Uncovering the Truth Behind the Deception: An Insider's Look at Media Manipulation with 'Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator'

Alain R Dumonceaux: a truly disturbing book that reveals the underbelly of how we are manipulated in the press and social media.

Canada on Oct 20, 2023

LenZen: In "Trust Me, I'm Lying," Ryan Holiday pulls back the curtain to reveal what is going on behind the scenes of online “blogs." For the book, Holiday defines a blog as any online site, from single-person operations up to the New York Times, which either purports to report current news or provides commentary. Holiday discusses how easy he found it to manipulate the blogosphere and how it ultimately creates a world of unreality, which, unfortunately, does intersect with the real world enough to cause destruction to the individual lives and businesses in the news.

Summary of Contents

Holiday's central thesis is that the blogosphere suffers from two major and interrelated problems:

The first problem is that blogs suffer from fierce competition for table scraps of revenue. Since there is so little money to be made for most in blogging, bloggers race to publish first, most sensationally, and with complete disregard for the time required to ensure even reasonable veracity of their stories. 

The second related problem is that blogs seem to operate on a "delegated trust" model. Holiday argues that before blogs, news media had developed editorial standards...

United States on Sep 04, 2023

hummer712: Interesting lecture

Australia on Aug 24, 2023

Pierre Conreaux: This book is evil: "Trust Me, I'm Lying" by Ryan Holiday

I knew the kind Ryan Holiday from "The Daily Stoic" but I didn't know the twisted devil twin from "Trust Me, I'm Lying". The subtitle of the book is "confessions of a media manipulator", and, trust me, the author needed a confession; fake news, media manipulation, totally made-up story, using dark joke on abortion to give visibility to a client,...

Is the book any good? Hell, yes. Ryan Holiday was already a very good writer (this is his first book) and shares many of his insightful experiences
The subject describes in detail how the media system is designed to trick and cajole you in order to steal every second of your attention.

The book is divided into two parties:
1/ Feeding the monster: how the dark art of media manipulation works
2/ The monster attacks: the consequences of the dark art

The scariest part of this book is that you feel that the worst is yet to come...

Out of five stars, I give this ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Excellent information, and excellent writing, but some parts are redundant.

France on Aug 23, 2022

Stephen Folan: It's a great guide to how the media works and not just blogging. He uses his own experience to describe the ecosystem of news and put it into context. The context is that there has always been challenges with the truthfulness of news but now it is 'free' there is less motivation to do original checking and research. He has plenty of modern quotes and also examples that are 100 years old. I grow more sceptical of all the media but I needed a framework to understand it and this book has helped me understand why they do the things they do.

United Kingdom on Feb 14, 2022

R. Freeman: When I first read this book a few years ago, it blew me away. Getting an inside look at how 'news' is manufactured by someone who actually did so was transformative. I have never looked at a newspaper or broadcast the same way since. Learning how the desperate, unending demand for something sensational, shocking and concerning is the primary driver for all news producers was one thing... but then finding out how this is curated, and frankly invented out of thin air so much of the time was sobering. I have nothing but respect for Holiday and his revealing the journey towards integrity through this lens. I have since read everything I can from him, and he's produced some outstanding work since - but this is a must read if you've just come to discover him lately.

The power of a soundbite or 30 second video taken out of context is brilliantly portrayed with real examples that I actually remember falling for, along with how journalists stack their justifications for plausible deniability. I'm not sure if there ever was a time when news reporting was any different. Perhaps that's the nature of the business.

If you dare to change your perspective, and can stomach not...

Canada on Jan 27, 2019

Amazon Customer: The first review I saw for this book said it could be finished in an afternoon implying that it's consideration as whole need not more than a full day. That kind of casual consumption is the cancer this book fully explores.

I had to put Trust Me I'm Lying down several times over the first couple of chapters. The words were so heavy, pregnant with the weight that can only come from a true exposé that I wanted time to actually digest what I was reading. At 24 I've been on the Internet for 16 years. My very first memory is of my then 13-year-old sister lying to strangers in an online chat room. Lying was a hallmark of the Internet for so long that growing up I was treated with adults constantly reminding the younger generation that, "If you've read it on the Internet, it's simply not true."

Surely when companies started throwing billions of dollars at online publishing as newspaper subscriptions all but dried up there was a policy shift right? According to this book, no. At least where the author is a blogger and the blogger's full time employment comes from "writing".

Ryan paints the entire online publishing industry with a wide brush, but backs up his claims...

United States on Aug 31, 2012