Includes bibliographical references and index.

Pulitzer and the Aristocracy of Labor -- Respectability Revolution -- Status Revolution -- The Abandonment of the Working Class -- Digital Media Revolution -- What Trump Taught Us -- The Great Awokening -- Moral Panic -- A Debate in the Black Community -- Case Studies -- How the Left Perpetuates Inequality and Undermines Democracy -- Epilogue.

"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.