Comparing Populist Media: From Fox News to the Young Turks, From Cable to YouTube, From Right to Left

This article compares populist media styles on US cable news and in online video. It juxtaposes the conservative cable giant Fox News with the progressive YouTube-based network the Young Turks (TYT). TYT stands as one of YouTube’s longest running and most successful “news and politics” channels on the platform. This progressive digital network has long embraced a populist anchoring style that resembles Fox News and the style of its conservative YouTube competitors. This study establishes the stylistic affinity between TYT and Fox News and then explains how it is driven by a similar commercial-economic logic that prizes “loyal” viewership and “intense” engagement above all else. Shifting from political economy to media activism, this article also chronicles TYT’s role in creating the Justice Democrats, the progressive PAC that recruited Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other “Squad” members. This article seeks to complicate the commonly held association between populism and political conservatism.