Preface : a utopia of division -- The beauty contest: press coverage of the 2016 election -- The ten rules of hate -- The church of averageness -- The high priests of averageness, on the campaign trail -- More priests: the pollsters -- The invisible primary: or, how we decide elections before you decide them -- How the news media stole from pro wrestling -- How reading the news is like smoking -- Scare tactics: all the folk devils are here -- The media's great factual loophole -- The class taboo -- How we turned the news into sports -- Turn it off -- The scarlet letter club -- Why Russiagate is this generation's WMD -- Appendix 1: Why Rachel Maddow is on the cover of this book -- Appendix 2: An interview with Noam Chomsky.

Provides an insider's guide to the variety of ways today's mainstream media tells us lies. Part tirade, part confessional, Taibbi reveals that what most people think of as "the news" is, in fact, a twisted wing of the entertainment business. In the Internet age, the press have mastered the art of monetizing anger, paranoia, and distrust. Taibbi, who has spent much of his career covering elections in which this kind of manipulative activity is most egregious, provides a taxonomic survey of American political journalism's dirty tricks. --From publisher description