How the woke media is undermining democracy

Deputy opinion editor at Newsweek, Batya Ungar-Sargon, discusses her new book, “Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy” in the video clip below. Before we get into it, I want to note here that Batya is no right-wing conservative. She describes herself as center-left.

Ms. Ungar-Sargon says the source of the tension in America is not actually based on race but on class. She makes some important points about how the mainstream media (MSM), both on the right and left, cater to the affluent elites, not the working class. This is a major reversal from traditional journalism. The following explanation of why this is so comes from her book description:

“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.”

What she’s saying rings true with my own investigation. As I wrote about in “CRT and the New Fascism,” what we have today in America (and globally) is a form of Socialism that’s on a disturbing trajectory toward the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) form of Socialism where corporatists and the state collude to create a totalitarian oligarchy. This is rather ironic considering that your average “Occupy Wall Street” Socialist is against big corporations.

The fact is, most of the world’s wealthiest elite are corporatist Socialists. Why is this so? The answer, pure greed. Think about it. If you wanted to control the market and drive out any competition from small businesses, what would be a better way to do that this state-corporatist brand of fascism.

While the woke leftists are acting out dangerously right now, Batya goes deeper into the issue and points out that even right-wing newspapers and news channels tend to cater to the globalist elites and big business, leaving the working class high and dry.

There is some truth to this. For instance, we’re currently witnessing these crony globalist politicians on both sides of the political aisle wanting to spend trillions of dollars of our children’s future on their pet projects. (If you want to see the real reason why “The Green New Deal” has political traction, just follow the money. Who stands to profit from totally overhauling our economy the most?)

Joseph Pulitzer

Back to Ungar-Sargon’s point. When journalism went through this transformation from being the voice of the populist working-class in the tradition of Joseph Pulitzer to that of the affluent elite class, they no longer represented most of the American people.

Batya contends that the problem is not actually with media bias as long as all people are represented. The problem today is that the MSM only represents the affluent elite. There’s no voice for the lower and middle class, which is most of America. She says the MSM acts like they’re having this robust national discourse and debate when about 90% of the nation is left out of it.

Article: “The Media’s Betrayal of the poor” (UnHerd)

I hope you watch this interview. It’s very interesting. There are longer interviews on YouTube and Rumble if you want to dig further into it. I would also recommend getting Batya Ungar-Sargon’s book.

Batya Ungar-Sargon’s assessment really helps us decode what’s been going on with the mainstream media, how it got that way, and how it’s truly undermining our democracy.