Gerard Baker, the editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal, criticized his staff this week for smuggling too much opinion into the news coverage of President Trump’s Arizona rally.
“Sorry. This is commentary dressed up as news reporting,” Baker
wrote in a 12:01 A.M. email Wednesday morning to a group of
Journal
reporters and editors. The message was in response to a draft of the
rally article that was intended for the newspaper’s final edition.
“Could we please just stick to reporting
what he said rather than packaging it in exegesis and selective
criticism?” Baker wrote in a follow-up email.
Baker’s emails ended up in the hands of
New York Times reporter Michael Grynbaum on Wednesday.
According to the draft obtained by the
New York Times, Baker
and editors removed language prior the publication. The draft called
President Trump’s Phoenix speech “an off-script return to campaign
form,” in which the president “pivoted away from remarks a day earlier
in which he had solemnly called for unity.” These portions did not
appear in the published version of the story.
Another important change came at the beginning of the draft’s lead
paragraph, which originally described the Charlottesville protests as
“reshaping” Trump’s presidency. This phrasing was removed prior to
publication.
A
Wall Street Journal spokeswoman told the
New York Times in
a statement that the paper seeks to maintain a clear distinction
between news reporting and opinion. “The Wall Street Journal has a clear
separation between news and opinion. As always, the key priority is to
focus reporting on facts and avoid opinion seeping into news coverage,”
she wrote.
Those are very small alterations for a front page news story. What
made it remarkable
what (was?) the staff insurrection. Rather than accept the
changes and grumbling over the late night drinks at the local
watering-holes, someone at the
Wall Street Journal decided to send Baker’s emails to its fiercest competitor, the
New York Times.
The insurrection demonstrates just how desperate reporters inside
mainstream media organizations have become to “virtue signal” by
including negative judgments on the Trump administration in news
stories. It is not enough to tell the story of what happened, they need
to explain what the story “means” just in case their readership might
not understand that they’re supposed to condemn Trump’s latest actions.
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