Wall Street Journal refuses to take a knee to internal woke mob
“These pages won’t wilt under cancel-culture pressure …. Their anxieties aren’t our responsibility, … we are not the New York Times.”
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A group of 280 news staffers at The Wall Street Journal signed, and then leaked, a letter complaining about the Opinion pages.
The full letter was leaked to and published on Twitter by a NY Times journalist:
This week, The Wall Street Journal reported that nearly 300 WSJ staffers signed a letter to the publisher pointing out flaws and errors in Opinion articles and asking for changes. https://t.co/TFOX3KdzOR
Below: The letter in full. pic.twitter.com/v6hZvDcXl3
— marc tracy (@marcatracy) July 23, 2020
There are complaints that some Op-Eds should have been better fact-checked. But these are opinion pieces, not news articles, and its up to the opinion authors to back up, or not, their claims. That’s not to say a publication has no responsibility to fact check opinion pieces, but its not the same standard as for news reporting by the publication.
That all seemed to be just window dressing. The heart of letter was a now-too-common passive-aggressive attempt to silence others by claiming opinions with which they disagree are divisive or upset people:
Multiple employees of color publicly spoke out about the pain this Opinion piece [by Heather Mac Donald, The Myth of Systemic Police Racism“] caused them … If the company is serious about better supporting its employees of color, at a bare minimum it should raise Opinion’s standards so that misinformation about racism isn’t published.
* * *
Opinion’s actions affect how the newsroom can operate and improve. Our newsroom is overwhelmingly white and now more than ever our management wants to actively recruit more people of color. As reporters, we have been told over the years to seek more diverse people as sources, given their overall lack of representation in our news coverage. But as long as Opinion in its current state is part of our brand, we will face difficulties recruiting diverse talen and building trust with sources. It’s understandable why someone who reads about systemic police racism being a “myth” in the WSJ might not trust our newsroom to be fair, honest or welcoming.
This the type of elevation of feelings over free expression that drove the NY Times, and many other publications, to purge alleged offenders. It’s the heart of cancel culture on campuses, and the pretext for trying to cancel people like me for stating uncomfortable truths about the Black Lives Matter movement.
So did The Wall Street Journal take a knee?
Here is the response from the WSJ Editorial Board, A Note to Readers – These pages won’t wilt under cancel-culture pressure (emphasis added):
We’ve been gratified this week by the outpouring of support from readers after some 280 of our Wall Street Journal colleagues signed (and someone leaked) a letter to our publisher criticizing the opinion pages. But the support has often been mixed with concern that perhaps the letter will cause us to change our principles and content. On that point, reassurance is in order.
In the spirit of collegiality, we won’t respond in kind to the letter signers. Their anxieties aren’t our responsibility in any case. The signers report to the News editors or other parts of the business, and the News and Opinion departments operate with separate staffs and editors. Both report to Publisher Almar Latour. This separation allows us to pursue stories and inform readers with independent judgment.
It was probably inevitable that the wave of progressive cancel culture would arrive at the Journal, as it has at nearly every other cultural, business, academic and journalistic institution. But we are not the New York Times. Most Journal reporters attempt to cover the news fairly and down the middle, and our opinion pages offer an alternative to the uniform progressive views that dominate nearly all of today’s media.
As long as our proprietors allow us the privilege to do so, the opinion pages will continue to publish contributors who speak their minds within the tradition of vigorous, reasoned discourse. And these columns will continue to promote the principles of free people and free markets, which are more important than ever in what is a culture of growing progressive conformity and intolerance.
It’s good that The Wall Street Journal refused to take a knee. Unfortunately, WSJ is the exception, not the rule.
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Comments
How is the Journal performing these days? I’ve been looking for a new general news source since Drudge went off the deep end, and if they are going to at least attempt to be impartial, I’m wondering if they might be worth a subscription.
My husband and I have been subscribers since the dark ages, getting a daily print copy in our driveway, then going to their digital subscription. I’d say we were really happy with the balanced reporting UNTIL COVID hit. Then, they went to the dark side. Really dark articles about Trump too. I only ever wanted a newspaper to write factually, balanced and fair, see both sides. Their comment crowd was fairly balanced too. Then, as I said, the sh** hit the fan.
Articles were so hateful and dark we cancelled our subscription. Part of me hated to do that but when we called to cancel, the agent said we were not alone, that many people were bailing.
I don’t have a clue what to replace it with.
Try out the Epoch Times online for free.
https://m.theepochtimes.com/
Newsroom Job Cuts Up 170% Through June, Worst On Record
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/newsroom-job-cuts-170-through-june-worst-record
I no longer read news by publication, but from reporters I respect. Quite a few of them are now on the new Parler platform. I can follow them individually. The I have a few news aggregator sites.
Legal Insurrection is the only news I read daily. I have been reading the print edition of Stars and Stripes lately over dinner while I’m deployed. Unfortunately, a lot of the articles are copies from the AP. I don’t get more than two paragraphs into those before moving on.
Well The Epoch Times might be a start. Great general areas include Whatfinger.com, Just The News and Lucianne.com
https://www.theepochtimes.com/
https://justthenews.com/
https://www.lucianne.com/
Jut the news has pop-ups and blinky things at times. Use a good blocker.
Darn, I hadn’t scrolled down far enough to see your comment before I posted mine about the Epoch Times.
Don’t worry about it. It just reaffirmed that there are other good source. There is also the Blog/Read on the right and
if you go to the Conservative Treehouse:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/
They have a nice list of sites too.
I am surprise to not see them in the blog roll here since Legal Insurrection is on theirs. I actually think I found Legal Insurrection from the Treehouse. Lucianne has been carrying more LI stories too, but I do not see them in the rolls here.
The opinion page of the WSJ is still strong. The news section it thinner than it has been in some time and one can see the impact of the 280+ SJWs in how the stories are written but it’s still far better than any alternative I have found. I read the business section first, then the opinion pages and get to the news only if I have time.
https://www.citizenfreepress.com/
https://thelibertydaily.com/
https://bonginoreport.com/
There’s 3 news aggregators to get you started…
“As long as our proprietors allow us the privilege to do so,…”
That is a big “if”. Most of the US financial reporting outlets have been bought up by the CCP. Forbes for instance, now majority-owned by China.
There used to be laws protecting American companies from being taken over by enemy interests. But now that the enemy is “us”, don’t hold your breath.
The enemy- China – is a Most Favored Nation. Not much to be done. Sorry for the down-tick.
With all the new ad revenue pouring in from all the new margin ads and stuff, how about hiring a web coder for the 15 minutes it would take to change the comment layout?
WSJ revealed themselves to hardcore globalists 20 years ago. They may not be the NYT but only in the sense that the LA Times isn’t the NYT either.
I’ve been an investment professional for 30 years and I cancelled my subscription 15 years ago, about the same time I cancelled my LAT subscription.
Hear Hear.
Thank goodness for The IBD (Investors Business Daily).
“In the spirit of collegiality, we won’t respond in kind to the letter signers. Their anxieties aren’t our responsibility in any case.”
Huh? This grand stand the WSJ is claiming about fighting “cancel culture” is exactly backwards. What the WSJ should be doing is firing the idiots who publicized the letter. A lot of the claims in that letter are total BS – which is funny as they are whining about how wedded they are to facts and the truth and everything right in the Universe …
The WSJ is surrendering to cancel culture by letting the America-haters of the cancel culture work and thrive in their midst. It’s good to know that these 250 “reporters” at the WSJ are carrying the lefty line in their claims of fact and that their BS shows up, not in the opinion section, but in the reporting … Very good to know.
The WSJ is making a mockery of itself with this “stand” against anti-American leftism within. THey are resisting the leftists on one minor point but letting them run free on the reporting pages. Nice …
So……
The WSJ can sue them for libel.
Slander is spoken, and
Libel is in print.
So many corporations, so few balls. At least the WSJ showed one ball, which is one more than the vast majority. So far only Red Bull has shown both, any other takers?
I was wondering why things were being posted on Mollie Hemingway’s twitter retweeted Kimberley Stassel
I am this close >< to cancelling my subscription that I have had for almost 40 years. I have watch independent reporting changed to recycle articles that look a lot like NYT and Washington Post. Except for the editorial section, the paper has lost a lot of creditably. How ironic, the people that are ruining the paper are the ones complaining.
Does anyone understand the connection between WSJ and GPS Fusion?
The founders of Fusion GPS cut their research teeth in investigative journalism for prominent American and British publications. A Vanity Fair story on the Christopher Steele dossier reports that Fusion GPS was founded by Glenn Simpson, a former investigative reporter with The Wall Street Journal known for his “tenacity, meticulousness, cynicism…obsession with operational secrecy.”
https://heavy.com/news/2017/07/fusion-gps-dossier-russia-trump-jr-christopher-steele-democrat-planned-parenthood-glenn-simpson-peter-fritsch-natalia-veselnitskaya-grassley-hearing/
GPS Fusion is the political hit man for the CIA and WSJ. The relationship is incestual.
Studies have shown that the WSJ “news” reporters are among the most left wing. One study found that the WSJ cites liberal think tanks more frequently than any other major publication, including NPR and The New York Times.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wall_Street_Journal
Good grief, Jane Mayer spent over a decade there and Al Hunt spent several decades there.
“Their anxieties aren’t our responsibility.” … I love that. Right up there with “If something I said offends you, I’m not the one with a problem.”
Or to condense it down into as few words as possible: “Grow up.”
I’ll go shorter: “Bye”
I wonder how many of these employees are actually employees, and not former employees or contract workers, or those who only occasionally work for the WSJ?
Dear WJS,
After being a print subscriber of your newspaper for almost 40 years and suffering though the changes in reporting from original content to fluff, LGBT featured stories and small sampling inferring broad census about things like mask wearing and impact of Covid virus, I will be cancelling my subscription because expect for the opinion section the newspaper has lost it way and value add to just a fluff paper.
Bye Bye!
Mr Smith
I think this is a bit over the top though I will say from reading the “Mansion” section of the paper every Friday that it appears only gay men own homes these days… and some really, really nice homes!
From the complaint: “…opinion writers ‘often make assertions contradicted by WSJ reporting,’ propel misinformation about racism, and selectively present facts.”
By which the complainers mean opinion writers differ with the “facts” found by the WSJ’s woke reporters, reveal facts about “racism” the writers would rather not have the reader see, and present facts that the news writers selected against. The situation between the news writers and the opinion writers seems “fair and balanced” to me, but I’d like to know who is checking the news writers’ “facts.”
Their feelings are checking their facts. That’s the biggest problem with journalism. We were sold the lie that journalists report facts. Journalists aren’t interested in facts when there’s an agenda to pimp.
“Multiple people of color…”
What color? Green, blue, chartreuse?
I remember back in the 70’s being reprimanded for referring to “colored” people. When did it come back? I’m too old to keep up with all these labels.
You have to say “people of color.” Because liberals say so. Not “colored people.” That’s racist, unless you are the NAACP, then nobody “notices.”
It’s like when liberals told us that “black” was racist before inventing “Afro-American.” Then black came back. Then liberals told us that “black” was racist again before inventing “African-American.”
And now it’s baaaaaack!
Now actually stick to that, WSJ. No “red line in the sand” b.s.
We’ve been gratified this week by the outpouring of support from readers after some 280 of our Wall Street Journal colleagues signed (and someone leaked) a letter to our publisher criticizing the opinion pages.
WTF – CAN YOU SAY GROUP THINK!
Mind Control in full force
Those who signed that letter just proved themselves to be incompetent news people. The should be placed on the first to be fired and last to be promoted list.
I say fire 280 people for group think and lack of objective journalist standards. How dare they criticized. IF they did their F—-ing job there would be no Flynn case/Russian crap or it would be clear cut if it was.
Major failure with Media is being exposed.
“at a bare minimum it should raise Opinion’s standards so that misinformation about racism isn’t published.”
__________________
Just because you don’t like the facts that Heather MacDonald cites, that doesn’t make them “misinformation,” snowflakes.
And just because the facts in her piece don’t fit your preferred leftist world view doesn’t make them “misinformation” either.
I like the tone, although the article could have started and ende with “We are not the New York Times”.
.
Et tu, WSJ?
.