Do the Media Hate the Rich?

With the super-rich as its core readership, Robb Reporthas fired the initial volleys of a nascent media class warfare. In a two-page note in the June issue entitled "Putting Luxury Into Perspective," editor in chief Brett Andersen attacks "the mainstream media" for its "demonization of the wealthy and the industries that cater to them." This antipathy toward the magazine's prime audience and advertisers, Andersen charges, is "a media phenomenon we have observed lately with increasing dismay." He lambastes the wave of populism as failing "to recognize the ways in which luxury industries have enriched society not only economically, but also intellectually, technologically and culturally."

It was the magazine's second broadside in a row: In Robb Report's May issue, Andersen wrote a similar essay about the media's "pernicious prejudice" against the wealthy.

It's a sign of how the current economic distress is exposing class tensions. For more than a year, newspapers and mass-market magazines have been chronicling the recession's sociological and psychological impact on the nation's top 1 percent of the income scale. A stream of headlines heralding an era of asceticism ensued—"Luxury’s Lament: The End of Flaunting" (Women's Wear Daily), "Class Dismissed: A New Status Anxiety Is Infecting Affluent Hipdom" (The Atlantic) and "Even in Recession, Spend They Must: Luxury Shoppers Anonymous" (The New York Times). At the same time, populism has reemerged as a key political force.

In an interview with NEWSWEEK, Andersen decried this "luxury bashing" (which some might conclude includes a piece on "luxury shame" I wrote for NEWSWEEK last November). "There's a sense that coverage in many of the mainstream news outlets wasn't quite balanced," Andersen says. "All of the wealthy get lumped in with [$60 billion Ponzi schemer Bernie] Madoff. Anyone getting a bonus on Wall Street is regarded as dishonest."

To accompany his June essay, Andersen enlisted the CEOs of some of the world's elite luxury brands to pen small companion pieces. They include Isadore Sharp, the founder, chairman and CEO of Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts; Christophe Georges, president of Bentley Motors; and W. W. Boisture Jr., chairman and CEO of Hawker Beechcraft Corp., and several others. "What we wanted to do was give some of the industry we deal with a platform to share their point of view," Andersen says, "and to convey to our readers the importance of understanding that buying what they buy and traveling to where they go supports the economy."

One of his wingmen leaves no doubt that their antagonists in the ink-soiled media masses are uncouth, with little or no grasp of the meaning of high-living. "If you read The New York Times, you find that its writers consider buying Starbucks coffee a luxury during this downturn," writer Henri Barguirdjian, CEO, of the U.S. arm of high-end jeweler Graff. He emphasizes his industry's economic impact—annual revenue of $25 billion from 30,000 speciality stores. "That represents a significant amount of sales and corporate tax revenue, not to mention employment opportunities," Barguirdjian wrote. Meanwhile, Margareth Henriquez, CEO of the prestige champagne brand Krug, extols luxury's transcendent virtues. "Luxury companies have lighted the way for the rest of the world," she writes, explaining their high-end products and services generate "new ideas and directions" that also advance the fortunes of companies that can't readily afford to fund innovation and set standards. Bentley Motors president Christophe Georges cites "a kind of self-flagellation in the United States at the moment." But Bentley's 4,000 autoworkers at its Crewe, England, plant don't buy the notion, he says, "that owning a Bentley is a bad thing."