In this case I suspect it worked because the media are pre-disposed to dislike "working class" people, and people are pre-disposed to trust media. When you grow up with "Live at 5", and the "Evening News" telling you what's happening in the world, hearing things that go against the narrative is jarring, and easy to ignore.
My parents literally argued with me about how bad the protests downtown were... I live a few KM from the epicenter, I walked into the "danger zone" multiple times. Still, they preferred what the news said to what I said, because the news is trustworthy, and my story was just an anecdote.
For the last 30 years at least we have been living in a culture that dismisses anything "right wing" as evil, or at the very least misguided. It makes it very easy to ignore the "right", while accepting the "left" as more correct.