Batya Ungar-Sargon, the deputy opinion editor at Newsweek, says journalists have shifted their focus from writing stories for the working class to ideas aimed toward the upper class.
During her Monday appearance on the Hill.TV’s “Rising,” Ungar-Sargon discussed her new book “Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy.” In the past few decades, she said that the media industry has shifted its focus away from working-class concerns.
She said, for example, that there has been a “moral panic around race,” but that she only believes that to be part of the problem.
“I argue in my book that this actually is not about race at all, it about class,” Ungar-Sargon said. “That over the course of the 20th century, journalists have become members of the American Elite essentially. Journalism used to be a working class trade, it was something you picked up while you were doing it out on the streets.”
Ungar-Sargon added while racism is a problem, socially and systematically, messages like “Defund the Police” are counterproductive in solving issues like police brutality. She cited it as an example of the maximalist language that comes from higher education, which she says is part of the problem.
Asked whether she sees politicized media as a problem, Ungar-Sargon said that while partisan media has been around for centuries, it is not a problem if everyone is represented fairly.
“American Journalism was born, really, as a populist revolution against elite journalism,” she said.
She said today, however, media is geared mainly toward concerns of the upper class.
“Today you have liberal media that’s really completely geared at getting an audience of the top 10 percent of liberals,” Ungar-Sargon explained. “And then you have conservative media that does manage to get working-class American viewers by not insulting their values, but it is really catering to the top five percent of Republicans.”
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