Book Review: Hate, Inc.: Why today's media makes us despise one another by Matt Taibbi

Abstract

Matt Taibbi's “Hate, Inc.: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise Each Other” (OR Books 2021) might make you angry, but it will make you think. Taibbi's takedown of commercial media, now updated in a post-election edition, offers a striking critique of the news media's slow but steady slide toward polarization “…skewed by a toxic mix of political and financial considerations” (20). Taibbi convincingly argues, using both historical and modern examples along with personal experience, that the press sells people on a simplified worldview where the two political parties are in a constant and perpetual conflict about everything. While Taibbi does offer some advice for independent-minded journalists seeking to navigate the current media landscape, audiences are left with little in the way of solutions, other than to stop reading (and watching) the news.