Media Bias and Hunter s Laptop – WSJ

My own prayer is Mr. Trump won t run and that somebody half-decent will, but I don t lie to myself that the survival of the republic depends on my preferences being fulfilled. History has its own mind. Hard to describe as anything but neurotic, however, is a press that preferred an unsupported assertion about a Russian plot to the self-evident facts of the laptop case or, for that matter, believed a badly typed collection of anonymous claims about Donald Trump and Russia (aka the Steele dossier) was the secret record of the greatest political conspiracy in history.

What seems closer to certain is that the rule of law and our democratic system are in greater danger when elite institutions work to discredit their outcomes than when self-proclaimed deplorables do. Our national press cowards, though, aren t about to admit how much they strengthened Mr. Trump, almost re-elected him and made stop the steal credible to millions of Americans because, starting in 2016-17, they chose to oppose him with lies instead of the truth.

If the problem were one Washington Post editorial, nobody would care. But it s not. Our media could use a period of intensive cognitive behavioral therapy to help it get back to seeing what s in front of its eyes and reporting accurately. In those hopefully rare occasions when the press still feels it must lie (say, to defeat Donald Trump), at least it could be honest with itself about what it s doing.

via www.wsj.com

Holman Jenkins.