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What’s Wrong with Rights?
Nigel Biggar
Are natural rights ‘nonsense on stilts’, as Jeremy Bentham memorably… Read more
The Failure of American Conservatism and the Road Not Taken
Claes G. Ryn
A natural outsider to the American political realm, Ryn puts… Read more
The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785-1800
Conor Cruise O'Brien
As controversial and explosive as it is elegant and learned, The… Read more
Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics
Mary Eberstadt
Who am I? The question today haunts every society in the… Read more
John Selden and the Western Political Tradition
Ofir Haivry
Legal and political theorist, common lawyer and parliamentary leader, historian… Read more

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Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy (2021)

Batya Ungar-Sargon

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.

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