Selling news is a tough business and media outlets increasingly rely on divisive and outrageous narratives to attract consumers’ attention. This trend developed while inequality was also on the rise. This paper asks: can these two phenomena be related? Could increasing inequality be breeding citizens’ appetite for populist media content? We explore this question through the lenses of political psychology and hypothesize that an increasing gap between the rich and the poor may be stimulating the success of populist media content. To test this question, we designed a survey experiment. Results from large Italian and UK samples show supporting evidence on our hypothesis — and highlight the important role of system justification in moderating the effect of inequality. These findings help us explain a possible mechanism linking inequality to the behavioral outcomes (such as electoral disengagement) that the previous literature on the politics of inequality has reported.