What's the Matter With Liberals: How a Media Coopted by the Woke Left Is Waging a New Culture War

What's the Matter with Liberals is a response to Thomas Frank's 2004 book What's the Matter with Kansas . I ask the same question he asked about the right, but about the left: Why is the media obsessed with racism, even though it's getting objectively better by every measure we have? I argue that the liberal media is mainstreaming a woke culture war based on ideas that were relegated to the academic fringe as recently as a decade ago because it's in their economic interests to do so. As American journalism has gone from a working-class trade to an elite caste, it has abandoned the economic fight of the little guy in favor of a culture war that protects its own financial interests while masquerading as social justice. On the business side, digital media pressures and social media rewards combined to make a woke culture war the perfect displacement exercise. This is how you end up with the New York Times putting Angela Davis on the cover and a Cartier ad on the back; these are two sides of the same coin, a culture war that benefits elites packaged as moral truth and journalistic ethics. The book begins by delving into the golden age of American journalism in the 19th century, when people like Joseph Pulitzer created a press that was by and for the working class. It then explores the status revolution in American journalism that took place over the 21st century, when journalism went from being a blue-collar trade to an elite caste. It explores how digital media and social media supplied journalists, now part of the American elite, with an alternative way to feel like heroes while further consolidating power and wealth in the hands of the few rather than the many. The book then explores the larger context of the great American class divide, and how journalism has been both a product and accelerator of inequality. 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 News: 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. "Bad News is a response to Thomas Frank's 2004 book "What's the Matter with Kansas." I ask the same question he asked about the right, but about the left: Why is the media obsessed with racism, even though it's getting objectively better by every measure we have? I argue that the liberal media is mainstreaming a woke culture war based on ideas that were relegated to the academic fringe as recently as a decade ago because it's in their economic interests to do so. It explores how digital media and social media supplied journalists, now part of the American elite, with an alternative way to feel like heroes while further consolidating power and wealth in the hands of the few rather than the many. The book then explores the larger context of the great American class divide, and how journalism has been both a product and accelerator of inequality"-- Provided by publisher