While the recent US presidential election was particularly bruising for many members of the media, for Fox News’ anchor Megyn Kelly the months of politics have catapulted her to international stardom. And just in time for Christmas stocking fillers, the journalist has released a new memoir on Tuesday – much to the delight of online trolls who have seemingly finished the 352-page book already and negatively reviewed it.
On its Amazon page, within hours of the release of Settle for More, Kelly’s book had received more than 100 negative one-star reviews, many of which had come from a link posted on a pro-Donald Trump forum on Reddit called ‘The_Donald’. The forum incited its members to criticise the book, tanking it with negative comments, with one post reading: “Megyn Kelly’s new book on Amazon (link included). It would be a shame if her biased reporting was reflected in the customer reviews!”
The Reddit thread had previously carried out a similar campaign against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton when her last book was published.
“Confused as a feminist, lacking as a ‘journalist’. Now she can add ‘failed as an author,’ reads one of the reviews of Settle for More, which addressed the torrent of hate and threats Trump’s supporters piled on Kelly during his rise to power.
“Horrible, bullying, hit piece,” reads another one-star reviews. “Megyn would have you believe she is an author, a journalist, and a victim when in reality she is a talentless shill who made it her mission to attack the 45th President of the United States. I have not watched her on FOX since she went out to end President Trumps [sic] campaign.” Nearly 1,000 people clicked to say they found this review to be ‘helpful’.
Kelly became a figure of hate among Trump’s most vocal supporters because of her tough treatment of the President-elect during his victorious but highly criticised campaign. The book’s publisher, HarperCollins, first alerted Amazon to the atypically high number of negative reviews just hours after it was made available to the public, as the numbers far exceeded the number of press copies released for publications to review.
“It has all the hallmarks of an orchestrated effort to discredit the book and our author Megyn Kelly,” said Tina Andreadis, HarperCollins director of publicity. “We have brought it to the attention of Amazon.”
