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

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.