sources under the trump administration in different federal agencies. some of them were there under clinton and bush. some of the same people persist from administration to administration. and i often argue it's not the president at the top that is pulling a lot of strings, it's that group of faceless bureaucrats that most people don't know their name, but they're controlling the information that goes up to the president, and they're controlling information that comes down and are making sure certain things do and don't happen. there definitely is that, you know, that layer, and everybody

who's been in d.c. long enough knows that. we know people who work in that layer. i'm not sure if it fit it is criteria of deep state -- fits the criteria of depp state, but there definitely are people whether it's obama, clinton, bush or trump who disagree with that president and just wait it out because they know they will be there longer than that president will be there. >> host: next call comes from jane, joshua tree, california. jane, good afternoon. >> caller: good afternoon. i'd love to speak to sharyl's first statement or very early statement that -- [inaudible] control the news. and that gets my goat. i'm a person that loves radio. i was traveling across the country to take care of my elders in washington state and new mexico, turned on that radio dial, and year by year the

radio -- the viewpoint on that radio became narrower, narrower and narrower. i live 20 miles from twentynine palms marine base. i get up into the high desert. i turn on my radio dial, and it's four very, very far-right christian preachers yelling at anybody who doesn't think exactly the way they do are evil. and then it's rush limbaugh on three channels at the same time spewing hate. this kind of vitriol and hatred that's been infecting the airwave withs for 30 years and now is at a crescendo point where radio stations in san francisco, radio stations in santa fe, radio stations in seattle, all alternate voices are gone except for maybe an npr station. you know -- >> host: all right. jane, i think we got the idea. conservative radio and then jane's view, a takeover of

radio. >> guest: i have not studied that phenomenon. i don't refer to it. i do know there's just the general idea that liberal interests control much of the broadcasts and conservative -- television broadcasts, and conservative interests control much of the radio broadcast. when i'm talking about control of the news, i'm not speaking to the industry bandwidth and that sort of thing. i just don't know about that. i'm talking about how special interests from both parties and corporations have been able to, as i say, get their nose under the tent in newsrooms. not just influence us with their talking points and their lips and make us report what they want to report on a given day, make us focus on that, we've also sured them in our newsrooms as analysts and pundits and sometimes managers and reporters. so now there's very little difference between the talking points we would be getting from an outsider and the talking points that you'd get when you turn on the news, and there's a reason for that. some of the people who work there aren't interested in journalism and giving the facts, they're interested in

promulgating talking points. and because we often invite both sides on, we call it fair, when all you're getting is either state-run media or to propaganda or corporate propaganda, in my view, rather than reporters digging up original stories that people do not want to see on tv. if someone brings me a story, that's usually a story i don't want to tell because enough people are telling it, or i see that as a diversion from something else that could be more important. but too often today it's very easy for someone -- i don't know if people know this, but p.r. firms and law firms and so on bring stories to reporters, bring research, bring theirives, have -- narratives, have them on e-mail lists. and reporters often, especially quasi-reporters in the non-journalist world, that sort of mix of blogs and so on that do some news and some other enough, they will lap that stuff up and further it without their own investigation and research. and this is what i'm talking about when i talk about control of the news. >> host: sheryl attkisson, a

couple years ago maybe during the 2014 congressional campaign the koch brothers became a big issue and kind of a, an evil, evil issue for the democrats. they'd be on the senate floor, and harry reid would rail against the koch brothers, and it turns out that most americans didn't know who the koch brothers were. but did that begin as a smear campaign, do you know? i mean, was that a coordinated campaign? >> guest: well, yes. that was definitely coordinated, although as i say at the heart of many smears as my definition in the book is there are grains of truth. the reason i call them smears is because the people who are trying to troy other people's ideas -- destroy other people's ideas are often trying to -- they have political interests that are rooted in annihilation of a target. it's not so much that they're really trying to expose what they say on the surface, they're trying to expose, they're trying to remove an enemy or an effective spokesman for a cause,

for example. the koch brothers are interesting, i googled -- in fact, i googled today because someone raised this question. there are so many charts done on their ubiquitous ties and all the groups that i've done in my book, "the smear," they're so easy to find. so many people have focused on the koch brothers. and i started to focus on them a bit, but they pretty much stopped back in 2016. they're in my book, but not in the starring role they might have hadthey had supported trump versus david brock and his group supporting hillary clinton. the koch brothers, like many republicans or conservatives, did not like donald trump and did not spend money on him. they kind of sat it out which is, i think, very unusual. but it's part of the reason why hillary clinton far outmatched trump in terms of the fundraising. >> host: next call comes from guy in reading, pa. hi, guy.

>> caller: i just want to put this out there, that i think the birther movement got trump elected. i think it's because there's a lot of hate out there -- [audio difficulty] highest office in the land. a lot of people were not even political. but they decided that they were going to vote for trump because, in their words, he speaks their language. >> host: guy, i apologize, i'm going to have to hang up on you. i was having trouble. the first words i heard, and then this was a lot of break-up. but he talked about the birther movement. did you trace that one back to an organized smear campaign? >> guest: yes. i mean, according to those who were first to report on it, it was started by hillary clinton, her supporters when she was running against barack obama. there were quite a few smears from her very expert smear artists that were allegedly responsible for quite a few of the big smears against barack obama when they were

competitors. and then the conservative side picked up on those, the smears that were generated in some cases by hillary clinton. the conservatives liked those and took some of those and they took on a new life of their own. that, i believe, there's pretty good documentation i mention in the book, anecdotal by reporters involved, that that was pitched to them by one of hillary clinton's smear artists. i think it was blumenthal, sydney blumenthal. >> host: investigative reporters, and tell me the if i'm wrong, really can't be chummy with everybody, can they? i mean, like a political reporter, you become chummy with all the other political reporters, but you guys are a special breed, aren't you? >> guest: before i was an investigative reporter, i was not chummy with these people. [laughter] they don't see me as, i don't think, their friends or allies. and a lot of people in my industry do pal around with, you know, they live in the same community with people, they see

them all the time. i don't. i live way outside of d.c. so far outside of d.c. it takes me two or three hours during rush hour the to get there. and i just don't move in that world. i don't get invited to parties. once in a while if i do get invited to parties, i don't usually go. and i'm comfortable there. i like being sort of outside the circle looking in. i think it just gives me a different perspective, and it's probably what helped me become an investigative reporter who could turn up things that in some cases other reporters weren't turning up because i'm outside the bubble a little bit. >> host: we had katie tur on this program yesterday from miami, and i asked if journalists were legitimate targets for, you know, politicians, for criticism, and she said, no, but they're easy targets. >> guest: well, i'd disagree a little bit. we are easy targets, and i think we're legitimate targets. i think a lot of the criticism that we are getting as an industry today -- and i say this in "the smear" -- is of our own

making. and i don't mean every person. there are amazing reporters still doing great work. but our job is getting harder because of trends in the industry that we've allowed and that our managers have allowed that do draw criticism and should draw criticism, in my view. so i feel like we're easy targets, but in some reasons -- in some instances there's a reason for that. >> host: and let's hear from charles in billings, montana. hi, charles. >> caller: most americans seem to have forgotten the smear campaign that went on by our own congressional people existence hillary clinton over benghazi. they spent millions of dollars and investigated over and over and over and over again. would you consider that a smear campaign? >> host: thank you, charles. >> guest: i would say there are elements of a smear in that story as well. grains of truth that were escalated beyond proportions in some cases would be normal.

but i have to say there was a lot of fodder there. so they weren't generating a lot of stuff out of thin air which sometimes happens. and i will say that in many cases there are elements of smears on both sides. so you look at bill clinton, this is categorized -- this is discussed in the book -- the clip -- the clintons were smearing the women who were accusing bill clinton. but at the same time, clinton was being smeared by a very well-organized campaign from the right which included david brock back then before he went to be on the left. so i think in any big national discussion you might be able to find efforts that i categorize as smears on both sides of the discussion. >> host: what's the best praise that you've received personally, and what's the best criticism that you've received personally for "the smear"? >> guest: i guess the best praise is that people feel like they really got a peek inside a

shadowy industry that they knew almost nothing about and that they now know how many of our images that we run into in dale today life on the news, parodies, talk shows, comedy shows are orchestrated by these powerful forces. the criticism i get, i think, i hate to say it's from people who haven't read the book, but they say something like all your examples are on one side. well, that's not the case. it's factually incorrect. there are people who haven't read it but may be listening to other critics. i've heard -- i read some of the reviews on amazon, the negative reviews. there's not very many, i got really good reviews. some of them said it's stuff i already knew, some of them said i didn't go deeply enough into some of the things they were interested in, that sort of thing. >> host: and you do use examples from both republican and democratic sides. >> guest: yes. for example, the swift boating smear of john kerry, i talk about the conservative smear

artist dr. evil, i talk about roger stone who's infamous in conservative circles for his smear efforts all the way up to today. i mean, there's just -- i don't i, i don't represent this that is an encyclopedic look, it's an anecdotal look. i talked to liberal and conservative smear artists, and i took the lead from there them as to what they saw was important, who were the important players. some people have criticized i left out the southern poverty law center which some conservatives think is a big liberal smear group. i just did not have good information on them. i tried to write about the topics and the groups that i had good information on from sources or other means and not just trying try to rehash. just because someone's in there and not in there doesn't mean i view them as a smear group or not a smear group. it's not encyclopedic. >> host: what's an astroturf campaign? >> guest: i talk about that a lot in "stonewalled."

it's fake grassroots. it's not a term i made up, i forget who did. but it's designed to make it look like there's a grassroots effort of ordinary people maybe against somebody when, in fact, it's a very well-orchestrated and usually well-financed movement by a group of people that want to make it look that way using social media, news, web sites and so on. and you'll see a lot of tactics in "the smear" about how exactly they go about that. >> host: dennis in sumter, south carolina, you have 30 seconds. >> caller: yes, i just want to say there's autocrat people out there and -- [inaudible] and may jesus bless you all. >> host: dennis -- >> guest: you didn't even take 30. [laughter] >> host: thank you for that call. the most recent book is called "the smear: how shady political operatives and fake news control what you see, what you think and how you vote."

her first book, "stonewalled: my fight for truth against the forces of obstruction, intimidation and harassment in obama's washington." she is currently the host of "full measure with sheryl attkisson" which can be seen where and when? >> guest: depending on your stations where you live, you'll have to look at your local listings or fullmeasure.news under about. but you can watch it anytime at fullmeasure.news. >> host: fu