''Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator'' is a book by
Ryan Holiday
Ryan Holiday (born June 16, 1987) is an American author, modern Stoic,
public-relations strategist, owner of the Painted Porch Bookshop and host of the podcast ''The Daily Stoic.'' Prior to becoming an author, he served as the former director of ...
chronicling his time working as a media strategist for clients including
Tucker Max
Tucker Max (born September 27, 1975) is an American author and public speaker. He chronicles his drinking and sexual encounters in the form of short stories on his website ''TuckerMax.com'', which has received millions of visitors since Max lau ...
Dov Charney
Dov Charney (born January 31, 1969) is a Canadian entrepreneur and clothing manufacturer. He is the founder of American Apparel, which was one of the largest garment manufacturers in the United States until its bankruptcy in 2015. Charney subse ...
.
Background and description
''Trust Me, I'm Lying'' was billed as an exposé of the online journalism system that rose to prominence in the decade before the book's 2012 publication.
Holiday is the former Director of Marketing for
American Apparel
American Apparel Inc. is an online-only retailer and former brick-and-mortar stores operator based in Los Angeles, California. Founded by Canadian businessman Dov Charney in 1989, it was a vertically integrated company that ranked as one of the l ...
Tucker Max
Tucker Max (born September 27, 1975) is an American author and public speaker. He chronicles his drinking and sexual encounters in the form of short stories on his website ''TuckerMax.com'', which has received millions of visitors since Max lau ...
, including marketing for the
film adaptation
A film adaptation is the transfer of a work or story, in whole or in part, to a feature film. Although often considered a type of derivative work, film adaptation has been conceptualized recently by academic scholars such as Robert Stam as a dial ...
of ''
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
''I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell'' is a book of autobiographical short stories about sex and drinking adventures written by Tucker Max. It was a ''New York Times'' #1 bestseller and made the Best Seller List each year from 2006 to 2011. It has ...
'' and a media stunt about Max's failed attempt to donate $500,000 to
Planned Parenthood
The Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. (PPFA), or simply Planned Parenthood, is a nonprofit organization that provides reproductive health care in the United States and globally. It is a tax-exempt corporation under Internal Reve ...
.Marcus, Stephanie; Bassett, Laura Planned Parenthood Turns Down $500,000 From Tucker Max ''The Huffington Post''. April 3, 2012.Maier, Jenny Tucker Max Proves You Can Pay Celebrities To Tweet Whatever You Want ''Crushable.com''. February 9, 2012.
The book is split into two parts: the first explains why blogs matter, how they drive the news, and how they can be manipulated, while the second shows what happens when this is done, how it backfires, and the consequences of the current media system.Losowsky, Andrew ''The Huffington Post''. June 29, 2012.
As an example of his argument that blogs shape the news, Holiday outlines how the political blog
Politico
''Politico'' (stylized in all caps), known originally as ''The Politico'', is an American, German-owned political journalism newspaper company based in Arlington County, Virginia, that covers politics and policy in the United States and intern ...
dedicated significant coverage to the campaign of
Tim Pawlenty
Timothy James Pawlenty (; born November 27, 1960) is an American attorney, businessman, and politician who served as the 39th governor of Minnesota from 2003 to 2011. A member of the Republican Party, Pawlenty served in the Minnesota House o ...
two years before the 2012 elections in order to generate pageviews for advertisers. Although Pawlenty did not yet have an official campaign, this kickstarted the media cycle which painted Pawlenty as a serious presidential candidate. As an example of the pageview-intensive blogosphere, Holiday uses the example of
Irin Carmon
Irin Carmon () (born 1983/1984) is an Israeli-American journalist and commentator. She is a senior correspondent at ''New York Magazine'', and a CNN contributor. She is co-author of ''Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg''. Pr ...
's attack on
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart (born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz; November 28, 1962) is an American comedian, political commentator, and television host. He hosted ''The Daily Show'', a satirical news program on Comedy Central, from 1999 to 2015 and now hosts ''Th ...
and ''
The Daily Show
''The Daily Show'' is an American late-night talk and satirical news television program. It airs each Monday through Thursday on Comedy Central with release shortly after on Paramount+. ''The Daily Show'' draws its comedy and satire form from ...
'' with misleading claims of "''The Daily Show's'' Woman Problem."Frauenfelder, Mark Gweek 061: Trust Me, I'm Lying ''BoingBoing.net''. July 19, 2012. The book is also the source of a marketing and media concept now referred to as "
trading up the chain
Trading up the chain is a marketing and propaganda tactic of deliberately inducing circular reporting, by seeding a message or claim in a less-credible medium, with the intent of it being quoted and repeated by publications (or people) who appeal ...
", in which news is broken on small blogs and passed to successively larger and more influential media outlets.
Release
In 2011, it was reported that Holiday received a $500,000 advance for a tell-all exposé about these clients and the modern media system from Portfolio, a subsidiary of
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.Ryan Holiday Did Not Dupe GalleyCat ''Galleycat''. November 18, 2011.
''Trust Me, I'm Lying'' debuted on the ''
Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
Publishers Weekly
''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of B ...
Kirkus Reviews
''Kirkus Reviews'' (or ''Kirkus Media'') is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus (1893–1980). The magazine is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fic ...
'' called ''Trust Me, I'm Lying'' " sharp and disturbing look into the world of online reality."Trust Me, I'm Lying ''Kirkus Reviews''. June 15, 2012.
In anticipation of the book's release, Holiday infiltrated the
public relations
Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) to the public in order to influence their perception. P ...
service
Help a Reporter Out
Help a Reporter Out (HARO) is an online service for journalists to obtain feedback from the public. It enables journalists to connect with experts in issues relevant to their reporting. It was founded as a Facebook
Facebook is an online ...
and posed as an "expert" on various issues to show that journalists will print statements without
fact checking
Fact-checking is the process of verifying factual information, in order to promote the veracity and correctness of reporting.
Fact-checking can be conducted before (''ante hoc'') or after (''post hoc'') the text is published or otherwise dissem ...
.Thier, David Tucker Max's Rejected Twitter Campaign and Stab at Celebrity Endorsement ''Forbes''. February 7, 2012. Holiday made decoy claims to prove the point; some of those were subsequently quoted in articles about subjects ranging from boating upkeep to insomnia to vinyl records in outlets such as ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'',
MSNBC
MSNBC (originally the Microsoft National Broadcasting Company) is an American news-based pay television cable channel. It is owned by NBCUniversala subsidiary of Comcast. Headquartered in New York City, it provides news coverage and political ...
, and
ABC
ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet.
ABC or abc may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting
* American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster
** Disney–ABC Television ...
, and the story was profiled in ''
Forbes
''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...
'' and
Yahoo! News
Yahoo! News is a news website that originated as an internet-based news aggregator by Yahoo!. The site was created by a Yahoo! software engineer named Brad Clawsie in August 1996. Articles originally came from news services such as the Associate ...
The Edmonton Journal
The ''Edmonton Journal'' is a daily newspaper in Edmonton, Alberta. It is part of the Postmedia Network.
History
The ''Journal'' was founded in 1903 by three local businessmen — John Macpherson, Arthur Moore and J.W. Cunningham — as ...
named ''Trust Me, I'm Lying'' one of their “favourite books of the year.”