Bad News

""Batya Ungar-Sargon has demonstrated that the press has fundamentally misdiagnosed the sources of tension in American political life, which are based more on class than race. As the industry has become more aristocratic, it has shed its egalitarian mission statement, devoting itself instead to reinforcing the assumptions of its educated, affluent readership. As a result, the news media is increasingly disconnected from the nation it pretends to serve and is ceding working-class politics to the American right. Ungar-Sargon’s insightful book is an impassioned plea not for objectivity in reporting but for a partiality that benefits the greatest number, even at the expense of a few egos in American newsrooms."" —Noah Rothman, associate editor at Commentary magazine, MSNBC/NBC News contributor, and author of Unjust: Social Justice and the Unmaking of America “Bad News is a book that every single journalist and aspiring journalist in the country needs to read. The fact that modern journalism has transformed itself to an upper class profession is blindingly obvious to outsiders, but not well understood within the profession itself. The belief that it's up to journalists to lead public opinion in particular directions and lead them away from 
inconvenient facts is nothing less than a disaster for democracy. It undermines trust and credibility and destroys the likelihood of our citizens having 'shared facts.' Modern news media needs to earn the trust of the public back, and the first step is taking the hard 
medicine in this important book.”—Greg Lukianoff, CEO of The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and co-author, Unlearning Liberty, co-author, Coddling of the American Mind  “Journalism, at its best, provides a necessary check against powerful interests.  But what happens when journalists themselves become part of a powerful, elite class, disconnected from the interests of the working class of the country? Batya Ungar-Sargon’s timely book paints a disillusioning picture of the state of 21st century journalism, where dispassionate reporting too often takes a back seat to narrative-driven progressive activism.  It offers a clarion call for  the most important kind of diversity within newsrooms – an ideological diversity that’s increasingly absent from our country’s leading institutions. If you care about the future of journalism, Bad News is both a wake-up call to the growing threat and a guidebook for how to build back better.”—Josh Kraushaar, politics editor, National Journal “If you really want to understand the contradictions and complexities of the present moral panic, Batya Ungar-Sargon is an extraordinarily incisive guide to the country we share and the journalism that attempts not just to capture but also to shape it. This is a must-read for anyone concerned about the fragmented state of American media and the perpetual culture (read: class) wars that so powerfully undermine it.” —Thomas Chatterton Williams, contributing writer, New York Times magazine, and columnist, Harper’s “In the growing chorus of voices speaking up against ideological conformity in the media and the zombie activism that goes along with it, Batya Ungar-Sargon’s call for sanity and intellectual integrity is full-throated and essential. In Bad News, she peels back the layers of a media apparatus that has incentivized the distortion of reality and pitted our brains against our emotions. In so doing, she offers concrete explanations for a cultural crisis that, for most people, is constantly felt on a visceral level but nearly impossible to understand. Readers will come away with a better understanding. From there, they might feel better, too.” —Meghan Daum, author of The Problem with Everything: My Journey Through the New Culture Wars  “This book is like a flash of lightning, giving sudden illumination to one of the main causes of our current cultural dysfunction. This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how we got here, or how we get out.” —Jonathan Haidt, NYU-Stern School of Business, co-author, Coddling of the American Mind  ”This lively, provocative, and eye-opening book shows that the cultural symbols of class constitute a forceful engine in American life, even as the prevailing pundit machine tries to remove it from view."" —Nancy Isenberg, author of bestselling White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America “In Bad News, Batya Ungar-Sargon provides a timely and entertaining account of how class rivalries as well as political conflicts have shaped and sometimes warped the news industry, from the age of yellow journalism to today’s woke media.” —Michael Lind, author of The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite