The triumph of ‘wealth porn’

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The mainstream media is so drunk on the so-called economic prosperity of the past five years that they gloss over issues of economic inequality and now unapologetically wax salaciously rhapsodic about wealth and the wealthy, according to an essay in the COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW.

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As new money magazines pop up, mainstream news outlets struggle to compete — with bigger business and Wall Street sections and new technology fetishist inserts — rather than taking the opportunity to show the other side of ‘New Wealth’: New Poverty and its economic, social, and moral impact for millions on the wrong end of the boom.

Writes author Gary Andrew Poole: “America is doing well, thanks, and the press is reporting the phenomenon. But do we over-celebrate the New Wealth, giving the reader the impression that he’s the only one who isn’t loaded, or that being rich is all that matters? Are we analyzing the ramifications of the new prosperity?” To which we say, do you really have to ask?

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