Non-resister replaced as Wall Street Journal’s top editor

The Wall Street Journal has replaced Gerard Baker, its top editor. Baker had been, as the Washington Post puts it, beset with internal criticism of his leadership in covering Donald Trump.

The Washington Post should know. An organ of the anti-Trump resistance, it has hired ten WSJ reporters, at least some of whom defected due to Baker’s insufficiently antagonist approach to Trump, the Post indicates.

Not that Baker showed partiality to Trump. For example, as the Post acknowledges, under Baker’s leadership, the Wall Street Journal produced a series of scoops about Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer, and his payment of hush money to Stormy Daniels. And the Post’s sources concede that Baker never killed a story that was damaging to Trump.

However, Baker told his staff that he wanted the Journal to be objective, not “oppositional,” in covering the Trump administration. Objective? We can’t have that.

Baker also has expressed skepticism about some lines of reporting regarding Robert Mueller’s investigation. This, says the Post, caused morale to suffer.

Of course it did. For the Trump-hating press, there can be no filter of its partisan venom. Only full anti-Trump freakout mode will suffice.

In today’s mainstream media, apparently there is no place for a top editor who isn’t willing, unquestioningly, to let his paper become a forum for a daily diet of anti-Trump themes. Objectivity is unacceptable; the paper must be “oppositional.”

But only a subset of the American public — considerably less than half of it, I believe — wants that kind of reporting. Thus, the oppositional nature of the mainstream media will likely make it even less trusted and less read than before.

That’s the silver lining in the MSM’s anti-Trump meltdown.

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