What’s Driving Media Becoming Woke? Money

Years before Donald Trump became president, legacy media was already moving in a woke direction. While no doubt some reporters are ideological, the trend was influenced by the growing prominence of the internet. Online, articles that generated an emotional response became income generators, because they led to readers spending a longer time interacting with the article.

In 2017, the New York Times launched a program called Project Feels to track how younger readers responded emotionally to certain articles. “What they found was the more emotional the reader was, the longer they stayed on the page, and the more likely they were to click on an ad,” says Batya Ungar-Sargon, the author of the new book “Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy.”

Ungar-Sargon shares why reporting on racism drives emotions, how black media differs from legacy media in its coverage, and the class issues the media ignores. Read a lightly edited transcript of our interview, posted below, or listen to the interview: