Many liberals and leftists criticized the New York Times last month for giving right-wing ideologue Bret Stephens a piece of the most valuable real estate in U.S. journalism, a regular spot on its op-ed page.
I rarely find any of Stephens’ arguments compelling (his first column in favor of climate-change skepticism was embarrassing in its misunderstanding and/or distortion of the practice of science), and his politics are coherent only if you ignore all the evidence that complicates the triumphalist view of capitalism and U.S. history. But in his May 20 column “Roger Ailes: The Man Who Wrecked Conservatism,” I had to agree with this statement: “the core task of journalism is something more than a liberal piety about afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted,” though no doubt his conception of “something more” is different from mine.
I agree that much of mainstream corporate-commercial journalism embraces liberal pieties on social issues, economics, and foreign affairs. Mainstream journalism’s daily report on the world is based on the assumption that the existing systems that distribute wealth and power (capitalism, U.S./First World imperialism) are morally defensible and that the task is making them fairer and more effective. That’s liberal piety. Journalists also report on the most grotesque and outrageous manifestations of the systems that determine status (patriarchy, white supremacy) while avoiding a direct challenge to the…