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Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy
Something is wrong with American journalism. Long before “fake news” became the calling card of the Right, Americans had lost faith in their news media. But lately, the feeling that something is off has become impossible to ignore. That’s because the majority of our mainstream news is no longer just liberal; it’s woke. Today’s newsrooms are propagating radical ideas that were fringe as recently as a decade ago, including “antiracism,” intersectionality, open borders, and critical race theory. How did this come to be?
It all has to do with who our news media is written by―and who it is written for. In Bad How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy , Batya Ungar-Sargon reveals how American journalism underwent a status revolution over the twentieth century―from a blue-collar trade to an elite profession. As a result, journalists shifted their focus away from the working class and toward the concerns of their affluent, highly educated peers. With the rise of the Internet and the implosion of local news, America’s elite news media became nationalized and its journalists affluent and ideological. And where once business concerns provided a countervailing force to push back against journalists’ worst tendencies, the pressures of the digital media landscape now align corporate incentives with newsroom crusades.
The truth is, the moral panic around race, encouraged by today’s elite newsrooms, does little more than consolidate the power of liberal elites and protect their economic interests. And in abandoning the working class by creating a culture war around identity, our national media is undermining American democracy. Bad News explains how this happened, why it happened, and the dangers posed by this development if it continues unchecked.
It all has to do with who our news media is written by―and who it is written for. In Bad How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy , Batya Ungar-Sargon reveals how American journalism underwent a status revolution over the twentieth century―from a blue-collar trade to an elite profession. As a result, journalists shifted their focus away from the working class and toward the concerns of their affluent, highly educated peers. With the rise of the Internet and the implosion of local news, America’s elite news media became nationalized and its journalists affluent and ideological. And where once business concerns provided a countervailing force to push back against journalists’ worst tendencies, the pressures of the digital media landscape now align corporate incentives with newsroom crusades.
The truth is, the moral panic around race, encouraged by today’s elite newsrooms, does little more than consolidate the power of liberal elites and protect their economic interests. And in abandoning the working class by creating a culture war around identity, our national media is undermining American democracy. Bad News explains how this happened, why it happened, and the dangers posed by this development if it continues unchecked.
312 pages, Hardcover
First published November 11, 2021
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December 5, 2021This book should be listed as science fiction and fantasy. The hard right of America desperately wants to believe that journalism steeped in facts and science is “fake” so that it can continue to cling to Trumpian “alternative facts” and ignore and hate science. Even Ungar-Sargon knows this. But she’s pandering to right wing extremists as a career choice. So she creates a straw-man that mainstream journalism, in particular the NYT, is radical left and then spends most of this book knocking down that straw-man. Does mainstream journalism and the NYT, which is almost the sole focus of Ungar-Sargon’s screed, slant center left? Yes. Is it radical? Absolutely not.
Yes, mainstream media covers racism. It should do so. Yes, mainstream media, despite Ungar-Sargon’s denials, also covers economic inequality. Do I get irritated by NYT’s center left slant? Certainly and I completely ignore its oped section, which Ungar-Sargon obsesses about because she desperately wants to connect the oped page to the real journalism in the rest of the newspaper. But the bottom line is that NYT journalists are not radicals and almost always get their facts right. Does the NYT have a problem covering Jewish topics and Israel? Yes, but this problem is not new and goes back at least to WWII and its coverage of the Holocaust. Books like this one are all about fueling resentment. They are certainly not about tikkun olam.
Ungar-Sargon wants her readers to believe that racism isn’t an important issue in America. It’s an odd argument to make from someone well aware of another significant hate in America, antisemitism.
We are at a crisis in America and that crisis is not about a radical NYT. The crisis is that extremists, almost entirely on the right, are trying to take down American democracy. The crisis is that one of two major American parties, the GOP, is being held captive by a wannabe anti-democratic strongman who tried to overturn a legitimate election that he lost. Rather than invent a crisis in mainstream journalism, Ungar-Sargon would do America some good if she examined this real crisis. She has a brain, certainly. She should use it for a better purpose than careerism.
I’ve seen formerly sane conservatives go down this rabbit hole of hate and conspiracy theories, some out of careerism, others so they can stay in the GOP because the GOP is all they’ve ever known. It’s sad and depressing to watch people get pulled into a radical, extremist mindset. I think that’s what may have happened here.
Yes, mainstream media covers racism. It should do so. Yes, mainstream media, despite Ungar-Sargon’s denials, also covers economic inequality. Do I get irritated by NYT’s center left slant? Certainly and I completely ignore its oped section, which Ungar-Sargon obsesses about because she desperately wants to connect the oped page to the real journalism in the rest of the newspaper. But the bottom line is that NYT journalists are not radicals and almost always get their facts right. Does the NYT have a problem covering Jewish topics and Israel? Yes, but this problem is not new and goes back at least to WWII and its coverage of the Holocaust. Books like this one are all about fueling resentment. They are certainly not about tikkun olam.
Ungar-Sargon wants her readers to believe that racism isn’t an important issue in America. It’s an odd argument to make from someone well aware of another significant hate in America, antisemitism.
We are at a crisis in America and that crisis is not about a radical NYT. The crisis is that extremists, almost entirely on the right, are trying to take down American democracy. The crisis is that one of two major American parties, the GOP, is being held captive by a wannabe anti-democratic strongman who tried to overturn a legitimate election that he lost. Rather than invent a crisis in mainstream journalism, Ungar-Sargon would do America some good if she examined this real crisis. She has a brain, certainly. She should use it for a better purpose than careerism.
I’ve seen formerly sane conservatives go down this rabbit hole of hate and conspiracy theories, some out of careerism, others so they can stay in the GOP because the GOP is all they’ve ever known. It’s sad and depressing to watch people get pulled into a radical, extremist mindset. I think that’s what may have happened here.
July 31, 2021
I was fortunate enough to receive an early copy of this book from Batya, and I can honestly say that it’s one of the best books I’ve read in a long time when it comes to commentary on what’s going on in the world. Prior to reading this book, I was completely unfamiliar with Batya’s work, but when I stumbled across her on Twitter and saw she had a book coming out, I decided to reach out and see if she had any review copies available. If I’m being honest, as a left-leaning progressive, when I saw the subtitle, I thought, “Oh hear we go. Someone pandering to anti-woke culture.” Fortunately, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Not only is Batya an amazing writer, but she provides a balanced, nuanced look at the current state of the divisiveness and how media played a major role in what’s happening.
I could go on and on about this book forever, but I’m going to give a brief overview of the thesis and topics in hopes that you’ll grab a copy because this is such an important book.
The main thesis that I gained from the book is that media has helped widen the class divide. For a while, I’ve felt like a crazy person because it seemed as though left-leaning journalism was coming from this very rich and privileged place, and Batya made me realize I’m not the only one who recognized this. After giving a history of Pulitzer and the origins of the New York Times, the author explains why the NYT and other forms of media shifted to write pieces for the elites. With the rise of digital media, it got even worse when the NYT showed how much money you can make from a subscription model and pandering to outrage culture and woke language.
I figured this book would just be a bunch of opinions from the author, but Batya backs it up with data and research. While I don’t agree with 100% of Batya’s opinions, I found myself agreeing with about 90% of them. And for the opinions I disagreed with, I respect her views on those, and that’s the whole point of how we fix this mess. Batya did an excellent explaining how outrage culture and twitter mobs dictate what the media covers, and as someone who was cancelled due to YouTube drama channels in 2019, I’ve witnessed this first-hand.
But this review is way longer than I wanted it to be, so I’ll end here. Mark your calendars for 10/19/21 and get two copies of this book; one for you and one to give to someone else.
I could go on and on about this book forever, but I’m going to give a brief overview of the thesis and topics in hopes that you’ll grab a copy because this is such an important book.
The main thesis that I gained from the book is that media has helped widen the class divide. For a while, I’ve felt like a crazy person because it seemed as though left-leaning journalism was coming from this very rich and privileged place, and Batya made me realize I’m not the only one who recognized this. After giving a history of Pulitzer and the origins of the New York Times, the author explains why the NYT and other forms of media shifted to write pieces for the elites. With the rise of digital media, it got even worse when the NYT showed how much money you can make from a subscription model and pandering to outrage culture and woke language.
I figured this book would just be a bunch of opinions from the author, but Batya backs it up with data and research. While I don’t agree with 100% of Batya’s opinions, I found myself agreeing with about 90% of them. And for the opinions I disagreed with, I respect her views on those, and that’s the whole point of how we fix this mess. Batya did an excellent explaining how outrage culture and twitter mobs dictate what the media covers, and as someone who was cancelled due to YouTube drama channels in 2019, I’ve witnessed this first-hand.
But this review is way longer than I wanted it to be, so I’ll end here. Mark your calendars for 10/19/21 and get two copies of this book; one for you and one to give to someone else.
August 16, 2021
This was an excellent book! Batya is a treasure. This was well-researched, balanced, and pragmatic. Her tone was respectful and her passion for journalism showed throughout. Fantastic work!
November 13, 2021
A very timely book; well researched, articulated and eye opening. I also liked the tone of her writing, it was reasonable, frank, and balanced. I highly recommend it to anyone who’s interested in current events/journalism/history of journalism.
December 24, 2021
Ignore the title, which almost knee-jerk response comes across that this book will be some sort of far right wing, ultra conservative denunciation of progressives and elites. It comes more from a center-left position, and opines, in my view correctly, that the woke approach of labeling any dissent as racist, homophobic, transphobic, or misogynistic, is unintentionally leading, and will continue to lead, to a failure of liberal politics. Ungar-Sargon takes the position that much of what is labeled as one of the -isms is a veneer over classism, and that that is intentional on the part of much of a very specific media elite (the history of which takes up the majority of the book), and unintentional on the part of ordinary, but well meaning people, who end up, instead of engaging in the actual issues around classism, racism, various phobias, etc., do little more than virtue signal how guilty they feel about it all, and condescend to various minorities by, more or less, proclaiming themselves as the saviors of those minorities, simply by embracing their own complicity.
November 3, 2021
This was an excellent book, very well done.
The premise of the book is that the differences in class in our society are being ignored by discussing race, which narrative is perpetrated by the elite media. A conclusion that is supported by the various chapters in the book.
It starts with a history lesson, Joseph Pulitzer was an advocate of the masses and sold news papers to each and every person. The NYT changed that, by focusing on wealthy readers by seeking advertising dollars that wanted rich eye balls. Then journalists migrated from blue collar to elite status through attendance at elite universities. These elite journalists than abandoned the working class in their reportage. The digital revolution upsets the revenue model and forces media to target readership through subscriptions and fees, and to tailor their articles to the views of their readers, the liberal elite. Vox and NYT are examples of this out of sorts dynamic. Then Trump comes along and the elite media uses race to return profits to the news room. Critical race theory is released from academia into the public sphere and affects media, corporate America and much more - putting race at center stage. With the media using moral panic to push this narrative - in order to cover up for the class divide that exists in the Country. The author them points to an interesting debate that is taking place within the black community, which debate is not making it to the public sphere because of the media. Next there is a discussion about how the media incorrectly uses bias and half truths to portray Jews, Crime and Trump supporters. Followed by a summation that holds that the media elite are partnering up with the tech oligarchs to perpetuate inequity and undermine democracy. The last chapter discusses what each citizen can do the put a stop to this attack on democracy - where public debate is silenced and the working class has no voice in policy discussions.
The premise of the book is that the differences in class in our society are being ignored by discussing race, which narrative is perpetrated by the elite media. A conclusion that is supported by the various chapters in the book.
It starts with a history lesson, Joseph Pulitzer was an advocate of the masses and sold news papers to each and every person. The NYT changed that, by focusing on wealthy readers by seeking advertising dollars that wanted rich eye balls. Then journalists migrated from blue collar to elite status through attendance at elite universities. These elite journalists than abandoned the working class in their reportage. The digital revolution upsets the revenue model and forces media to target readership through subscriptions and fees, and to tailor their articles to the views of their readers, the liberal elite. Vox and NYT are examples of this out of sorts dynamic. Then Trump comes along and the elite media uses race to return profits to the news room. Critical race theory is released from academia into the public sphere and affects media, corporate America and much more - putting race at center stage. With the media using moral panic to push this narrative - in order to cover up for the class divide that exists in the Country. The author them points to an interesting debate that is taking place within the black community, which debate is not making it to the public sphere because of the media. Next there is a discussion about how the media incorrectly uses bias and half truths to portray Jews, Crime and Trump supporters. Followed by a summation that holds that the media elite are partnering up with the tech oligarchs to perpetuate inequity and undermine democracy. The last chapter discusses what each citizen can do the put a stop to this attack on democracy - where public debate is silenced and the working class has no voice in policy discussions.
December 12, 2021
Garbage polemic pretending to be from a left perspective. It's real purpose is to deploy rhetoric about the working class as a smokescreen for the usual reactionary concerns: unhinged & decontextualized fear-mongering about immigrants, criminals, antisemites, & dense European philosophies lurking around every corner to afflict a working class that the writer repeatedly asserts, w/o evidence, is economically & socially conservative.
The first half of the book's populist history of US journalism is interesting but not reliable given how myopic & blinkered the writer's coverage of other topics, like European & Afro-American intellectual history, are.
Wokeness is a hollow & hypocritical discourse that liberal elites use to hoard virtue, exclude the multiracial working class, retrench the US's sham meritocracy, & fail to do anything to address the nation's grotesque social & economic inequalities. All of that can be easily admitted w/o carrying water, as the writer does, for the agendas of conservatives elites (further militarization of the border & police, perpetual military support for Israel's apartheid, tax cuts & student debt hawkery, &c., all in the name of the working class).
The first half of the book's populist history of US journalism is interesting but not reliable given how myopic & blinkered the writer's coverage of other topics, like European & Afro-American intellectual history, are.
Wokeness is a hollow & hypocritical discourse that liberal elites use to hoard virtue, exclude the multiracial working class, retrench the US's sham meritocracy, & fail to do anything to address the nation's grotesque social & economic inequalities. All of that can be easily admitted w/o carrying water, as the writer does, for the agendas of conservatives elites (further militarization of the border & police, perpetual military support for Israel's apartheid, tax cuts & student debt hawkery, &c., all in the name of the working class).
December 27, 2021
Scathing and brilliant. - Me
It's the class, stupid. - Also me
It's the class, stupid. - Also me
January 15, 2022
Bad news, indeed. This is a sort of companion book to Rindsberg’s Grey Lady. But better written and with a broader view of things.
She begins with the good old days, the days of Day and Pulitzer who created modern journalism. The kind of journalism that was written for the people and by people. Pulitzer especially tried to write with the interest of the common people in mind and at the same time honouring truth. The way to make money was to sell millions of papers. The New York Times in contrast tried more or less from the beginning to appeal to more educated, read richer, readers. And the way to make money was by selling ads. It was, says Ungar-Sargon, a conscious decision to ignore the working class. (When they had the chance to buy the World in 1930 they declined the offer.)
The problem today, and this is meant by bad news, is that nearly all the remaining papers of today had gone the way of the times. Writing for the elite by the elite. There just are no media left who will take in interest in the lower classes. The fact that blue color workers go for conservative (if one wishes to call it that) Fox news is that while they do not care for the working class, they at least do not despise them.
Today the press is dominated by college educated people, and not any but high class college. And at the same time since there is not much money to make (at least in the first years) it means a career in journalism, is a career of rich peoples kids.
The other point of the book, and it is closely related, is that the liberal press of today is obsessed by racism. The “woke” journalism, as prominently presented by the Times’ 1619 project, means to establish as a fact that racism is in the DNA of America. What it really means, says Ungar-Sargon is far from an honest attempt to make America a better less racist place. Whereas rich people at least in theory could be guilty because of their wealth and could try to change society the narrative of the Woke anti-racism is that there is nothing one can do, except feel guilty. It is a convenient way to keep the status quo while presenting one selves as belonging to the progressive force.
There is racism in the US, there is no doubt. And Ungar-Sargon does not want to deny that there are more black people in prison e.g. But a few statistics show, to my mind quite convincingly, that racism is declining. To give just one example in 1955 less than five percent of the American people approved of interracial marriage. Today it is nearly 90%. As a European watching American movies for the last 50 years, it is impossible not to notice that racism does not play a big role anymore. Now, denying that racism is on the decline is, of course in the eyes of the anti-racists, a sure sign of being a racist. Just as being against Affirmative action is a sure sign of racism, and the fact that many black people are against it is a sign that they are either stupid or brainwashed. The other statistic is a CNN poll. In 2006 45% of white democrats said that they knew people who they would consider racist. In 2015 the number has climbed up to 65%. But at the same time the number fell from 50% to 40% in the eyes of non-White democrats.
Everything is viewed as a sign of racism, the author claims. One good example is open borders. If you want to keep Mexicans out of the country that is a sign of racism. Ungar-Sargon shows that Bernie Sanders was strictly for border for very obvious economic reasons. Open borders he said is the right-wing ideology of the Koch brothers who want 2 or 3 dollar jobs. With the overwhelming force of woke he was forced to flip his opinion completely. Needless to say, putting ideology above economy did not help him win votes.
Like most Europeans I was shocked by the election of Trump. I just could not believe it. And neither, obviously, could the liberal press in America. I still think he is a danger for democracy but reading this book has changed my mind. The people who voted for him are not (necessarily) stupid or racist.
They are, quite literally, forgotten by a liberal press, that does not deserve the name.
She begins with the good old days, the days of Day and Pulitzer who created modern journalism. The kind of journalism that was written for the people and by people. Pulitzer especially tried to write with the interest of the common people in mind and at the same time honouring truth. The way to make money was to sell millions of papers. The New York Times in contrast tried more or less from the beginning to appeal to more educated, read richer, readers. And the way to make money was by selling ads. It was, says Ungar-Sargon, a conscious decision to ignore the working class. (When they had the chance to buy the World in 1930 they declined the offer.)
The problem today, and this is meant by bad news, is that nearly all the remaining papers of today had gone the way of the times. Writing for the elite by the elite. There just are no media left who will take in interest in the lower classes. The fact that blue color workers go for conservative (if one wishes to call it that) Fox news is that while they do not care for the working class, they at least do not despise them.
Today the press is dominated by college educated people, and not any but high class college. And at the same time since there is not much money to make (at least in the first years) it means a career in journalism, is a career of rich peoples kids.
The other point of the book, and it is closely related, is that the liberal press of today is obsessed by racism. The “woke” journalism, as prominently presented by the Times’ 1619 project, means to establish as a fact that racism is in the DNA of America. What it really means, says Ungar-Sargon is far from an honest attempt to make America a better less racist place. Whereas rich people at least in theory could be guilty because of their wealth and could try to change society the narrative of the Woke anti-racism is that there is nothing one can do, except feel guilty. It is a convenient way to keep the status quo while presenting one selves as belonging to the progressive force.
There is racism in the US, there is no doubt. And Ungar-Sargon does not want to deny that there are more black people in prison e.g. But a few statistics show, to my mind quite convincingly, that racism is declining. To give just one example in 1955 less than five percent of the American people approved of interracial marriage. Today it is nearly 90%. As a European watching American movies for the last 50 years, it is impossible not to notice that racism does not play a big role anymore. Now, denying that racism is on the decline is, of course in the eyes of the anti-racists, a sure sign of being a racist. Just as being against Affirmative action is a sure sign of racism, and the fact that many black people are against it is a sign that they are either stupid or brainwashed. The other statistic is a CNN poll. In 2006 45% of white democrats said that they knew people who they would consider racist. In 2015 the number has climbed up to 65%. But at the same time the number fell from 50% to 40% in the eyes of non-White democrats.
Everything is viewed as a sign of racism, the author claims. One good example is open borders. If you want to keep Mexicans out of the country that is a sign of racism. Ungar-Sargon shows that Bernie Sanders was strictly for border for very obvious economic reasons. Open borders he said is the right-wing ideology of the Koch brothers who want 2 or 3 dollar jobs. With the overwhelming force of woke he was forced to flip his opinion completely. Needless to say, putting ideology above economy did not help him win votes.
Like most Europeans I was shocked by the election of Trump. I just could not believe it. And neither, obviously, could the liberal press in America. I still think he is a danger for democracy but reading this book has changed my mind. The people who voted for him are not (necessarily) stupid or racist.
They are, quite literally, forgotten by a liberal press, that does not deserve the name.
January 13, 2022
This was a very interesting book and had more substance than might be implied by the slightly sensational title! I appreciated learning some history of journalism and was intrigued by the author’s observations regarding the shifting of the career of journalism from blue-collar to elite and of the impact of going digital on journalism- from the economic side to the actual content of news articles. While I didn’t necessarily agree with all her conclusions or opinions on things I felt it was worthwhile to understand them. And I do agree with her observations and insights into the Trump phenomenon (for lack of a better phrase that would encompass the complexity of his election, his presidency and the reaction to it), and the context in which that took place. All in all I felt it was worth reading and had some very valuable content.
May 11, 2022
This chameleon of a book is very much recommended to anyone who is politically inclined on either side of the divide. Written by a liberal who sees the danger in shutting down one side of an argument -- EITHER side of an argument -- "Bad News" is a cautionary book about how to preserve our form of government... and it's not by continuing what we're doing.
Batya Ungar-Sargon goes back to the birth of American journalism, and depicts its shift from a blue-collar working-class trade into an actual profession that pretty much requires higher education, and then into what it is today -- a rarefied role occupied mostly by upper-class graduates of elite universities at a few high-profile outlets, because most of the smaller media outlets where "regular" college-educated folks are dying out because of the changing face of mass communication.
Ungar-Sargon makes the compelling case that the racial dichotomy in modern American society is only racial as a kind of shorthand for what it really is... a class dichotomy. The problem, she says, is in the fact that the media speaks increasingly to an educated, upper-class audience, leaving other classes of society out of the equation. These people who don't see the media as interested in their lives then seek out those who do pay attention to them, despite the fact that the politicians and news sources they choose are treated by the mainstream news as outsiders and not reliable.
The problem is compounded in recent years by a shift toward not just painting the cultural divide as a racial split, but insisting that America is a nation of oppressors and oppressed, determined solely by skin color (at least that is the basis of Ungar-Sargon's argument, though it could be said that something similar is happening with regard to gender and sexual politics as well). When one side is universally viewed as "correct" and the other side is shut down and excluded from the debate because they are "wrong," Ungar-Sargon says, there is a chilling effect on the lively debate required to keep a democracy (or a democratic republic) healthy. It's a problem, according to her, that there's no longer any discussion because there's nothing anyone can do -- if you're light-skinned, you are an oppressor and all you can do is feel guilty and try to make up for it, and if you're a person of color, you're oppressed even if you don't feel that way in your everyday life.
No matter who you are, there are things about this book that you won't like. Right-leaning people may tire of Ungar-Sargon's persistent treatment of their opinions as wrong, and the left-leaning may take offense that she says their way of winning the debate doesn't, in the long run, win anything at all. But I think both sides could benefit from reading what she has to say.
Batya Ungar-Sargon goes back to the birth of American journalism, and depicts its shift from a blue-collar working-class trade into an actual profession that pretty much requires higher education, and then into what it is today -- a rarefied role occupied mostly by upper-class graduates of elite universities at a few high-profile outlets, because most of the smaller media outlets where "regular" college-educated folks are dying out because of the changing face of mass communication.
Ungar-Sargon makes the compelling case that the racial dichotomy in modern American society is only racial as a kind of shorthand for what it really is... a class dichotomy. The problem, she says, is in the fact that the media speaks increasingly to an educated, upper-class audience, leaving other classes of society out of the equation. These people who don't see the media as interested in their lives then seek out those who do pay attention to them, despite the fact that the politicians and news sources they choose are treated by the mainstream news as outsiders and not reliable.
The problem is compounded in recent years by a shift toward not just painting the cultural divide as a racial split, but insisting that America is a nation of oppressors and oppressed, determined solely by skin color (at least that is the basis of Ungar-Sargon's argument, though it could be said that something similar is happening with regard to gender and sexual politics as well). When one side is universally viewed as "correct" and the other side is shut down and excluded from the debate because they are "wrong," Ungar-Sargon says, there is a chilling effect on the lively debate required to keep a democracy (or a democratic republic) healthy. It's a problem, according to her, that there's no longer any discussion because there's nothing anyone can do -- if you're light-skinned, you are an oppressor and all you can do is feel guilty and try to make up for it, and if you're a person of color, you're oppressed even if you don't feel that way in your everyday life.
No matter who you are, there are things about this book that you won't like. Right-leaning people may tire of Ungar-Sargon's persistent treatment of their opinions as wrong, and the left-leaning may take offense that she says their way of winning the debate doesn't, in the long run, win anything at all. But I think both sides could benefit from reading what she has to say.
June 4, 2023
This atrociously titled book (written by a liberal) is actually about class and how race, while taking care to not discount the actual enormous racial inequality in the US, is often used as a smokescreen for class divides that benefit certain groups of people (guess which ones). The first quarter is a completely fascinating history of journalism from the penny press to the digital age and the nurturing of mainstream media and journalism as a space for elites. That is not a "right wing talking point," it's undeniably true. Then it descends into kind of ranty territory that was half good commentary about the descent into public lunacy the online contingent of the left (which includes the media) has taken and how harmful that is to Democratic discourse, and half extremely reductive and overly simplified, often just inaccurate, interpretations of race-related issues and incidents.
I'm politically in the center (my views span center left to center right) who is extremely frustrated by the extent to which Very Online activist language has permeated public discourse, and the vicious cancel culture and public shaming rituals that take place in that space now, and honestly I find white progressives to frequently be some of the most obnoxious people I've ever met, so despite the overuse of the word woke, which I hate in this snide co-opted use case, I thought I would end up being satisfied by this book. But in reality it was like whiplash. She'd describe something accurate and validating and true and then turn around and completely misinterpret or minimize something serious or blow something stupid out of proportion. I would literally speak out loud to my kindle "YES!! That's what I'm SAYING!!" followed on the next page by "That's completely f*cking wrong, what are you even talking about." I also did not fully buy her argument that race issues are nothing more than a proxy war for class. I think these things are related but as with much in this book, she frequently overlooked and oversimplified, sometimes to a degree that was a bit insulting.
And I noticed on more than one occasion some really loose claims were not footnoted. So anyway that is why I gave it a 3.
I'm politically in the center (my views span center left to center right) who is extremely frustrated by the extent to which Very Online activist language has permeated public discourse, and the vicious cancel culture and public shaming rituals that take place in that space now, and honestly I find white progressives to frequently be some of the most obnoxious people I've ever met, so despite the overuse of the word woke, which I hate in this snide co-opted use case, I thought I would end up being satisfied by this book. But in reality it was like whiplash. She'd describe something accurate and validating and true and then turn around and completely misinterpret or minimize something serious or blow something stupid out of proportion. I would literally speak out loud to my kindle "YES!! That's what I'm SAYING!!" followed on the next page by "That's completely f*cking wrong, what are you even talking about." I also did not fully buy her argument that race issues are nothing more than a proxy war for class. I think these things are related but as with much in this book, she frequently overlooked and oversimplified, sometimes to a degree that was a bit insulting.
And I noticed on more than one occasion some really loose claims were not footnoted. So anyway that is why I gave it a 3.
April 24, 2022
Where Day and Pulitzer appealed to the sensations of the poor and working classes, the Times’s revamped sensationalism today is designed to prick the emotions of the rich.
While flipping through the pages, I planned on giving Bad News 2 stars with an extra credit bonus star, but now that I’ve finished, 2 stars is probably all it deserves. The argument Batya provides is the same one Marxist journals (the Jacobin, the New Republic, the Bellows) have been saying against the BIPOC-LGBTQQIAA2SPK+ reckoning: identity politics is a bourgeois distraction away from class politics. (As I typed that alphabet monstrosity, Google Docs red-underlined it to let me know that it’s actually BIPOC-LGBTQQIP2SAA lol. Sorry for trying to be inclusive.)
The issue is that Batya is inconsistent.
She wants to steer us away from race politics, then goes on to say, “a woke moral panic isn’t really about representing black people but about pandering to white readers (p.196).” This is obviously false when one scroll through LinkedIn will show careerists and academics both white and not white, like Ibram X Kendi himself, loving the attention they get from “calling out” white supremacy. She even cites black journalists having a tantrum over Slack at the NYT after the debacle that was Tom Cotton’s op-ed. Why not just go full throttle with the class stuff like Walter Benn Michaels and say that DEI is rich people pandering to rich people no matter the color? Why bring the “cis white males” thing into it again?
Apparently, wokeness “is rooted in Hegel’s master-slave dialectic (p. 233).” I’m not sure why she skips over Marxism and places the root of critical race/gender/sexuality studies on Hegel. It’s called Neo-Marxism for a reason. Oh wait. It’s because Batya herself is a Marxist. Why would Hegel’s dialectic be wrong but not Marx’s, given the materialist dialectic is rooted in the master-slave dialectic?
The idea of seeing through illusions goes back probably even before the Allegory of the Cave. I don’t know what “picked up” is supposed to mean; postmodernists reject grand narratives, which includes Marxism. The reason Social Justice mish-mashes Marxism and postmodernism is autism. It’s that simple.
So Day and Pulitzer obviously became wealthy from their “pro-labor” journals. But is their generation of wealth a good thing for Batya? If we’re going the Marxist route, why should we be impressed that these men made profits creating dumbed-down and scandalous gossip articles for workers’ money? Of course, the capitalist will say that this shows that the market rewards those who innovate, and that this is good. But under Marxism, this is just more exploitation of the proles. And how do Day and Pulitzer’s own rags-to-riches stories work within the Marxist framework?
But the most pressing question in discussing wokeism: Is it good for the Jews?
I don’t have much to say about the Israel/Palestine conflict, but as most cable news (except Fox) and most journals have bagel runners, claiming that the reason why the mainstream media is pro-Palestine, is because Ochs was just a self-hating “deeply insecure about his Jewishness (p. 215)” Jew isn’t much of an analysis. In fact, it reeks of the same cowpat that she immediately after criticizes the NYT for dropping by saying that minority Trump voters were the “oppressed [who] will stand with the oppressors (p. 229).”
As to whether Jews are considered white under wokeism, she’s right that they tend to be lumped in with whites. But Sarah Silverman’s dad made sure to clear that right up for us when Sarah guest hosted the Jimmy Kimmel show a few months ago. Not to mention the backlash Whoopi Goldberg got for saying that the Holocaust was a clear example of man’s evil against man.
Batya’s politics are just all over the place. Like another reviewer said, she hasn’t made up her mind, so there are many instances of contradictory thinking.
Then what is white guilt? Clearly some successful white people become antiracist because they feel they didn’t earn their way solely through meritocracy, and then overcorrect throughanti-racist DEI initiatives. The issue isn’t that they aren't “doing anything about it (p. 167)”; it is that they’re doing too much.
But will meritocracy ever not be a fiction for Batya? Don’t we want meritocracy if we’re doing away with wokeness and its identity discrimination? Unless if Batya truly wants wealth distribution, which would still be discrimination, just with salary instead of skin color.
What the hell? Now I’m really confused. Batya identifies herself as a socialist, yet she disagrees with getting more people out of the “working class,” and instead wants a strong “working class.” Then why all this hoopla about the fake meritocracy in the highly educated upper class if the working class shouldn’t want upward mobility. Why should we want wealth distribution given that this (ideally for socialists) leads people out of the working class? What does a “dignified life” entail, and would the working class actually be the working class if they had one? It sounds like she’s fine with the neofeudalism she criticized later in the book.
Batya finds fault with the Left's idea of “oligarchal socialism.” Of course, contra the 2016 Sanders flavor of “democratic socialism.”
I would like to read a clarification between the two somewhere.
No, poor people voting for the Right isn’t voting against their own economic interests. I don’t know how she could have a whole section on why people voted for Trump, and then turn around and use the same “trickle down economics is bad” schtick. Paying less taxes, upward (and downward) mobility, incentives for small business, limiting immigration, school choice, incentives for property ownership is not against the values of “autonomy, bootstrapping, marriage, family, and religion (p. 254).”
Aside from all that, yes, journals have basically become tech companies. They run campaigns, experiments, A/B testing to see what increases the click-through rates and other engagements on web and mobile for users overall or with profiles with certain metadata markers and sell that information and ad space to advertisers. Since most happenings occur on Twitter or Zoom press releases, almost no gumshoeing in the material world is necessary. Identity politics goes hand-in-hand with tech. If an online profile is black, 18 - 25 years old, male, it will respond to this article and ad. If Asian, 55-70, female, that article and ad. It’s viewing people as mathematical formula variables. So just get rid of social media (except Goodreads!), and use the paper of record as paper mache.
I wanted to give Bad News a bonus star not for the content within the book, but everything surrounding it. The hardback cover is great. The entire book tour is perfect. Batya goes on BookTV and Washington Journal, debates on Intelligence Squared, goes on CNN, calls out CNN on Tucker, calls out CNN on the Hill. Even going on Bill Maher, contra the NYT’s head queen Frank Bruni just to call him a rich yuppie who got his job from coming from rich parents, was amazing.
If anyone is writing a book, especially on politics, and you truly believe your argument is important to the (sorry for this) discourse, please use this book tour as an example. Grab a few nickels and dimes to toss into the pushka at the agent’s office, and don’t settle for any less.
Also I was trying not to do this because I mention her name every other book review, but my fingers are itching to say something. Inhales... anncoulterhasbeensayingthatthenewyorktimesneedstobedestroyedfordecadesnow. Whew, glad I got that out of the way.
While flipping through the pages, I planned on giving Bad News 2 stars with an extra credit bonus star, but now that I’ve finished, 2 stars is probably all it deserves. The argument Batya provides is the same one Marxist journals (the Jacobin, the New Republic, the Bellows) have been saying against the BIPOC-LGBTQQIAA2SPK+ reckoning: identity politics is a bourgeois distraction away from class politics. (As I typed that alphabet monstrosity, Google Docs red-underlined it to let me know that it’s actually BIPOC-LGBTQQIP2SAA lol. Sorry for trying to be inclusive.)
The issue is that Batya is inconsistent.
She wants to steer us away from race politics, then goes on to say, “a woke moral panic isn’t really about representing black people but about pandering to white readers (p.196).” This is obviously false when one scroll through LinkedIn will show careerists and academics both white and not white, like Ibram X Kendi himself, loving the attention they get from “calling out” white supremacy. She even cites black journalists having a tantrum over Slack at the NYT after the debacle that was Tom Cotton’s op-ed. Why not just go full throttle with the class stuff like Walter Benn Michaels and say that DEI is rich people pandering to rich people no matter the color? Why bring the “cis white males” thing into it again?
Apparently, wokeness “is rooted in Hegel’s master-slave dialectic (p. 233).” I’m not sure why she skips over Marxism and places the root of critical race/gender/sexuality studies on Hegel. It’s called Neo-Marxism for a reason. Oh wait. It’s because Batya herself is a Marxist. Why would Hegel’s dialectic be wrong but not Marx’s, given the materialist dialectic is rooted in the master-slave dialectic?
This aspect of Marx’s thought–seeing through the illusions of everyday life to the “real” exploitative nature of our society and institutions–was then picked up by the postmodernists. (p. 157)
The idea of seeing through illusions goes back probably even before the Allegory of the Cave. I don’t know what “picked up” is supposed to mean; postmodernists reject grand narratives, which includes Marxism. The reason Social Justice mish-mashes Marxism and postmodernism is autism. It’s that simple.
So Day and Pulitzer obviously became wealthy from their “pro-labor” journals. But is their generation of wealth a good thing for Batya? If we’re going the Marxist route, why should we be impressed that these men made profits creating dumbed-down and scandalous gossip articles for workers’ money? Of course, the capitalist will say that this shows that the market rewards those who innovate, and that this is good. But under Marxism, this is just more exploitation of the proles. And how do Day and Pulitzer’s own rags-to-riches stories work within the Marxist framework?
But the most pressing question in discussing wokeism: Is it good for the Jews?
I don’t have much to say about the Israel/Palestine conflict, but as most cable news (except Fox) and most journals have bagel runners, claiming that the reason why the mainstream media is pro-Palestine, is because Ochs was just a self-hating “deeply insecure about his Jewishness (p. 215)” Jew isn’t much of an analysis. In fact, it reeks of the same cowpat that she immediately after criticizes the NYT for dropping by saying that minority Trump voters were the “oppressed [who] will stand with the oppressors (p. 229).”
As to whether Jews are considered white under wokeism, she’s right that they tend to be lumped in with whites. But Sarah Silverman’s dad made sure to clear that right up for us when Sarah guest hosted the Jimmy Kimmel show a few months ago. Not to mention the backlash Whoopi Goldberg got for saying that the Holocaust was a clear example of man’s evil against man.
Batya’s politics are just all over the place. Like another reviewer said, she hasn’t made up her mind, so there are many instances of contradictory thinking.
...an obsession with racial parity at the tippy top of the economic ladder is crucial to sustaining the fiction that the reigning elites earned their right to their success, power, and wealth due to their own talent. (p. 167)
Then what is white guilt? Clearly some successful white people become antiracist because they feel they didn’t earn their way solely through meritocracy, and then overcorrect through
But will meritocracy ever not be a fiction for Batya? Don’t we want meritocracy if we’re doing away with wokeness and its identity discrimination? Unless if Batya truly wants wealth distribution, which would still be discrimination, just with salary instead of skin color.
Free college isn’t a pathway to a strong working class; it’s a fantasy in which there is no working class. Rather than creating an America that ensures a dignified life for working-class people, the Far Left proposed getting more people out of the working class and into the college-educated set. (p. 237)
What the hell? Now I’m really confused. Batya identifies herself as a socialist, yet she disagrees with getting more people out of the “working class,” and instead wants a strong “working class.” Then why all this hoopla about the fake meritocracy in the highly educated upper class if the working class shouldn’t want upward mobility. Why should we want wealth distribution given that this (ideally for socialists) leads people out of the working class? What does a “dignified life” entail, and would the working class actually be the working class if they had one? It sounds like she’s fine with the neofeudalism she criticized later in the book.
Batya finds fault with the Left's idea of “oligarchal socialism.” Of course, contra the 2016 Sanders flavor of “democratic socialism.”
In this elite fantasy, the working class would not be a self-sufficient countervailing power to the elites as it once was, but rather a massive sector of society living at the beneficence of the super rich. (p. 241)
I would like to read a clarification between the two somewhere.
No, poor people voting for the Right isn’t voting against their own economic interests. I don’t know how she could have a whole section on why people voted for Trump, and then turn around and use the same “trickle down economics is bad” schtick. Paying less taxes, upward (and downward) mobility, incentives for small business, limiting immigration, school choice, incentives for property ownership is not against the values of “autonomy, bootstrapping, marriage, family, and religion (p. 254).”
Aside from all that, yes, journals have basically become tech companies. They run campaigns, experiments, A/B testing to see what increases the click-through rates and other engagements on web and mobile for users overall or with profiles with certain metadata markers and sell that information and ad space to advertisers. Since most happenings occur on Twitter or Zoom press releases, almost no gumshoeing in the material world is necessary. Identity politics goes hand-in-hand with tech. If an online profile is black, 18 - 25 years old, male, it will respond to this article and ad. If Asian, 55-70, female, that article and ad. It’s viewing people as mathematical formula variables. So just get rid of social media (except Goodreads!), and use the paper of record as paper mache.
I wanted to give Bad News a bonus star not for the content within the book, but everything surrounding it. The hardback cover is great. The entire book tour is perfect. Batya goes on BookTV and Washington Journal, debates on Intelligence Squared, goes on CNN, calls out CNN on Tucker, calls out CNN on the Hill. Even going on Bill Maher, contra the NYT’s head queen Frank Bruni just to call him a rich yuppie who got his job from coming from rich parents, was amazing.
If anyone is writing a book, especially on politics, and you truly believe your argument is important to the (sorry for this) discourse, please use this book tour as an example. Grab a few nickels and dimes to toss into the pushka at the agent’s office, and don’t settle for any less.
Also I was trying not to do this because I mention her name every other book review, but my fingers are itching to say something. Inhales... anncoulterhasbeensayingthatthenewyorktimesneedstobedestroyedfordecadesnow. Whew, glad I got that out of the way.
March 21, 2022
Saw her on Bill Maher and was interested to read her book. She sounded like she had an interesting perspective and might provide an original view of how media has changed in the last 20 years. Boy, was I wrong. Obviously she self-moderated because she was with Maher. The book has a hyperbolic tone. I dumped it after 20 pages. From the very beginning the point she hammers is essentially that all journalists are elitist and out of touch with common folk because they have become educated and many make a lot of money (media celebrities). The book starts by describing a CNN panel with Kirsten Power and Don Lemon, two people who fit her bill, and who obviously can not possibly provide fair-minded analysis or opinion, because they have bought into lefty 'wokeness' like the rest of their out of touch richie-rich media celebrity ilk. I of course immediately thought of Tucker Carlson, the standard bearer of 'anti-wokeness', who is the highest paid media personality on the most watched cable news network in the country. The author identifies 2011 as the turning point, because that was the year the New York Times erected their paywall. The date sounds about right, but most people identify that year (around that year) as when social media really took hold as the principle provider of 'news' information. Her right-wing agenda mitigates against a balanced assessment on the way media has had to adjust to the changing informational climate, which has sub-segmented into the 'silos' we have become so familiar with. That's ultimately what undermines democracy. This skewed polemic certainly doesn't help.
April 15, 2022
The book doesn’t really hit its stride until the 3/4 in. It’s an interesting premise and deserves examination but this book is not written particularly well, has many logical fallacies, and clearly strung out to make it just long enough to sell as a quasi textbook. Very interesting description of how editorial rooms have become echo chambers that don’t reflect or in some cases even allow diversity of opinion. The author derides the mainstream media and young journalists with elite educations in particular while seeming to forget that she’s a young journalist working at Newsweek with a PhD from Berkeley.
I would have enjoyed a more careful exploration of the idea that extensive coverage of race has come at the expense of coverage of income inequality. Her idea that we shouldn’t just want a more diverse slate of robber barons is great. It would have been interesting to examine this more carefully.
I would have enjoyed a more careful exploration of the idea that extensive coverage of race has come at the expense of coverage of income inequality. Her idea that we shouldn’t just want a more diverse slate of robber barons is great. It would have been interesting to examine this more carefully.
August 7, 2022
Calling American media out as ‘woke’ is pretty funny. What’s funnier is Batya’s reasoning by her cherry-picking some truths, half truths and fantasies to back up her claims. There’s moments where Batya manages to diagnose the failings of journalists, bias and poor editorial decisions but then nose dives into ahistorical takes that don’t analyse the initial assessment to meet her conclusions. The Cotton and Weiss analysis is a minefield of selective memory that ignores the content, context and realities of the situation and like a lot of cranks and grifters, Batya attempts a faux outrage formula that is aimed at boosting sales over telling facts. It’s like a person arguing with a specialist who has years of training and experience all because the 4th page of google results told them something different.
August 5, 2022
It’s fascinating to watch a mind NOT at work. Just a bunch of hollow machinations on a page from an intellectually vapid “writer” whose only credits include riding the coat tails of her friend Bari Weiss and rage tweeting about whatever progressive issue angers her small conservative mind. Bad News is what happens when reactionary anger & access to a publisher combine with a talentless hack.
April 27, 2023
This book was fascinating and inspiring. I began surveying people to gauge interest in local news while reading this and even began contacting local election candidates once I finished the book because I now believe even more in the importance of local journalism.
May 29, 2022
Alright, so this point makes a great point in identifying the socioeconomic divide that the media went through in the '70s and '80s that led to the rise of conservative media sources like Fox News. However, it is stated over and over again and doesn't do as much further analysis than I expected.
March 21, 2022
A solid read--particularly for those that are not too steeped in the debate about the media today or not too close to it. As someone who is (ex-journo who saw a lot of these issues first hand and read about them over the past 5-10 years) I found the book to be returning to a lot of the same moments (the Tom Cotton op-ed) and figures (Tony Timpa) that have been written about ad nauseum by now. There were some moments of insight and fresh perspective here--I particularly liked the last chapter and epilogue, which spelled out some solutions to the media's issues. But it says something that they were also the slimmest chapters. For the most part, the book felt like a mash-up of takes I've read from the NY Post and WSJ editorial board, Tablet, the Spectator, National Review, Quillette and other similarly aligned publications in the last two to three years. Again, the book isn't so bad if you haven't read these takes. But if you have, I fear there is little here that is particularly new or fresh for you.
February 28, 2022
Batya Ungar-Sargon’s “Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy” adds itself to the growing list of books that use “Woke” derisively in the title. If that’s your thing, at first blush “Bad News” seems like manna. It makes the big promise of exposing how news media have shifted from objectivity to a type of activism that underlies all its coverage, even at the expense of truthful reporting. Yes, “Bad News” makes that promise… and it mostly delivers on it.
The author’s primary conceit is that with the deterioration of, say, newspapers the last several years, the only people who can survive the entry-level pay are those who don’t have to worry about making a living from one’s job. And that this has produced an elitist/activist class of journalists that much prefers focusing on (if not creating) issues of race/gender, rather than the more pressing one of economic class.
Despite a rather slow beginning about the history of newspapers, “Bad News” eventually gets to those irresistible anecdotes/statistics/conundrums of woke media, e.g., how do they explain that minority votes for Trump actually increased from 2016 to 2020, even after the season of social justice leading up to the second election? If you guessed: by claiming that the minority voters are white supremacists… you’re right.
Ungar-Sargon’s a formidable researcher and writer, and has produced a good book. It’s a shame that—because of what it has to say—it won’t reach the audience that most needs to hear it.
The author’s primary conceit is that with the deterioration of, say, newspapers the last several years, the only people who can survive the entry-level pay are those who don’t have to worry about making a living from one’s job. And that this has produced an elitist/activist class of journalists that much prefers focusing on (if not creating) issues of race/gender, rather than the more pressing one of economic class.
Despite a rather slow beginning about the history of newspapers, “Bad News” eventually gets to those irresistible anecdotes/statistics/conundrums of woke media, e.g., how do they explain that minority votes for Trump actually increased from 2016 to 2020, even after the season of social justice leading up to the second election? If you guessed: by claiming that the minority voters are white supremacists… you’re right.
Ungar-Sargon’s a formidable researcher and writer, and has produced a good book. It’s a shame that—because of what it has to say—it won’t reach the audience that most needs to hear it.
December 20, 2021
I was dying to give this book 5 stars because it's very needed. First of all, it's a great companion to Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America. Lots of great history and information. It's always nice to see someone on the left start to change their viewpoint. But, at the end of the day, Ungar-Sargon is still a creature of the left, so she still accepts without question some of the main canards of the leftist press without question. The most blatant one is Trump's racism, including the easily disproven claim that he was averse to disavowing white supremacy. Something he did unequivocally dozens of times.
I'd call it a work in progress.
I'd call it a work in progress.
March 1, 2022
Batya is a good writer and communicator in this book where she consolidates a lot of observations that have been made about the liberal left and contextual idea them within the media landscape. I found some of her thoughts on the working class and what to do about the problem to be confused like she hadn’t fully formed an opinion and her case studies were more diatribes about her own problems with certain opinions rather than specific examples. Overall a good book about how the media and identity politics divides us up but should be taken with a grain of salt.
May 11, 2022
In her critique of the American media, Ungar-Sargon argues that the gentrification of the news media has put the field out of touch with its core mission “to afflict the powerful and empower the afflicted.”
She claims that media gentrification panders to the elite’s racial “wokeness” while muffling the voices of conservative-leaning, less educated, lower classes.
In response. media hucksters like the Murdochs have swooped in to grab an essentially abandoned group of media consumers, capitalizing on rage-baiting while failing to enlighten their audience about how to confront deeper economic inequalities through reasoned policy and public debate.
In sum, Ungar-Sargon concludes that the media preserve the economic status quo, which is increasingly polarized between haves and have nots.
Her work is impressive. She draws on 150 years of media history, showing how the older media ecosystem included a broader range of voices. She argues the woke media have manufactured a moral panic about systemic racism, and she illustrates by tallying the increasing mentions of “racism” in the word counts in recent news articles as compared to 50 years ago. She presents data from polls disaggregated by race, showing how they belie the woke narrative that caters to the vanity of the upper class, White, and highly educated. She contrasts the news consumption habits of those on different poles of education level and household income. All in all, she marshals a devastating argument.
As a former journalist who witnessed the gentrification of the field firsthand, I found that section of her argument spot on. I also appreciated the media history and data-based analyses that indicate the current moral panic over race is largely manufactured to soothe elites who have zero intention of sharing their wealth with the expanding lower classes. This argument also resonates with my personal experience of having childhood memories of civil rights and racial consciousness-raising only to be subjected in my middle age to a round of overwrought and self-righteous lectures about White racism—as if the problem has actually worsened in some way. The problem exists, yes, but the current situation is not nearly as oppressive as it once was.
However, I disagree with her conclusion that the solution is as simple as getting educated liberals to start listening to Trump conservatives. I tried this with my own family. It failed.
I am the daughter of an Eisenhower Republican father who supported civil rights his entire life, partly because he grew up in a blue collar family that had felt the sting of class oppression. But he always had anger issues—and the Murdochs’ media recipe actually damaged my father’s capacity to listen to many reasonable arguments about climate science, for one. Fox also neutralized his attention to the ways that his own life and actions were not as culturally conservative as he might have wanted to believe.
What Ungar-Sargon’s argument ignores is that there’s a whole sense of White conservative vanity and deafness too, and it is laced with as much hypocrisy as anything by the White liberal elites. She frequently cites the work of Chris Arnade, who has studied the forgotten underclass in the middle of the country. But that’s not my father or his political pals. The upper-class and upper-middle class subscribers to Trump Republicanism are plenty comfortable. They have plenty of agency and opportunity to speak out for themselves.
And yet…they engage in a mirror version of liberal smugness, which is equally problematic for the civic life of our democracy. This brand of smugness runs along the lines of: “I might not be the top dog but I am streetwise! And let me tell you: no scientist or government bureaucrat is going to put one over on me!” If they could back up this stance with some indication that they actually *do* understand how science and government work, this would work. But they don’t do that. They simply don’t do their homework and get all huffy and offended, often going on the attack.
I have tried engaging with several friends and family members in that camp, and have seen this behavior over and over. They will talk your ear off but they won’t listen. Instead they will attack or just hurl some crazy insult. No rules of engagement! Food fight! I suspect this is why they like Trump. He caters to that side of them. He models how to “engage” in civic discourse by being willfully ignorant, bullying, and disrespectful.
I am a fighter but this is a waste of time. My read: They don’t want to understand or solve or discuss serious problems through debate. They just want to “be right” and they are willing and eager to shout down anyone pointing out the inconsistencies of their positions.
So, no, I don’t think that “just getting woke liberals to listen” is going to work—which is her recommendation at the close of her book. Sorry—but no. Been there. Done that. Maybe her next book needs to deconstruct the smugness of the affluent White Right?
She claims that media gentrification panders to the elite’s racial “wokeness” while muffling the voices of conservative-leaning, less educated, lower classes.
In response. media hucksters like the Murdochs have swooped in to grab an essentially abandoned group of media consumers, capitalizing on rage-baiting while failing to enlighten their audience about how to confront deeper economic inequalities through reasoned policy and public debate.
In sum, Ungar-Sargon concludes that the media preserve the economic status quo, which is increasingly polarized between haves and have nots.
Her work is impressive. She draws on 150 years of media history, showing how the older media ecosystem included a broader range of voices. She argues the woke media have manufactured a moral panic about systemic racism, and she illustrates by tallying the increasing mentions of “racism” in the word counts in recent news articles as compared to 50 years ago. She presents data from polls disaggregated by race, showing how they belie the woke narrative that caters to the vanity of the upper class, White, and highly educated. She contrasts the news consumption habits of those on different poles of education level and household income. All in all, she marshals a devastating argument.
As a former journalist who witnessed the gentrification of the field firsthand, I found that section of her argument spot on. I also appreciated the media history and data-based analyses that indicate the current moral panic over race is largely manufactured to soothe elites who have zero intention of sharing their wealth with the expanding lower classes. This argument also resonates with my personal experience of having childhood memories of civil rights and racial consciousness-raising only to be subjected in my middle age to a round of overwrought and self-righteous lectures about White racism—as if the problem has actually worsened in some way. The problem exists, yes, but the current situation is not nearly as oppressive as it once was.
However, I disagree with her conclusion that the solution is as simple as getting educated liberals to start listening to Trump conservatives. I tried this with my own family. It failed.
I am the daughter of an Eisenhower Republican father who supported civil rights his entire life, partly because he grew up in a blue collar family that had felt the sting of class oppression. But he always had anger issues—and the Murdochs’ media recipe actually damaged my father’s capacity to listen to many reasonable arguments about climate science, for one. Fox also neutralized his attention to the ways that his own life and actions were not as culturally conservative as he might have wanted to believe.
What Ungar-Sargon’s argument ignores is that there’s a whole sense of White conservative vanity and deafness too, and it is laced with as much hypocrisy as anything by the White liberal elites. She frequently cites the work of Chris Arnade, who has studied the forgotten underclass in the middle of the country. But that’s not my father or his political pals. The upper-class and upper-middle class subscribers to Trump Republicanism are plenty comfortable. They have plenty of agency and opportunity to speak out for themselves.
And yet…they engage in a mirror version of liberal smugness, which is equally problematic for the civic life of our democracy. This brand of smugness runs along the lines of: “I might not be the top dog but I am streetwise! And let me tell you: no scientist or government bureaucrat is going to put one over on me!” If they could back up this stance with some indication that they actually *do* understand how science and government work, this would work. But they don’t do that. They simply don’t do their homework and get all huffy and offended, often going on the attack.
I have tried engaging with several friends and family members in that camp, and have seen this behavior over and over. They will talk your ear off but they won’t listen. Instead they will attack or just hurl some crazy insult. No rules of engagement! Food fight! I suspect this is why they like Trump. He caters to that side of them. He models how to “engage” in civic discourse by being willfully ignorant, bullying, and disrespectful.
I am a fighter but this is a waste of time. My read: They don’t want to understand or solve or discuss serious problems through debate. They just want to “be right” and they are willing and eager to shout down anyone pointing out the inconsistencies of their positions.
So, no, I don’t think that “just getting woke liberals to listen” is going to work—which is her recommendation at the close of her book. Sorry—but no. Been there. Done that. Maybe her next book needs to deconstruct the smugness of the affluent White Right?
April 24, 2023
An excellent book with a compelling thesis, which was well researched.
The history of how newspapers came about in the United States was fascinating.
More fascinating was the journey that journalism took from being a blue-collar job — whose purpose was to give a voice to the poor and working classes and empower them to gain the control necessary to build a better life — to a job filled by rich graduates of Ivy League colleges, who not only didn’t know any poor or working class people, but didn’t want to sell their papers to them, because their high-end advertisers wanted rich eyeballs on their ads, not poor ones.
A lot of the choices to abandon the poor and working classes were made on purpose, but a few were accidental. For example, as the New York Times struggled to survive the shift to the digital age, they fired all their veteran reporters, whom they had to pay respectable salaries to, and started to hire new kids out of the Ivy Leagues for pittance wages.
They needed Ivy League kids, because the only internships they offered were unpaid internships — in New York City. Poor people can’t afford that. Working class people can’t afford that. Only rich people whose parents can support adult children in one of the most expensive cities in the world, can afford that. And then, in their first few years as young reporters, they’re paid $30,000 or $40,000 a year. That’s not enough to live in New York City. So once again, they have to be rich kids, whose parents can afford to pay for them to take their fancy job that doesn’t pay a living wage.
And so the New York Times and similar news sources became echo chambers for wealthy elites, talking to other wealthy elites. And not only aren’t they interested in giving a voice to the poor and working classes — whom they look down on — they don’t even know any people who are poor or working class.
Meanwhile, these reporters turned all their attention to the woke project of re-racializing everything. It’s the same old story that’s been going on since the 1600s. Rich American aristocrats invented the concept of race in order to divide and conquer the poor and working class people who posed a threat to their power after Bacon’s rebellion. It was horrifically successful. Then in the mid to late 20th century, we finally began tearing down the walls of race. The ranks of the poor shrank, and the working class — black and white — rose into economic comfort.
But now, once again, it’s the wealthy elite who are pushing the concept that the single most important thing about every human being is the color of their skin. And that if you are poor or working class and you are a “person of color“ you should absolutely not see yourself as in any way related to a poor or working class person who is “white.“
You should separate yourself – join an affinity group – and talk about how oppressed you are (by white people, not by rich, elite people). And you shouldn’t try to find solutions to that oppression. Because there are no solutions. Racism is eternal. You should just feel oppressed and stay separate from the other poor and working class people with whom you might unite to try and improve your conditions.
As this philosophy has spread and gained acceptance, the gap between the haves and the have-nots has exploded. The ranks of the poor have burgeoned, and the working class have slipped from economic comfort to teetering on the edge of poverty — while at the same time, the rich have become richer.
The old saying is true. Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.
This book elucidates the history of how American news sources shifted from being the voices of and for poor & working class people, to being the voices of and for wealthy, elite, ivy leagers & ivy league wannabes.
It’s a useful bit of history. We should learn its lessons, and cut short our nation’s second foray into the horrific Wonderland of believing that race is real and something to be embraced — that there is no difference at all between a rich “white” person and a poor “white” person, but that there is an insurmountable gap between a poor “person of color“ and a poor “white” person, who might otherwise band together to make both their lives better.
I listened to the audiobook. Batya Ungar-Sargon read it herself. She did an excellent job.
The history of how newspapers came about in the United States was fascinating.
More fascinating was the journey that journalism took from being a blue-collar job — whose purpose was to give a voice to the poor and working classes and empower them to gain the control necessary to build a better life — to a job filled by rich graduates of Ivy League colleges, who not only didn’t know any poor or working class people, but didn’t want to sell their papers to them, because their high-end advertisers wanted rich eyeballs on their ads, not poor ones.
A lot of the choices to abandon the poor and working classes were made on purpose, but a few were accidental. For example, as the New York Times struggled to survive the shift to the digital age, they fired all their veteran reporters, whom they had to pay respectable salaries to, and started to hire new kids out of the Ivy Leagues for pittance wages.
They needed Ivy League kids, because the only internships they offered were unpaid internships — in New York City. Poor people can’t afford that. Working class people can’t afford that. Only rich people whose parents can support adult children in one of the most expensive cities in the world, can afford that. And then, in their first few years as young reporters, they’re paid $30,000 or $40,000 a year. That’s not enough to live in New York City. So once again, they have to be rich kids, whose parents can afford to pay for them to take their fancy job that doesn’t pay a living wage.
And so the New York Times and similar news sources became echo chambers for wealthy elites, talking to other wealthy elites. And not only aren’t they interested in giving a voice to the poor and working classes — whom they look down on — they don’t even know any people who are poor or working class.
Meanwhile, these reporters turned all their attention to the woke project of re-racializing everything. It’s the same old story that’s been going on since the 1600s. Rich American aristocrats invented the concept of race in order to divide and conquer the poor and working class people who posed a threat to their power after Bacon’s rebellion. It was horrifically successful. Then in the mid to late 20th century, we finally began tearing down the walls of race. The ranks of the poor shrank, and the working class — black and white — rose into economic comfort.
But now, once again, it’s the wealthy elite who are pushing the concept that the single most important thing about every human being is the color of their skin. And that if you are poor or working class and you are a “person of color“ you should absolutely not see yourself as in any way related to a poor or working class person who is “white.“
You should separate yourself – join an affinity group – and talk about how oppressed you are (by white people, not by rich, elite people). And you shouldn’t try to find solutions to that oppression. Because there are no solutions. Racism is eternal. You should just feel oppressed and stay separate from the other poor and working class people with whom you might unite to try and improve your conditions.
As this philosophy has spread and gained acceptance, the gap between the haves and the have-nots has exploded. The ranks of the poor have burgeoned, and the working class have slipped from economic comfort to teetering on the edge of poverty — while at the same time, the rich have become richer.
The old saying is true. Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.
This book elucidates the history of how American news sources shifted from being the voices of and for poor & working class people, to being the voices of and for wealthy, elite, ivy leagers & ivy league wannabes.
It’s a useful bit of history. We should learn its lessons, and cut short our nation’s second foray into the horrific Wonderland of believing that race is real and something to be embraced — that there is no difference at all between a rich “white” person and a poor “white” person, but that there is an insurmountable gap between a poor “person of color“ and a poor “white” person, who might otherwise band together to make both their lives better.
I listened to the audiobook. Batya Ungar-Sargon read it herself. She did an excellent job.
January 9, 2022
Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy by Batya Ungar-Sargon is a 200-year history of the news. Understanding how the news works is critical to understanding the news itself. Much of Bad News focuses on the paper of record, The New York Times. This builds on recent work done by Martin Gurri in The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium, Hate Inc. by Matt Taibbi and the Grey Lady Winked by Ashley Rindsberg.
There is this longing amongst the intellectual class for the days of Walter Cronkite, if we just could agree on the facts again in the years following the Trump election in 2016 then everything would be alright, but it is the elite media itself that has caused this split, first there was a transition to writing stories that catered to the business and intellectual classes in order to have a targeted audience to sell advertisements back to them, then in the digital age, and when the newspaper's online pages were free to all, there was another switch to subscription-based models which further entrenched this business model. Such that the working class had no place to read about the issues that were important to them until they were eventually scooped up by radio and FoxNews.
Bad News helps us understand this new landscape, in which an op-ed from a United States Senator (Tom Cotton) could tear a newsroom apart, where moderate voices, such as Bari Weiss or Andrew Sullivan are forced to leave legacy platforms for substack, or why the legacy media is so critical of technology companies, not because it is the news to fit to print but because they are now in direct competition. At first, newspapers were for the business elite, then there was a robust market for newspapers for the working class, the elites battled back with the New York Times that would come to cater to the broader intellectual class, which drove the working-class market to radio and television, and now we have another response, independent media in the form of podcasts and newsletters. It all comes down to class inequality and not the racial inequality that the elite media claims, they make this claim because breaking down the class inequality would remove themselves from the top. Bad News helps you to better understand what are the forces behind the news you are getting, and how the woke media is perpetuating this class inequality while undermining democracy.
There is this longing amongst the intellectual class for the days of Walter Cronkite, if we just could agree on the facts again in the years following the Trump election in 2016 then everything would be alright, but it is the elite media itself that has caused this split, first there was a transition to writing stories that catered to the business and intellectual classes in order to have a targeted audience to sell advertisements back to them, then in the digital age, and when the newspaper's online pages were free to all, there was another switch to subscription-based models which further entrenched this business model. Such that the working class had no place to read about the issues that were important to them until they were eventually scooped up by radio and FoxNews.
Bad News helps us understand this new landscape, in which an op-ed from a United States Senator (Tom Cotton) could tear a newsroom apart, where moderate voices, such as Bari Weiss or Andrew Sullivan are forced to leave legacy platforms for substack, or why the legacy media is so critical of technology companies, not because it is the news to fit to print but because they are now in direct competition. At first, newspapers were for the business elite, then there was a robust market for newspapers for the working class, the elites battled back with the New York Times that would come to cater to the broader intellectual class, which drove the working-class market to radio and television, and now we have another response, independent media in the form of podcasts and newsletters. It all comes down to class inequality and not the racial inequality that the elite media claims, they make this claim because breaking down the class inequality would remove themselves from the top. Bad News helps you to better understand what are the forces behind the news you are getting, and how the woke media is perpetuating this class inequality while undermining democracy.
July 20, 2024
This is a damning review of the media and exceptionally well done. She proves how the media has perpetuated culture wars at the expense of real issues that affect the American populace in order to perpetuate its own power. She begins with a history of the modern media and how its elitism is baked into its very existence as the New York Times was designed to exclude the working class in order to sell more expensive ads. The Washington Post cut circulation to Black neighborhoods in order to ensure their advertisers a more elite readership. So why do these publications grift so hard on race and gender when the broader populace is affected by more serious issues? Why do they tell us that Black people are hyper focused on racism when the data shows that they are not? It is in the media's interest to do so, that is why.
And yet there is a section on Jews that confuses me. She makes a strong point that Black racism is overrepresented and then makes the case that Jewish racism is underrepresented because the founder of the Times thought that Zionism was a threat to Jewishness as a religion. This is a legitimate concern from Orthodox Jews. Many of them DO feel that Zionism is harmful to their religion and a threat to Jews all over the world. I don’t understand why she would present anti-Zionism as antisemitism. I think it is a lack of understanding of Orthodoxy but this part only represents 4 pages of the book
The epilogue has suggestions for how to resist the polarization that the media inflicts upon us and I loved them! She suggests that we do not offer the media our rage when they try to provoke it, we not cancel people for changing their position on things or engage in online pile-ons, and she calls for an understanding of the working class outside of the media’s conclusion that all Trump voters are acting against their own self interest. How would the media know anything at all about working class conservatives? They are not represented in newsrooms. The media is confused that conservatives value hard work, family, bootstrapping and religion so they punch down on those things. That’s why they deserve our hatred.
I was guilty of a lot of these elitisms when I worked in corporate media. This book validates the fact that I left but if I cared to fix the media, I don’t know what I would do with this book. To me, they are beyond the pale but should anyone in power be listening, you can find ways to put out the dumpster fire here in this book.
And yet there is a section on Jews that confuses me. She makes a strong point that Black racism is overrepresented and then makes the case that Jewish racism is underrepresented because the founder of the Times thought that Zionism was a threat to Jewishness as a religion. This is a legitimate concern from Orthodox Jews. Many of them DO feel that Zionism is harmful to their religion and a threat to Jews all over the world. I don’t understand why she would present anti-Zionism as antisemitism. I think it is a lack of understanding of Orthodoxy but this part only represents 4 pages of the book
The epilogue has suggestions for how to resist the polarization that the media inflicts upon us and I loved them! She suggests that we do not offer the media our rage when they try to provoke it, we not cancel people for changing their position on things or engage in online pile-ons, and she calls for an understanding of the working class outside of the media’s conclusion that all Trump voters are acting against their own self interest. How would the media know anything at all about working class conservatives? They are not represented in newsrooms. The media is confused that conservatives value hard work, family, bootstrapping and religion so they punch down on those things. That’s why they deserve our hatred.
I was guilty of a lot of these elitisms when I worked in corporate media. This book validates the fact that I left but if I cared to fix the media, I don’t know what I would do with this book. To me, they are beyond the pale but should anyone in power be listening, you can find ways to put out the dumpster fire here in this book.
June 12, 2023
White the author herself admits she is on the more liberal sides of thing,s she recognizes how media like the New York times (which is her primary target through most of the book) have a major bias against the common people. The media has moved to the left, and their focus has shifted to "intersectionality". They blame white people simply for being white and this had driven off the working class white voters. The author claims this is why Republicans have become the party of the working class, because they were abandoned by the Democrats. She claims race as the divider masks the true divider. Liberal media says white people are guilty just for being white. The media is more educated from elite colleges than ever before, where once journalism was not an elitist profession.
She does a good job of identifying a lot of the issue with today's media, and how print media giving way to digital media has also been problematic. A large part of her focus is economic inequality, but that racial inequality has been a distraction. If someone points out the plight of poor whites, or that police brutality effects more than just black people, they are labeled racist. She does say how the idea that the poor need to be taken care of by government social programs is dehumanizing, as it strips them of self sufficiency. She describes the appeal of Trump and why he won more votes from demographics that typically voted Democrat in the past. She claims that a lot of the media has anti-semetic tendencies and this goes way back, even tough many in the media are themselves Jewish. She gives some good advise on how to engage with those you disagree with. I may disagree with some of her issues, but she presents it in about as objective a manner as you can, acknowledging her own built in biases.
She does a good job of identifying a lot of the issue with today's media, and how print media giving way to digital media has also been problematic. A large part of her focus is economic inequality, but that racial inequality has been a distraction. If someone points out the plight of poor whites, or that police brutality effects more than just black people, they are labeled racist. She does say how the idea that the poor need to be taken care of by government social programs is dehumanizing, as it strips them of self sufficiency. She describes the appeal of Trump and why he won more votes from demographics that typically voted Democrat in the past. She claims that a lot of the media has anti-semetic tendencies and this goes way back, even tough many in the media are themselves Jewish. She gives some good advise on how to engage with those you disagree with. I may disagree with some of her issues, but she presents it in about as objective a manner as you can, acknowledging her own built in biases.
March 26, 2023
The author describes how American journalism, which once upon a time catered to the downtrodden and the working class, has become an elitist institution co-opted by pampered "trust fund kids" to promote liberal and often dangerous agendas. The author discusses the history of American journalism and the evolution -- or rather, de-evolution -- of newspapers like The New York Times, which set out over a century ago to present a balanced view of current events but have ended up raging left-wing rags. The NYT is not alone. Sadly, almost all the mainstream newspapers and media outlets have been overrun by social justice warriors and other misfits. How are they able to survive on a notoriously low-paid profession? Simple: money is not a problem with them. Meanwhile, they exacerbate the cultural divide in this country by portraying the white working class, once American heroes, as redneck reactionaries or white supremacists, and promoting half-baked accusations of racism, sexism, etc. -- and the rest of the currently fashionable "isms." The rise of Trump has only heightened their hatred of Middle America and conservative values.
The author is herself a professed liberal -- which makes the book refreshing and much needed. She is also Jewish and bitterly aware of the NYT's legacy of anti-Semitism. She acknowledges the danger and damage of arrogant but ignorant journalists whose writing is based on left-wing ideology and youth fixation on steroids. She also gives various reasons for the radical left-ward shift -- social media being among the biggest, and the reliance on algorithms and drive for profits. The result is an echo chamber, where one opinion--the "woke" one--is heard, the others suppressed.
In fairness, and in possible contradiction to journalism giants like Pulitzer, not every working class person is automatically virtuous. Nevertheless, they were respected. Ironically, the socialist slant and sympathies of the older newspapers are now being directed toward anyone considered marginalized, and people are labeled victims simply by virtue of being non-white or non-straight.
This book, though over a year old, already seems dated, given the worsening decline of our cultural and traditional institutions. Having observed over the past decade (she also points this out) the explosive obsession with race, feminism, and now gender identity in all its forms, I would say that our current journalism is leading us toward disaster. That alone is "bad news."
The author is herself a professed liberal -- which makes the book refreshing and much needed. She is also Jewish and bitterly aware of the NYT's legacy of anti-Semitism. She acknowledges the danger and damage of arrogant but ignorant journalists whose writing is based on left-wing ideology and youth fixation on steroids. She also gives various reasons for the radical left-ward shift -- social media being among the biggest, and the reliance on algorithms and drive for profits. The result is an echo chamber, where one opinion--the "woke" one--is heard, the others suppressed.
In fairness, and in possible contradiction to journalism giants like Pulitzer, not every working class person is automatically virtuous. Nevertheless, they were respected. Ironically, the socialist slant and sympathies of the older newspapers are now being directed toward anyone considered marginalized, and people are labeled victims simply by virtue of being non-white or non-straight.
This book, though over a year old, already seems dated, given the worsening decline of our cultural and traditional institutions. Having observed over the past decade (she also points this out) the explosive obsession with race, feminism, and now gender identity in all its forms, I would say that our current journalism is leading us toward disaster. That alone is "bad news."
September 2, 2022
Batya Ungar-Sargon is a fearless champion of pointing out the truth, judging from this book. Clearly a member of the millennial left, she’s willing to point out hypocrisy, illogical thinking, self-deception and a host of other miscues made by the left in general and the news media (what were once called journalists) in particular.
Although it’s been obvious for many years that something has gone terribly, terribly wrong with the news media, it took Ms. Ungar-Sargon’s book to help me pinpoint it exactly: the news media was once comprised of denizens of the working class, more likely than not to have eschewed a college education in favor of developing their craft. Now, the overwhelming majority of the news media are comprised of scions of the wealthy, with unnecessary degrees from elite universities who are as far removed from the average person as clouds are from the grass. Their concerns are those of the wealthy, pampered self-styled aristocratic class to which they belong, or in some cases, aspire.
This book also includes a brief but interesting history of popular journalism in the United States.
I listened to the audio book read by Ms. Ungar-Sargon and enjoyed listening to her read and in some cases act out her writing.
Although it’s been obvious for many years that something has gone terribly, terribly wrong with the news media, it took Ms. Ungar-Sargon’s book to help me pinpoint it exactly: the news media was once comprised of denizens of the working class, more likely than not to have eschewed a college education in favor of developing their craft. Now, the overwhelming majority of the news media are comprised of scions of the wealthy, with unnecessary degrees from elite universities who are as far removed from the average person as clouds are from the grass. Their concerns are those of the wealthy, pampered self-styled aristocratic class to which they belong, or in some cases, aspire.
This book also includes a brief but interesting history of popular journalism in the United States.
I listened to the audio book read by Ms. Ungar-Sargon and enjoyed listening to her read and in some cases act out her writing.
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