these television companies and more including cox. >> homework can be hard but squatting in a diner for internetwork is even harder. that's what we are providing lower income students access to affordable internet some homework and just be homework. cox connect to competes. >> cox along these television companies support cspan2 as a public service. >> good morning. my name is sam abrams panama senior fellow at the american enterprise institute. and professor of politics andah social science here in new york. i like to welcome you to the american enterprise institute another edward and helen book form event.is simply put, american journalism today is under attack. ioin this intense polarizatione many major news outlets takeed pressure to push so-called politically correct narratives under the guise of objective

unbiased reporting. so the question for today is, has a so-called institution that is largely responsible for checking the government, providingng information fall pry to a rising pressure from the woke or the pressure to be woke? today batya ungar-sargon the deputy at newsweek said yes but she has a orth coming book it's a great cover and i were not sponsored judge books by the cover but this is a great cover. it's called bad news: how woke the media is undermining democracy. it's a radical shift in american journalism over the last few years and what it means for democracy as a whole. i'm looking for to explaining this with everyone today. help me do that a number of gas. first batya ungar-sargon as a deputy editor of newsweek but before that she was the opinion editor of forbes the largest institution outlet in america

pages written extensively for places like "new york times", washington post, to name a few. she also holds a phd from the university of california at barkley.oo what a book comes out and about a week, go get it is fantastic. contributor at wired. she is author of magic and loss, the internet is art. she's been around the tech world for years. i look forward to talking to her off-line more at tech. i was rountree web 1.0 in 2.0 out in palo alto, amazing times and so much julie written about that. before joining the staff at wired she worked for the "new york times" editorial op-ed columnist for the "l.a. times." she also, like batya, has a phd in this phd is from harvard. she likes to say that she stumbled onto the internet in 1979 in 1979 now it's pervasive and i can't wait to hear her views on this and finally thomas

jefferson williams who is also a fellow with me at the american enterprise institute and for harper's magazine and "the new york times" magazine. he has influenced quite a bit of my thinking and his memoir self-portrait black-and-white created at least three two-hour seminars and i thank you for that. such aou provocative, wonderful piece of work and including the best american essays. in his philosophy from georgetown. i want to step back and say for a minute thank you for joining us here at aei. in social media about aei and universities we care and are iebringing in people we disagree

with. i am none of those things. socialists,so no way. whether i agree with you or not, your book and your ideas are so important. your insights are so important and at aei, what a university should be and like the wonderful letter that you helped to spearhead that i will talk more that later this is what this is about, bringing people together with different views and ways of seeing the world. we disagree, but i admire and consider her a friend and want to have you at a table when it's

safe to hear your views and we can respect and disagree with each other. thish is something that's being lost and something i've seen aei be accused of recently. we value ideas and we want more speech and opinions, debate and dialogue. thank you for beingdi a socialit and being willing to join us at an institution where we enterprise in market. it's just kind of amusing but what the think tanks higher and basically what we should be doing. i think thisis is a virtue. that being said, let me do a brief introduction for a thoughtful and interesting

guest. by end large abandoned the issues of identity. like brokenness and the cancel culture alien to most working-class americans. basically in this book there is an institution known as the media and they've taken on the following.g. the belief that america is an unrepentant white supremacist state withh power and privilege which systematically denies people of color. in the interconnected network of institutions and every level of society, culture and politics and all the i power binary and e

solution according to those that hold this view is not to reform institutions of struggle but to transform the consciousness of everyday americans until we prioritize over everything else. if you look at what i've written this is a flawed view but this is what is dominating the newsroom today and we shifted from a world of blue-collar tradesmen or tradespeople to and anelite profession where these individuals that's why we see the woke news system thate we have today. so i'd like to pause and get there. how the book came together. >> first of all, thank you so much to aei for organizing this event and sam for your leadership and commitment to the

diversity. i'm so honored to be here. i also r have to thank virginia and thomas. my book is at times scathing but i try hard to maintain a generous reading of why people are pushing the woke narrative. a lot of people do this from a place of really wanting to see a better world and virginia is my motto for that because it is impossible not to pictureau her doing anything but for not the best reason -- for the best reason. aside fromin the intellectual leadership brought to be very ay difficult time and space. every day you u show up on twitr and you y are kind. i feel so honored to be in your company right now and to be here talking about my book so thank you so much.

i would say that there are three scenes at the heart of this book. the first when i found out and the study found there was a difference between how white liberals and white conservatives spoke to peoplee of color and found white liberals dumbed down their vocabulary when talking to black andki latino people and tt conservatives do not. i remember thinking to myself there is i a sickness that produces that behavior. and again it comes from a misguided place of wanting to help, wanting to be good, not wanting to embarrass somebodynty using six syllable words, but i remember having this moment of clarity into my worldview but it was definitely a moment of what are we doing here that's happened to us and we are

calling the conservatives racist when they are the ones who don't do this, so that is the first thing i would say. the second is learning about the downward mobility among us. the working class in america particularly lost by the liberals. the idea that people feel so hopeful and that those are the people that are being shown the most. people that are losing out of the american dream and somehow my site has become okay with that because of what their tpolitical views are. one that you were therefore i tried to write a different book and that book was about american unity.

it's shown the change on the right allows a host of issues at the beating heart like sexism, racism, lgbtq rights. it's not as lighted on those issues anymore. the left one a lot of those cultural battles and yet, nobody knows it and nobody talks about it so i wanted to write a book about the more perfect union about how united we are as americans around the most important issues and the values the nation was founded on. we are united around those issues. nobody would buy it. editors kept saying to me who is the audience and a kind editors had me down and he said nobody s going to buy a book telling us something plausible if we are still united why do we think we are so divided. and i think that is sort of the book i did write.

>> if you want to jump in on that, by all means. >> first off, my constant interlocutor i've refined a lot of my thinking and conversations with her in public and otherwise. i agree and think before you wrote this book we agreed this hypothesis of the more perfect union. i will give you one example in spite of the books, bestseller books called polarized, i don't know if anyone is following but for 65 and over it is 96% at least one shot, so we talked a lot and the so-called media about anti-vax and people willing to die for the libertarian politics. that seems if we define those

people who wouldn't have one shot of the vaccine, that represents 4% and shrinking among the people over 65. we are all getting the vaccine. we've discovered and spied of the new bills that people were willing to vote for and enormous bailout bill and social service program bill in the form of the two relief bills during covid. things that richard used to say and if that were decided under our feet, they could have a huge debate about something like racism writ large or debates about the welfare state. about the debatete goes on and then the tectonic plates move without us even thinking about it. i will say that on the subject

of racism, and who knows exactly what that designates now, but i was listening to clarence thomas now 30 years ago, almost 30 years ago, 25 years ago.lf his defense of himself against the levels by anita hill. we remember that but he worked out that metaphor so powerfully using rope as an analogy and felt under the pressure of people like jeff sessions really pain and no one criticizedci clarence thomas for this idiom to talk about what was not a lynching ending in the death of a black man but it was very powerful and i think that he is defense partly worked as

there was a shared idea especially extermination like we saw during jim crow slavery. there's a touchstone for pain and a touchstone that we all could agree and i think that has slipped away somewhat. there's a certain amount of doubt around even certifications of like 20th century suffering that we use to all agree on. it was the touchstone from both of us interested in the history of europe in the 20th century and somehow of all things instead of being indifferent to the suffering there's been an element of doubt about the suffering. i am reminded of this great line

i kind of can't get out of my head. i hope you will spend a minute thinking about this. asshe has in her book around pan argumentring and her is to have pain is to have certainty. to hear about pain is to have doubt. but even in a small way if someone says i have a headache, there's a little bit of skepticismer that creeps in whee you yourself have a migraine or lyme disease syndrome, you yourself encounter and have a fearsome load as jason johnson calls it because of three systems offered, that seems plain as day to you, so the pain of other people including those

with syndrome or suffering from diseases of despair or addition as i suffered from for a long time, you are absolutely sure that your pain is not only unimpeachable you true but takes precedence over others and i think there is a willingness whennd both say that a certain kind of pain let's say religious discrimination and bigotry is real or classism. that's the kind of suffering that feels palpable to you where other kinds with somehow less real or the suffering of the followers of gordon peterson --

jordan peterson. he has i think some people on theht right who you quote in yor book including connor reminded me of his last name. >> i don't think that he identifies as on the right. >> centerleft. who knows what these names mean anymore but certainly objects to some sort of identity politics. maybe he calls himself the least favorite thing a classical liberal, that is my least favorite. i think i prefer the romantic but in any case, he has said things about jordan peterson who also i think are the signatories in the letter that he emphasized with. jordanan peterson is also a pill

addict and possibly the followers of men like him feel that their suffering lies in the fear of death, their fear of not meeting their reproductive potential. the kind of existential fears that belong to white men, if hamlet or winston churchill or something. she's suffering and the rest deserves as little skepticism. the jordan peterson followers see themselves as plenty troubled, plenty upset and dislike the suffering of other marginalized groups as less important or less real. so i guess that suffering is

real. the ways that you slice and dice experience at least when i was in graduate school was a constant conversation about which ones came first. it is a tediousio conversation d i think it is grounded in this and was pointed out sometimes refer to the olympics of who has it worse. what i'd might come down to is that i think that the media, and i'm still confused what counts as woke media. i think i'm the only one here that has worked in a news room and it was hard to see evidence of the work of getting the story of a hurricane in houston somehow infected and i have a hard time getting a definition,

but i really didn't know how people voted at "the new york times" when i was there. sorry, i lost my way a little bit. i guess my point is we are supposed to accept that possibly someone with these politics are pro- free market and it comes in the way that there are too many critics that restrained his awesome freedom into something like another critic that he says there are certain kinds of imaginations that are inhibited by this kindin of idea and yet your reference i think is germaneat that you share religis commitments as another way oft

saying it's not an entirely individualist project fort you r entirely individual project for really any of us and yet we have individuals suffering. but that nobody takes seriously, or at least nobody fully accept uss as powerful as their suffering. so i guess it's the idea that the load is one of them, the idea that racism causes some wear and tear on the body that you are regularly confronted with racism and that actually hurts your body and you could say victims of the made to movement and sexual assault have actual suffering in their body.o you don't have to imagine it if they've been hurt or bruised. and you know, now we are off to

imagine that the suffering like let's take the argument that the newspapers or the media, the suffering of jews in europe gave right to the jewish state is somehow more important or needs more ink than the suffering of the indigenous people in the u.s. and indigenous people in israel. or whether they are indigenous. but this is ati conversation abt suffering i think they still had their division part because we do need a touchstone to imagine what kind of group suffering looks like. i think currently to imagine the load and forced on people from the systemic racism or during the reporting on the harvey

weinstein thing that there's some kind of unique suffering because of gender bias and gender-based in the workplace. we go through periods like this and i think that the kind of certainty of our politics lies in the certainty of what we see being asked to imagine the religion based suffering is more important than other kinds of suffering. it's just another way and i'm not sure it represents more or less progress or even less critique. >> comments, any thoughts or response? that was a lot to take on. >> first i want to say thank you for this wonderful introduction. i guess i would just tip my hat

to identify as a liberal but i have a very strong interest in kind of dialogue and exchange and mutual understanding to forge new alliances with people who share similar values were trying to achieve a similar world even if you don't agree on everything and i should also say i thinkf what i'm hearing.

in direct contrast i think there's a a lot of what i intend to hear on my elite appears at t the top tier media platforms and really nice universities for decades what i hear from them is a kind of catastrophe that seems unreal to me because i compare it to something much more real than i find myself dealing with. so i just want to flip that. what she's getting at and her book and it takes courage to write bad news and go against that kind of feeling of

triumphant i wish you could write a book called good news. we are experiencing but not allowed to admit. so that's how i would just start off. i think to me what came up while you were speaking and again thank you so much, both of you. this is just thrilling, is that i don't know that my book is about suffering. i think to me the problem with today, the rubric of using something emotional or personal to measure what should be political is a huge part of the problem and to me is very much a part of this elite, like the

idea that these things happening in a person's heart are more important then what happened outside in the real world and the political realm. we have personalized and privatized politics, and i think that that is one of the major problems. it's not a reason i think we i should move s to the classic model. the reason to move to a classic model is because so many working-class people are people e of color and are being ignored by bothd parties and i think the woke language is sort of a masquerade of social justice that makes affluent people feel like they are doing something when they are actually not do so to me the idea of the politics, socialist politics that prioritize the needs of labor and works of the class is about combating racism and the ways we have income gaps from a place that would be more real and political. but you need to focus on who is suffering.

i take your point obviouslyy we feel the problem is the focus on the suffering as opposed to solidarity and coalition and the idea that there is a political realm beyond that it matters more than each individual person's heart and that is what we've lost in america the sense ofof the public beyond these individual needs that matters not like insulting someone on twitter because what if you could find something in common with them and create a larger

coalition that is multiracial and ihi think thomas has really opened our eyes to what the polling shows a lot of the ideologygy is very foreign including the majority of black americans and latino americans who continue to vote for democrats for historical reasons. a lot of them justified. but i guess the point of my book is in a way that the liberals havehe stopped doing anything fr them in return, so it's kind of a response to when i wrote the book is calling it what's the matter with liberals. i think they share a lot of commitment about the questions a as well, what are the biggest questions facing america and how dodo we achieve. but i want to hear from both of you.ne

>> it's all about identity and theal victimization. people are going to tell you a host of factors about themselves that usually intend this way or i've been hurt that way. when i first made to students i reject that and say that's fine i don't care about your race, gender, ethnicity. let's try to find something we can all agree on. what are we here collectively to do as a community. but i am troubled by the idea that the entire woke framework demands taking on this victimization and makes it harder to find unity and harder for us to recognize our potential and elite schools. it does show the transformation

from the small local newspapers to the much more prestigious jobs if you take a look at people fromro journalism backgrounds. research shows over and over again the work we do at aei that the students from the backgrounds are fixated. they don't care they don't want to talk about it. this is sort of the cleavage we are beginning to see. and we are worried the democrats don't know how to play it and they are pushing harder and harder on p this and republicans have some ground to gain talking about the picture of unity and struggling with that a little as well. but i think to the point we are

seeing this not just in newsrooms but happening with jen z, undergrads just basic populations around the country now. it started with millennial's. >> i don't know who we are talking about when we talk about thete elite. i just reviewed a very good biography and its designated like all of us he was from the elite but is someone that likely identified as elite by any relative of mine is usually a person using the word elite to criticize other people. i think the working class in general calls elite the rich.

soka i am reminded of when i was first writing about the interner and to put all cards on the table, i think it isn't woke next or any trend with one exception or even the rise of donald trump that has changed everything if i were going to point to one. the one that he zeroes in on is the one w that says he is in control so i would say the digitization that's enacted and we are sort of still grappling with that fragmentfr of the language and throw a lot of e

things up. the few times i was brought in for breaking news, one of them is when saddam hussein was executed in iraq and "the new york times" reported that hist last words were death to the zionists in america. looking back he was mad at the same things. this is what the officials told "the new york times." i don't know if you remember this, but the video snuck out probably by and iraq he onlooker that brought a camera in and managed to smuggle it out and it was the first time i ever saw at

the time i was carefully monitoring some very unsavory sites that had a very disturbing video from iraq. the editors say this is not what happened. his last words were not. i think you might see where i'm going with this. theis elite we wish that we were at warar with women on the class but we are just at war with each other.

someone in the class at harvard starting to complain more about the fact she's been date raped them structures in the free market or other things we think should be determining. i don't know when undergraduates were not to subsist withdrawing the connection between the way they grew up and the things they had endured and great social trends. they just don't have much to fall on. i just finished reading one of the first treatises in 1951 and buckley had two major complaints. in all white and all male student body.

even the many colored members of the clergy who are his professors are allowing a little agnosticism in the classroom and nots that they are not religious were open to jewish students or other historically marginalizedy populations, but they do not profess with the son of god on an economic basis.s. that is a big thing. the other thing they made somebody all subject to. maynard keynes, is that is the other objection. i'm not sure anyone even in the elite remembers who this is except we are always being told we are keynesians now.

the point is we always thought people were either too conservative or liberal. likeke saddam hussein, still fighting his battle. i know i'm constantly thinking people must be to the right of me and not just end of the world and it's important to decide my ideologies and certain sentimental people into visions of the people that i don't know if you imagine the relatives of yours that suffered the way that i imagine my relatives but i definitely will take some time toto tell you they were left out

of everything and i have some sentimental attachment to that. maybe we can talk about what the definition is. it's laughable how of the four of us see the criteria and in our education and i think we are turning on and passing them off as political arguments. i completely agree they turn into little skirmishes. >> the rosebud idea, moments in our childhood absolutely still defining it. we are getting a ton of questions but before we do that i just want to ask a question if you don't mind that relates to

what you had written about. journalists who descend from this sort t of woke worldview kp their mouth shut or humiliation as it relates to this job and they are far and few between. shortly after tenure i said something to "the new york times" and had death threats and my office was vandalized. what do we make of this? i'm so impressed by the way you've done it and i hope i write about this your career and writing continues to flourish even though you may not be in eline with these newsrooms so please keep writing but what about people that differ or

deviate? >> it is a complicated question because i think that if you are going to be a writer or think publicly you do that because there are ways of describing that are truer than other ways and regardless of. you should do something with silicon valley.

what is an elite, yes certainly one sort of often times they are angry because they are more rerefined and have more culture and education and they are lessd than the kind of elites often times the two types in the binary political system. it's true that there is a culturalre capital that people participate in kcal9. >> did we lose him? i'm sure he will jump back j on.

while he jumps back on, let me ask one final question to the two of you. you are back. >> i don't have a stable enough cointernet connection kcal9. [laughter] i don't know why. >> is that the socialist at thet government in france kcal9. [laughter] but i have healthcare and daycare. but you know, to your question i think that i probably have been penalized in certain ways that matter but i can't prove it. how can you ever talk about the fellowships that you didn't get, the opportunity that you're about to get in for some reason didn't happen if someone told you it was coming your way. it happens all the time but also

for reasons that don't have anything behind it so you don't know. that is one point how can the cancel culture be that important. you work for me and other places. ndthat's true but there is no guarantee that tomorrow i will continue to. and also i think that if i am really honest, i have an identity that gives me some amount to cover, just enough. i traced my ancestry to one of the primary groups, so i'm allowed a little bit of latitude in what i am able to say and some of the venues that i don't think i would be able to say if i didn't have thate kind of standpoint authority in the way the conversation works today.

>> i do want to point out that virginia also knows that she lost many opportunities for writing a piece about her belief in god from the right and so it's just so interesting always talking to you because you have found that experience i think a lot of people are experiencing now but from the other side of pethe political aisle. >> i was given a path to the

creationism. the left labeled me worse than iciest. this is in the heyday of the robust atheists including sam harris and the crowd. on the other hand, it's terrible your office wasoi vandalized. i haven't actually had a threats go kinetic although the ones inspired byke tucker carlson, te endless stream of death threats that i still get that are just so terrifying, i mean terrifying sounding that i have called the police and fbi about those, but nothing has ever turned into actual bodilyua harm to propert.

just not elected by the majority, never speaking to it's hard to see who he was talking to. there is no american who doesn't think that or believe that when they are relative and mississippi one in eight people has had covid that really can maintain a belief for a very long that the virus was a hoax and hard to imagine he was talking to his constituency when he refused to put the country on a so-called war flooding and treat covid. so, if mississippians who voted

for trump were well served by him, they were not so well served but it protected them from getting sick. they seem to be misrepresented in a million ways but i agree i will completely agree with you and i gave you the statistic about 65 and over half a shot at the vaccine and we might say they are in a special threat group or maybe they managed to work around this information are something else. the short answer is they all have medicare. this is the only group on the list t that is getting used to having social services.

if you are used to getting help from your government with national health insurance and we advocategi for it, if we are usd to that itha doesn't matter if u believe it is a hoax. sall of those come out of being abandoned by your government. that you start to find your solutions, and i think the solutions if we are going back to politics and away from personal experience, it's the obvious onene and certainly some of them are social programs in my view. >> let me ask one final question then we do have to open up since we have quite a few guests. that is i think a lot about undergrads. they don't always have the greatest attention span. they mean well. and i always encourage people to read as many sources as

possible. on the way out we get to newspapers delivered. my 3-year-old said why do we nhave two newspapers. i said we have a liberal one and a conservative one. i think there's an awful lot of truth to it. what are we supposed to do with our younger americans that are not going to take the time to read a hardcopy newspaper or do the work to read various blogs necessarily so how do we move forward to this and then i would love to open up to the audience. >> i think to me a large part of the problem is the class chasm that's opened up, the squeeze thatra has pushed elites to the

top 10% and that college divided being both one of culture and one of economic. and i will say i think that the problems, one of the major problems and i want to take this away from he was suffering and more towards the threats of democracy is a tiny elite in america now has all the politicians speaking to them and all the media created for them and there's nobody speaking to us for the bottom 90%. the problem is we put a premium on the college education and lost people who don't have it. the overeducated like everybody frequently show our contempt for those without a f college degree while winning everything. all of the media representation. so the first thing we need to do is focus. that's why my book is so much

about the dignity of the working class. it's about balancing and creating a countervailing force to the massive power of the elites today, those highly educated elites on the left and economic elites on the right. things we can do is think about what does it mean to start to respect people again who don't have that education and how can we institutionalize that. people don't want more welfare. they want or jaws, dignity that allow them to play an active role in building up this nation. the first thing we should do is tell our kids when they are going to college you are not all that for having this education. it's a different pathway.

everybody needs to play anac active role in building out this nation and i will see the second thing is where can i get good information and good news and i think another problem we have is like why do you have to know everything. why is it so important to know everything, t every minute of what's going on with the democrats right now and all of this overhi the infrastructure bill and reconciliation bill. then they are going to create the bills to pass them both. why do we have to be up on every single moment. that is cultural issues. if something important is going to have and you will find out about it and the moment to exercise your civic duty whatever it is.

it's a lot of where we sort of ended up and what has tied into that. >> on the dignity of work it's one of our major initiatives and thank you despite being a socialist -- [laughter]ai for exactly what we are trying to do. >> the center president. pointing out once again that we are all in agreement on a more perfect union. the current president from the industrial midwest where there's a lot of working-class people

who were not interested in hillary clinton coming in for a special and i think the isneoliberalism. we are in this moment we can't continue to talk is two years ago. i have quite a few views in common with. eeverything is mixed which puts me into some trouble sometimes but it's also a great virtue and complicatedwh to use the old facebook status update, the relationship status. >> i do love this point. i've never heard somebody make that, why do you need to know

everything. >> if you want to address culture, culture calls itself culture. >> i think you are absolutely right about that. >> we have to turn to some audience questions, how do we define brokenness, any ideas that are commonplace or not universally considered racist butss for the political left and right. could it really just be ideology that is before it's time? >> i would like to answer b that first and then hear how both of you answer that because it is such an important question. when i say well i don't mean advocating for police reform. police reform is one of my number one issue was. i don't mean against mass incarceration. extremelyy important i don't men thema wealth gap. i mean, the view you are either

antiracist or racist, meaning in every moment you have a choice to be actively talking about race and fighting it or to be complicit. to me, that is a panic because it demands that it be there all the time, that it be prioritized into that we put a person's race before their humanity. and when i talk about what happen to this when educated white liberals get their hands on it because then it really gets divorced from the class-based and analysis that could help people and divorced from people like police reform and it turns into slogans like defined the police that actually are very much in the economic interest of the highly educated liberal elite. so it's about that from the actual work and policy on the ground that would cause

americans of color to see and putting it into the hands of a very highly mobile liberal elite in a way that benefits them and really platforms those working-class americans. so again it's not about fighting racism, that isn't the media has gottenbo woke. i mean, it is a racial binary that gives all the power to the white supremacists, white americans and takes all the power away from people of color and i think it is dehumanizing and dangerous for democracies. now isu really want to year how both of you define it. >> i don't really like this term and i don't use it. working on the book that's trying to grapple with some of the same questions, but the term for whatever reason but in the

kind of pejorative sense with different definitions you have to state because it might be misunderstood. so i find it's unfortunate because it is such a perfect word. the way that it started really describe something people didn't see as pejorative. it's the same thing people on the right use in some ways, not asleepou walking. i talk about some of these things and try to use the actual constellation of things lumped together like antiracism which wouldn't be what previous generations wouldan have thought which is a binary view.

it would also have to encompass a kind of mainstream thinking about gender and other scholars. if that is a part of what we put in the umbrella so are some political and economic views. people term woke and socialism and rejuvenation. they are not all the same things that often times are collected together under a kind of umbrella or something. not everybody subscribes. some people are looking some ways. this is another thing i think we need much more specific language if we want to actually get a

conversation to get to the root of what is driving us all crazy. >> tlet's move to the question. >> sure. .. idea and i agree, things are very, very sloppy. the world is far too complicated in my view. so i completely agree. another question we have, which i think we have all dealt with as a hysteria over woke notice.

when we exhaust ourselves over this or it could get worse. one piece of data, i am a data person, that we have seen is that cancellation is much more prominent among millennial spurred the slightly younger crowd the 24 and under right now is a lot less interested in cancel culture than their slightly older generation. that is a little bit of optimism i have toward it. slightly younger americans realize cancellation is not necessarily a good thing. i am curious to know what everyone thanks. >> i've been working on a project with someone who is canceled. he is interested and what kind of rehabilitation there might be.an and do i think like i will say systemic but there were maybe

ten women who were abused by him in a pretty small shop. seems demonstrably true -- mcnair's quid pro quo to keep it in political terms.it there is eoc violations not about individual suffering for the cap hostile work environment. i am interested in forgiveness and redemption as a religious person. but i'm not quite sure he sees himself as being canceled, that we want a world where that kind of cancellation is somehow no longer allowed. and frankly, i lost my contract to yahoo! news because i publish something marissa mayer found anembarrassing the parties and announce myself as a christian. she was the boss there. and i had no kind of tenure but did not violate anything, she could renew my contract or not.

and i'm not sure that cancellation was something that we want to see disappear, even though it was my own. people canceled for, i don't know anti- asian slurs on twitter several years ago. maybe if it's decided it creates a hostile work environment, or there's a massive hemorrhaging of people who cannot work for this person because of her tweets, i don't know. that seems like the usual firing thing is i can't work with someone i'm uncomfortable with. i work for michael eisner at disney for a long time. he happened to not like working with black people and women in high positions of power. he was uncomfortable around them. he didn't hire them or he fired them if there are some inherited on the board. and i don't know to be want to stop that kind of cancellation? that seems like very free

market. you work with people you're comfortable with and people are no longer comfortable with people of anti- asian slurs and their twitter. it's a hard world in the public sphere and also there are some laws that govern the stuff. i do not think any of you would like to see a world or someone who had sexually abused -- was sexually assaulted ten people who work for him, would not be canceled. they imprisoned priests.ca [inaudible] i don't think so and who assaulted ten people is cancel that violated all kinds of law. >> exactly. the three said he considers himself having been canceled and you know there certain people at the fringes who feel they flirt aggressively with someone they should not be held responsible for that.

[inaudible] it's an example of what is it mean to be canceled what is too much or too little?ss i have not assaulted anyone. but i question identity politics totally different sort of narrative. >> may have attempted cancellation. >> i sold my tenure they wanted to get rid of it but tenure is tenure. i wrote an article on data but they didn't like a question certain things. >> i got to tell you in the 70s my father is academia and a colleague of his useless as ax an explanation for why she couldn't publish it was publish or perish and it just seemed unfair to her that she had to publish this book. to others it was unsympathetic to not give her three more years to work on the book.

these are -- cancel culture of these limit cases everyone can decide if the person was kind of a well-intentioned or maybe not by. >> cancel culture describe something real that is exacerbated by technological change. i think cancel culture isn't just like losing out on an opportunity are being held accountable. often timesel it somebody often time inadvertently transgresses some as yet to be established norm. rapidly shifting norm is called out publicly in the new digital realm that exist that we all have to navigate without rules or guidelines. it is called outcome it made an example of and targeted. that institution then has a barrage and unable to in the heat of the moment, gauge how long it will last. how serious it's going to be.

and due diligence to find out what the proper responsepr shoud be or if there should be eatenca no response, often they'll be the but end up terminate theth person or turning them into a pariah in which their livelihood is no longer viable. then often times it turns out the person didn't even do the thing they are accused of. i get that story can never travel around the world as fast as the light in the beginning. there are some examples of this by. >> of amounts in computer had to retrain marketing after scientists. [inaudible] upset about we were not spectacular emotional experiences. [inaudible] out there emotional experiences but i think it a sounds like something happened to you that sounds quite unfair to me. i don't think social media should be in the hr department

and not mass ted's of these institutions for the largest said people should put in their contracts is a 90 day cooling off. that has to happen before their company can terminate them with the tempest in the teapot. they just cannot react if they react too quickly. i think that solve a lot of problems for. >> are up coin base the truth coming from coin base the crypto platform i trade on. [laughter] i love this idea want this in my contract now. next absolutely. [laughter] that is fantastic. yes, things feel especially hot. there's definitely like a thermal idiom there. and for another time i would love to talk about awake and

asleep as two different ways is thomases of awoke and not. and also that strange participle i can shook that comes out of black english that is awed. i do. i was being told by awoke whites on twitter out using inappropriate language ig describe myself having. [inaudible] an elite white liberal. backed out using that language. >> before we run out of time i went to kick it back because it's directly related to your book. i like there's a question news outlets big more selective with a canon cannot write this is where editors are surprised on

the power. pitched a number of things. if it doesn't fit with the editor once even if i'm very proud of the peace in the piece as it spent years working on in the data behind it doesn't really always matter bred the question as to what extent aret we going to end up with basically duality or polarization for only right and left outlets? can there be a middle? is a really objective news anymore? i visited the uk pre-covid, what i loved about it was no check into a hotel that's a nice hotel that asked me what newspaper i would like in the morning. [laughter] and i loved it. but i like that they are not truly objective and say here's our point of view were going to go with it. we talk about the "new york times" being a paper of record. as you'veou said in the book its hard to be that if it clearly has an ideology to it. has really ever been a middle? the demand for the metal will there be a nonpartisan

appropriate balance news organization, is there one left? can we have one or we just going to see this -ism? >> thank you so much that question. it allows me too go back to the book but a lot of what i talk about in the book is what looks to us as a partisan divide is actually a class divide. some people look at the difference. i meant editor cnn and on the other screen fox news all day but the real difference between them is pretty much a static but it comes down to whether they are picturing a working-class view or viewer with a'r college degree. in everyone's following analytics and watching. i think a lot of what we think of as partisanship or political cited actually about class. that is kind of how i see the divide in our media. i think partisanship is not a problem so long as everybody is

represented. as long as there is something for every group with the problem is we have now is a conservative media landscape that is abandoned the working class economically. we have a liberal media landscape that is now also abandon the working class economically. but they also sneer at their values but fox news is catering all they have to do is not sneer at their values have a captive audience. they do not have to talk about their economic incentives which i really wish they would. i sing at the heros of 19th century american journalism they really believe the point of the media, the point of newspapers to create a crusade on the poor and working-class. there also newspapers for the elite. and just did not matter that every paper was partisan because every subgroup had its paper in 1920s there so many communist newspapers in new york city you would have people who literally had four communist newspapers they would never dream of

reading. the communist newspaper they read and everyone was so off-base. and that's obviously a plethorah per the problem is because of the pressure we really got into this in my book, all of the mainstream outlets obviously conservative ones are going for the same highly educated liberal elite. they can track how much money you make, where you live, what you do for a living. they know exactly what to publish in order to get those eyeballs in that attention. i think that is the real problem. the media's partisan it's all of the medias partisan on behalf of either conservative elite or the highly educated. that is the real problem here. the only way i think people can fix that people who want to get the news you're not going to build change the "new york times". the only thing you can change is

your heart, the only thing you can change is how you respond to this news. i think a point i made repeatedly i will end with this if you are reading something on the internet and you feel that surge of adrenaline of her rage, you feel enraged, someone is making money. someone is making a lot of money when you feel that feeling. i would just urge people, do not let your heart become the place were somebody else's buck is being produced by make you hate your fellow americans. you have complete control over what happens in here. i would urge you to take that back, that control. >> let me to the final question then. i love this one. where can they go for genuinely nonpartisan journalism? where can they go to not havele that rage, to seek out news but that's a lot of news, little news, just something and go find your nonpolitical space you like to talk about to get a break.

>> democracy is built on having a tolerance. having a muscle within you that joyce encountering the views of people you disagree with. that is really the key. you have to exercise that muscle. a great way to do that is to be outlets you don't agree with. you have those skating to your views that you can find one just like you do, sam, get into other people's views, unique viewpoints and people he disagreed with. even better go to synagogue, go to church, go volunteer and people in life you can disagree with. using that muscle without it we are finished, right? >> got it. very quickly, i think harper's is a very good job of being genuinely in publishing. the views and stories that can align across a good amount of

political spectrum. i think i would anecdote that too. quite a lot of writers who disagree with each other and does not toe online some of the way the other prestigious tend too. these are two magazines i think you can get. and newsweek of course. i thought you're asking about news brief your asthma op ads come to newsweek for the two editors who are liberals on the left into our conservative on the right. every day you will find viewpoints that will make you very angry, please come and read them. [laughter] look at the pager to beat the fact of this going on should shock people and thrilled we are doing it. we really do try to keep things balanced may be a news outlet for research and policy but they're trying to do this, we occasionally fail but we are actually trying.

and i appreciate what newsweek has been doing its reincarnated version. [laughter] may put innnc a word i'm not sue harper were once to work in the atlantic which i'm currently writing the buckley piecework, really represent news sources. if you're interested in writing for the los angeles times are living in brooklyn i have learned a lot you do not pitch a story on woke media or even the infrastructure bill before checking how the fires are because that's going to be the front page of a california-based newspaper. so if you are interested in the fires but are disproportionately hit the west coast think the los angeles times is a great source. i am a fan of newsletters kind new scabbing organizations put out. you choose it on the things youg need to know. i don't think many different views on the california fire,

you really need to know what the air quality is. i also love the vaccine newsletter for the "new york times" just to talk about vaccine rates in the country because they are so heartening. and rather than reading, the atlantic got a certain wire restoring cloth masks? i guess that does not fit the description of woke. start out by saying writing about fashion, we used to getnn our seersucker things in the beginning of the vaccine. or whatever. now we should know we need and 95. what are we talking about? i just do not need an essay on that. but it's meant to make me worry and by. >> you got to heaven and 95. [laughter] works right. maybe it's a woke thing, i don't know. >> are you kidding i'm worried about you out there.

[laughter] works i don't have my seersucker either. i do have and 95, action was inspired to go to amazon and buy and 95. i think health reporting is generally terrible until shoot mostly how to be thin or how to work her magic on people to sell them things. getting us to thin into rich seems to beor the goal of lots f writing about habits and soft journalism, i hate that stuff. but if you wanted to know about the larry masters affair gymnastics newspaper, it's one that turned into michigan live, which is a website you can get news from. choose the things you actually want to be re- informed about. and we all do, watch a panel show, watch fox and friends. if you don't just want that warm feeling that you have friends

that are you just need to know some numbers about hurricanes, or in this case in new york are being built my partners very interested in banning cars and bikes. usually it looks to see where the r. r go for it newsletters on this and stay away from the places with like big feeling tone. your being hit with cortisol this is more of an assault than the free press. this is meant tois get into your bloodstream that either feels good or it doesn't. turn to netflix foror that. >> let's stop there. i want to say thank you to everyone who tuned in and joined us around the world. thank you to thomas for joining us from france. thank you virginia for joining us here in new york. in the book comes out next week.

again it's a great covid routes was to judge judge them by their covers but i love this. plus it's really good. it's amazing for. >> will have a mutual friend who helped design the cover, right? [laughter] yes this is a brilliance of alana neuhaus. it was her idea. >> you did a great job and it really this is a great cover. >> thank you so much great thank you all so much for this. what a pleasure. >> it is such a good book. congratulations on it. everyone listening really, do buy it. the storytelling which we did notttu get into about the 19th century is really, really compelling and great. >> feel free to follow us on twitter. go outside and spend some time orders all paired thank you all for joining us. >> thank you. >> thank you so much.

♪ weekends on cspan2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday, american history tv documents america's story and on sunday, book tv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. funding for cspan2 comes from these television companies and more including media calm. >> the world changed in an instant. media calm was ready, internet tracking sword and we never slowed down. schools and business about virtual we powered a new reality because it media calm we are built to keep you ahead celebrate cspan2 as a public service. >> that evening everyone. welcome to the midtown scholar bookstore hermanus alex it's an honor to welcome into the savings off their program with dan pfeiffer and deray mckesson. i've a few housekeeping notes as