Learn the shocking facts about the shady operatives who influence nearly everything you see and read on TV, on social media and on the news.
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A donation was also made to Project Censored.
A portion of the proceeds is being donated to the University of Florida Brechner Center for Freedom of Information
Astroturf and Manipulation of Media Messages: TEDx Talk
One of Five Recommended “Memoirs to Read”
Harper Collins “Stonewalled” Video
Order your signed copy here and other options here
TV Appearances:
Attkisson Senate Judiciary Committee Free Press full hearing, Jan. 29, 2015
Attkisson Senate Judiciary Committee Free Press Statement, Jan. 29, 2015
The Flipside with Michael Loftus, Jan. 2015
The Flipside with Michael Loftus, Feb. 2015
CNN Michael Smerconish Nov. 8, 2014
MediaBuzz with Howie Kurtz Nov. 9, 2014
Write-up of MSNBC Interview With Chris Hayes Nov. 7, 2014
C-SPAN After Words with Nia-Malika Henderson of Washington Post Nov. 18, 2014
Larry King Politiking Nov. 27, 2014
Reviews
“Attkisson offers a harrowing and gripping account of journalism as practiced these days in Washington. She skillfully unveils how she discovered the secret scheme to spy on her. The larger and more disturbing takeaway is how the mainstream are falling down on the job.” (Jeff Gerth, Pulitzer Prize winning former investigative reporter for the New York Times)
Washington Times Book Review (Excerpt) With the heart of a lion and a beaver colony’s work ethic, Mrs. Attkisson also possesses the lockjawed determination of a pit bull. She needed that courage in 2012, when a “well-informed acquaintance” with intelligence connections warned that her Benghazi stories were raising eyebrows. “Keep at it. But you’d better watch out.” Her Deep Throat added, “The average American would be shocked at the extent to which this administration is conducting surveillance on private citizens.”
Kirkus:
STONEWALLED
My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and
Harassment in Obama’s Washington
Author: Sharyl Attkisson
A respected investigative journalist perceived as having a political chip on her shoulder when she left CBS reveals a deeper story.With more than 30 years in broadcast journalism, Attkisson has received five Emmys and an Edward R. Murrow Award for her work. She makes the claim that she was as doggedly the scourge of Republican administrations as Democratic ones. But with unrelenting coverage of the flubbed healthcare.gov rollout, Benghazi, and the ATF gunwalking, Fast and Furious debacle, the author argues that the convergence of a thin-skinned Obama administration’s reaction to her work and “skittish,” liberal ideological news managers at CBS made the climate for her investigative work untenable. (She goes so far as to say that Evening News with Scott Pelley executive producer Pat Shevlin “sometimes had a difficult time grasping complex stories.”) Finding it increasingly difficult to get her segments aired as she conceived of them, Attkisson eventually negotiated a departure from the network—but not before a long, mysterious bout of sophisticated hacking of her computer occurred (the author intimates in the book that someone inside the federal government is responsible and her telling of the hacking makes for thrilling reading). The fact that Attkisson joined the staff of the Daily Signal, the news site funded by the Heritage Foundation, after leaving CBS may indicate she’s conservative by nature, but she doesn’t blindly repeat Republican talking points. Instead, she’s more concerned that politicians on both sides of the aisle often forget that they serve everyday citizens rather than the rich and powerful. “[The politicians] think they own your tax dollars,” she writes. “They think they own the information their agencies gather on the public’s behalf. They think they’re entitled to keep that information from the rest of us and…they’re bloody incensed that we want it.” A deep, nuanced and indignant indictment of the players who have made investigative journalism harder to conduct, even if those actors are other journalists.
Blurbs:
“Forty years ago Woodward and Bernstein exposed the rampant dishonesty inside the White House, spawning an entire generation of journalists dedicated to investigating the government and holding those in power accountable. Four decades later, one of America’s few remaining premier investigative journalists has penned an explosive book detailing just how far short her profession has fallen in keeping to those ideals. Sharyl Attkisson’s Stonewalled examines the power exerted by the corporations that control the media, the ruthless tactics used by the Obama administration and its allies to manipulate and control the news narrative, and the complacency of many of her colleagues in challenging the entrenched special interests. Stonewalled is not only a riveting read, it’s a gutsy and important book that echoes the best traditions Woodward and Bernstein and reminds us of what journalism should be when practiced well: an impartial search for facts and the truth.” – Tom Bevan, Co-Founder and Executive Editor of RealClearPolitics
“Stonewalled” is a harrowing real-life tale that should be required reading for NEWS JUNKIES AND anyone who has asked the Obama White House a question and foolishly expected a straight answer. Sharyl Attkisson’s meticulous reconstruction of her award-winning investigative stories shows how difficult the federal government has made it to commit a random act of journalism, how the groupthink of network news bureaus can be every bit as soul-crushing as university politics, and how buying digital ink by the barrel is no longer an insurance policy against the kind of government surveillance that used to be unthinkable.
– David Martosko, U.S. Political Editor, The Daily Mail (UK)
“Attkisson offers a harrowing and gripping account of journalism as practiced these days in Washington. She skillfully unveils how she discovered the secret scheme to spy on her. The larger and more disturbing takeaway is how the mainstream are falling down on the job.”
— Jeff Gerth, Pulitzer Prize winning former correspondent for The New York Times.
“I don’t know any journalist like Sharyl Attkisson. She has no fear and she doesn’t stop until she gets all of the facts, like an old-fashioned gumshoe detective. That’s why I stop and listen to her when I see her on TV and that is why I read her book. Stonewalled is a perfect blend of Attkisson’s captivating storytelling abilities and her relentless appetite for the truth. No fluff, no agenda…just the facts.”
–Greta Van Susteren, Attorney and Fox News anchor
From the Back Cover
Who’s been hacking Sharyl Attkisson’s computers? Computers that turn themselves on in the night, make strange noises, then shut themselves down. Whoever is doing it is using highly sophisticated spyware available only to our top intelligence agencies. Is someone sending Attkisson a message?
Washington, D.C., has always been a tough town for investigative journalists. But in the age of Obama, the government has taken the tried-and-true techniques of bureaucratic stonewalling to unprecedented heights. What’s more, it has added harassment, intimidation, and outright spying to the mix.
Through more than thirty years as an award-winning investigative reporter, Sharyl Attkisson fought tirelessly to uncover wrongdoing by those in power, whether major corporations, government officials, or presidential administrations of both parties. But when she started looking into stories involving the Obama administration’s mistakes and misjudgments in a series of high-profile cases—stories few in mainstream journalism would touch—she was confronted with the administration’s use of hardball tactics to discourage, block, and actively suppress her investigative work.
A dogged reporter with a well-earned reputation as a “pit bull,” Attkisson filed a series of groundbreaking stories on the Fast and Furious gunwalking program, Obama’s green energy boondoggle, the unanswered questions about Benghazi, and the disastrous rollout of Obamacare. Her news reports were met with a barrage of PR warfare tactics, including emails and phone calls up the network chain of command, criticism from paid-for commenters and bloggers, and a campaign of character assassination that continues to this day. Most disturbing of all, Attkisson reveals that as she broke news on Fast and Furious and Benghazi, her computers and phone lines were hacked and bugged by an unrevealed but tremendously sophisticated party.
Stonewalled is the story of the Obama administration’s efforts to monitor journalists, intimidate and harass opposition groups, and spy on private citizens. But it is also a searing indictment of the timidity of the press and the dangerous decline of investigative journalism and unbiased truth telling in America today.
Description
Seasoned CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson reveals how she has been electronically surveilled while digging deep into the Obama Administration and its scandals, and offers an incisive critique of her industry and the shrinking role of investigative journalism in today’s media.
Americans are at the mercy of powerful figures in business and government who are virtually unaccountable. The Obama Administration in particular has broken new ground in its monitoring of journalists, intimidation and harassment of opposition groups, and surveillance of private citizens.
Sharyl Attkisson has been a journalist for more than thirty years. During that time she has exposed scandals and covered controversies under both Republican and Democratic administrations. She has also seen the opponents of transparency go to ever greater lengths to discourage and obstruct legitimate reporting.
Attkisson herself has been subjected to “opposition research” efforts and spin campaigns. These tactics increased their intensity as she relentlessly pursued stories that the Obama Administration dismissed. Stonewalled is the story of how her news reports were met with a barrage of PR warfare tactics, including online criticism, as well as emails and phone calls up the network chain of command in an effort to intimidate and discourage the next story. In Stonewalled, Attkisson recounts her personal tale, setting it against the larger story of the decline of investigative journalism and unbiased truth telling in America today.