Chris Boutté's Reviews > Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy

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.