Fox News personality Megyn Kelly has spent the better part of November promoting her new book, Settle for More, on television talk shows covering just about every major channel. Some aspects of this tour — like her on-again-off-again war of words with fellow Fox News-er Bill O’Reilly — haven’t been the most positive thing this side of the election, but they’ve at least somewhat distracted viewers from the orange elephant who’s soon to occupy the White House. Then again, this doesn’t mean that President-elect Donald Trump, or some of his most ardent followers, have forgotten about Kelly’s well known critiques of the Republican nominee.
According to USA Today, Amazon has apparently removed hundreds of one-star reviews from the book’s entry on its website. An official confirmation or statement from the company wasn’t given at the time of publication, but the removal efforts seem genuine considering the number of people who’ve commented on their disappearance in more recent ratings:
Some commenters picked up on the removal of the negative reviews. “Tim from MD.,” for example, wrote a post titled “Over 120 1 star reviews have been deleted. Are we living in a free country anymore?”
“Trump is president, but she wrote the book certain Clinton would win,” Tim from MD. wrote. “Now the book and her shows advertisers are getting boycotted. So apparently her attorneys have called to get negative reviews deleted. And they succeeded. I’m shocked.”
Slate reported on Monday that nearly 76% of the total reviews given for Settle for More were one star. By Wednesday morning, USA Today determined this number had dropped down to around 17%, though additional one-star assessments were coming in — especially since reviewers behind the concerted effort knew about Amazon’s apparent actions against them. As a user named Brianna put it, “I have written many thoughtful reviews as to why this book is horrible! They have all been removed even though I am a reputable Amazon customer/reviewer.”
Most of the bad reviews were linked by the Los Angeles Times to a pro-Trump forum on Reddit called “The_Donald” and its desire to troll Kelly’s new book:
The forum instructed users to trash “Settle for More.” One post said: “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 Times article quoted Tina Andreadis, senior vice president and director of publicity for HarperCollins, who claimed the massive influx of low ratings “[had] the hallmarks of an orchestrated effort to discredit the book and our author Megyn Kelly.” The publisher “brought it to the attention of Amazon.”
UPDATE: Amazon has issued the following statement — “Amazon Customer Reviews must be product reviews and are designed to help customers make purchase decisions. There are many other forums available across the internet to discuss topics of interest which are not product reviews.”
(Via USA Today)