No, it really *doesn't* know how to deal with this, and though I'm an editor, writer, and erstwhile journalist (weekly newspaper division), I don't really get it either. I do suspect, though, that it has something to do with the conventional news media's conviction that there's a high, impermeable wall between "news" and "opinion." Related to this is the belief that "objectivity" is possible (or desirable) in any human endeavor. Experienced reporters are duty-bound to keep their "opinions" out of news stories, even though their opinions are better informed that those of the overwhelming majority of their readers (and probably of their editors as well). However, as a writer I know it's absolutely possible to write a story with exactly the same verifiable facts in half a dozen ways, each of which will give the reader a different impression of what "the truth" is.
As to why the WSJ published that godawful op-ed, maybe because they thought their readers would see through it? maybe because they were afraid of being sued? maybe because anything the president says/writes deserves to be heard/read? I mostly agree with the latter: we *need* to know what the U.S. president is writing, or at least putting out under his name. But we also need journalists and other commentators to critique it and put it in context. And that's not what's happening in the so-called "legacy media" these days.
Is it that they do not know what to do with the lies or that they know what to do but are afraid to do it? Trump uses lawsuits to hurt people and entities that displease him. In addition, he calls troll storms down on individuals who displease him. This constant threat of legal trouble or of violence is an underreported aspect of the Trump regime's power.
In general, my point of view is that even the best of the media (the NY Times, Washington Post, PBS, etc.) are wildly inadequate at analyzing and even choosing what to report on and analyze.
Besides commercial pressures, special-interest pressures, and government-line pressures (all of these nicely discussed in the Chomsky / Hermann "Manufacturing Consent" of a few decades ago), I just don't think we have reporters and analysts who know enough and understand enough. And, as well, there aren't enough of the reporters and analysts at the papers to do a decent job.
(For a level of knowledge and understanding that suits at least the best of the newspaper readers, I think in terms of the levels of the top academics in the various fields, and maybe some other experts scattered about.)
So, Mr. Bernstein's, and many others, having serious and correct complaints about the media coverage, are just what we would expect given this state of affairs.
--
On the point of the lies and ridiculous claims not being debunked, I go to (redundantly with posts of mine some months past) to the issue of what the end-of-last-year shutdown was for.
The Republican line, coming not just from POTUS, but Vance and Mike Johnson, as well, was that the shutdown was so that the Democrats could provide healthcare for illegal aliens.
This is quite untrue, with only the small component of truth that about 1%-2% of the $1.5 trillion (which was over 10 years) was over federal reimbursement rates for undocumented immigrants getting legally-required (by the Reagan-era EMTALA law) emergency ER treatment, and maybe 7% was over healthcare for "legally present" refugee-status people, who were at one time, or may become, actual illegal immigrants.
My complaint is that I see little confidence of reporters referring to this as a lie, or at least gross deception. Thus, I find the reporters inadequate, perhaps due to inadequate research staffs.
For fun, let me post some handy examples of that lying or highly-deceptive assertion
)J.D. Vance, in a “press conference” where a “reporter” asks the first question about “two key Democrat lies”:
"it is a fact, that no one can dispute, that they [the Democrats] shut the government down over restoring free healthcare to illegal aliens as part of their $1.5 trillion wild partisan wish list."
where you can see that Vance is avoiding a technical lie by referring only to the 1%-2% and 7% parts of the $1.5 trillion, which Mike Johnson is also doing (from my little transrcipt above.
As well, there are some POTUS documents trying to backup the claim referenced within:
Another media failure has been on the graphic labelled "Obamacare Plan Premiums have Increased Nearly 2x Faster than Employer-Based Plan Premiums Since 2014", which John Thune and Mike Johnson both used to justify not extending the ACA expanded subsidies.
As well, at Davos, the president claimed numerous world leaders, particularly in the EU, already agreed to paying much higher prices for drugs to allow our U.S. prices to be lowered, as in the president's "Most Favored Nation" plan on drug prices.
I doubt the other world leaders actually agreed. I have seen nothing in the press on this.
It seems to me the media is completely missing the lead of all the stories written. The story is not that Trump said the economy is great. The lead of the story is that Trump LIED TOP YOU. If this were any other president, the press would be relentless about the lies. But not with Trump. They merely report what he said, and what he says is a lie. So here is the leader of the most powerful country in the world LYING to you. How is that not the story? the stuff he says is worthless drivel. Why is that important?
Trump has been getting a free pass since the escalator.
Similarly, the news organizations should not allow him to verbally abuse their reporters when they ask normal questions. So, when a reporter asks about Epstein, and Trump responds with, "...you're a little piggy", she should be able to respond and be backed up by her employers with, "...and you are a convicted sexual predator with 4000 references in the Epstein files."
Just where is it written in the Constitution that this imbecilic clown have a right to insult, with impunity, the reporters who in a sense represent the people who pay his salary?
Just right: yeah, they have to cover him, but not like this! Instead, mainstream media should be calling out his lies, even time, and headlining the fact of his fictions. And his crimes, his breaches of the Constitution, and his corruption. All of it.
The very word “ Trump” has come to mean deceit more than anything else. WSJ knows this, easier to convey by showing the dictator’s deceit and doing a follow-up. The entire regime is deceit on steroids in words and deeds. That’s where we are. We CAN’T fix them nor even edit them into good behavior. We can mock them, resist 24/7, and avoid all deceit. Underscore.
Trump and company are taking baby steps, inching towards the total control of elections, ICE in the streets of Minneapolis will expand to troops in the streets across the nation, they’ll move from snatching immigrants to snatching “troublemakers,” and sending them to reeducation camps, and somewhere in the distant future, if there one, historians will ask why did they (that’s us!!) allow it to happen 😫
Of course Trump leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth. Ipso facto a priori. So is web AI. The fact is it’s not news that the rest of the world has a distinct distaste for American intervention. The lies we hand down sanctimoniously for children to rehearse on rote tests is absurd. Jarvis who heads the Natonal Park Service wrote a piece this week about the replacement and/or removal of signs that our pontiff in charge finds is bad for business to mention.
From Mr.Jarvis' substack:
"In March of 2025, President Trump issued an Executive Order “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” requiring the Secretary of the Interior to:“Take action, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to ensure that all public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties within the Department of the Interior’s jurisdiction do not contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times), and instead focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people or, with respect to natural features, the beauty, abundance, and grandeur of the American landscape”.
Pick up digression here: News Corp a tiny smidgen of the corpse it used to be owns the WSJ. Times has been an equivocating pile of garbage for quite some time and it’s doubtful online subscriptions will maintain the flotsam and jetsom. You don’t need an editorialist to write up how wonderful SA is you just buy the space and hand in your masterpiece.
Speaking of Trump's lies and Trump's liars, you gotta read this. Sam Freedman has written a chilling and detailed profile of Stephen Miller, the dark heart of the Trump regime.
The truth is out there. NYT and many journalistic sources have given us the “blow by blow”.
I think the overriding causes are FOX (et al) spouting coordinated lies giving people a righteous victimhood to inhabit, and larger a national spoiled altitude that was dying for permission to feel god about being horrible.
But, respectfully, Mr. B., the WSJ did an entire piece setting the record straight, according to your piece. I see no harm in giving 'em enough rope to say fully what they intend to say, and then going into a full revealing of the facts. Is that not the very definition of fair, unbiased journalism? A live shouting match only wins over tribal instincts, not minds
This gets to my point as an oped writer myself. In a decent newspaper--and I happily subscribe to the WSJ (though I stay off the opinion pages)--the opeds are opinion pieces, but their facts are carefully checked. I've had a few opeds in the Journal and this is absolutely their process. That way, people can read what I wrote and, agree or disagree, know that I'm arguing from facts, not falsehoods.
If we instead follow the path you cite above, we read an argument and cannot know whether it's fact based or fantasy. That fact that we can tune in later to find out is better than nothing, I agree. But I think this is highly corrosive and adds an unnecessary, destructive step (ie, having to tune back in later to find out if what you read is true!).
No, it really *doesn't* know how to deal with this, and though I'm an editor, writer, and erstwhile journalist (weekly newspaper division), I don't really get it either. I do suspect, though, that it has something to do with the conventional news media's conviction that there's a high, impermeable wall between "news" and "opinion." Related to this is the belief that "objectivity" is possible (or desirable) in any human endeavor. Experienced reporters are duty-bound to keep their "opinions" out of news stories, even though their opinions are better informed that those of the overwhelming majority of their readers (and probably of their editors as well). However, as a writer I know it's absolutely possible to write a story with exactly the same verifiable facts in half a dozen ways, each of which will give the reader a different impression of what "the truth" is.
As to why the WSJ published that godawful op-ed, maybe because they thought their readers would see through it? maybe because they were afraid of being sued? maybe because anything the president says/writes deserves to be heard/read? I mostly agree with the latter: we *need* to know what the U.S. president is writing, or at least putting out under his name. But we also need journalists and other commentators to critique it and put it in context. And that's not what's happening in the so-called "legacy media" these days.
Once again, your analysis is spot on
I suspect I’m not the only one who doesn’t even read what Trump says….I start to then immediately fog out due to the bs.
But as to the medias handling of him, this is what happens when you cow the media. If you fact check him is censorship and here comes the lawsuit
Is it that they do not know what to do with the lies or that they know what to do but are afraid to do it? Trump uses lawsuits to hurt people and entities that displease him. In addition, he calls troll storms down on individuals who displease him. This constant threat of legal trouble or of violence is an underreported aspect of the Trump regime's power.
In general, my point of view is that even the best of the media (the NY Times, Washington Post, PBS, etc.) are wildly inadequate at analyzing and even choosing what to report on and analyze.
Besides commercial pressures, special-interest pressures, and government-line pressures (all of these nicely discussed in the Chomsky / Hermann "Manufacturing Consent" of a few decades ago), I just don't think we have reporters and analysts who know enough and understand enough. And, as well, there aren't enough of the reporters and analysts at the papers to do a decent job.
(For a level of knowledge and understanding that suits at least the best of the newspaper readers, I think in terms of the levels of the top academics in the various fields, and maybe some other experts scattered about.)
So, Mr. Bernstein's, and many others, having serious and correct complaints about the media coverage, are just what we would expect given this state of affairs.
--
On the point of the lies and ridiculous claims not being debunked, I go to (redundantly with posts of mine some months past) to the issue of what the end-of-last-year shutdown was for.
The Republican line, coming not just from POTUS, but Vance and Mike Johnson, as well, was that the shutdown was so that the Democrats could provide healthcare for illegal aliens.
This is quite untrue, with only the small component of truth that about 1%-2% of the $1.5 trillion (which was over 10 years) was over federal reimbursement rates for undocumented immigrants getting legally-required (by the Reagan-era EMTALA law) emergency ER treatment, and maybe 7% was over healthcare for "legally present" refugee-status people, who were at one time, or may become, actual illegal immigrants.
My complaint is that I see little confidence of reporters referring to this as a lie, or at least gross deception. Thus, I find the reporters inadequate, perhaps due to inadequate research staffs.
For fun, let me post some handy examples of that lying or highly-deceptive assertion
)J.D. Vance, in a “press conference” where a “reporter” asks the first question about “two key Democrat lies”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7W1L5iENcI&t=504s
2)Mike Johnson states:
"it is a fact, that no one can dispute, that they [the Democrats] shut the government down over restoring free healthcare to illegal aliens as part of their $1.5 trillion wild partisan wish list."
(
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHtZU1Vc7k4&t=63s )
POTUS:
3)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLgkXhvbELE&t=38s
and
4)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAvuTHIyUTo&t=2036s
( If interested, I've transcribed the Vance statement within:
https://normspier828307.substack.com/p/exploring-the-mass-deception-and
where you can see that Vance is avoiding a technical lie by referring only to the 1%-2% and 7% parts of the $1.5 trillion, which Mike Johnson is also doing (from my little transrcipt above.
As well, there are some POTUS documents trying to backup the claim referenced within:
https://normspier828307.substack.com/p/exploring-the-republican-assertion
https://normspier828307.substack.com/p/further-elaborations-on-whether-the )
--
Another media failure has been on the graphic labelled "Obamacare Plan Premiums have Increased Nearly 2x Faster than Employer-Based Plan Premiums Since 2014", which John Thune and Mike Johnson both used to justify not extending the ACA expanded subsidies.
That graph is erroneous, as far as I can tell. (As I explained here: https://normspier828307.substack.com/p/senate-republican-leader-john-thune ).
I have seen not a thing on this in the media!
--
As well, at Davos, the president claimed numerous world leaders, particularly in the EU, already agreed to paying much higher prices for drugs to allow our U.S. prices to be lowered, as in the president's "Most Favored Nation" plan on drug prices.
I doubt the other world leaders actually agreed. I have seen nothing in the press on this.
(As I discussed here:
https://normspier828307.substack.com/p/the-president-at-davos-indicates )
---
Inadequate press. I see no solution.
It seems to me the media is completely missing the lead of all the stories written. The story is not that Trump said the economy is great. The lead of the story is that Trump LIED TOP YOU. If this were any other president, the press would be relentless about the lies. But not with Trump. They merely report what he said, and what he says is a lie. So here is the leader of the most powerful country in the world LYING to you. How is that not the story? the stuff he says is worthless drivel. Why is that important?
Trump has been getting a free pass since the escalator.
Similarly, the news organizations should not allow him to verbally abuse their reporters when they ask normal questions. So, when a reporter asks about Epstein, and Trump responds with, "...you're a little piggy", she should be able to respond and be backed up by her employers with, "...and you are a convicted sexual predator with 4000 references in the Epstein files."
Just where is it written in the Constitution that this imbecilic clown have a right to insult, with impunity, the reporters who in a sense represent the people who pay his salary?
Just right: yeah, they have to cover him, but not like this! Instead, mainstream media should be calling out his lies, even time, and headlining the fact of his fictions. And his crimes, his breaches of the Constitution, and his corruption. All of it.
The very word “ Trump” has come to mean deceit more than anything else. WSJ knows this, easier to convey by showing the dictator’s deceit and doing a follow-up. The entire regime is deceit on steroids in words and deeds. That’s where we are. We CAN’T fix them nor even edit them into good behavior. We can mock them, resist 24/7, and avoid all deceit. Underscore.
This is obvious in the NBC interview with Trump which aired Feb4. Trump just delivered his normal word salad of lies and Tom Llamas looked on calmly and politely and moved to the next question. NBC has published a “fact checking” follow up story but too little too late. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/fact-check-trump-interview-nbc-news-rcna257084
Trump and company are taking baby steps, inching towards the total control of elections, ICE in the streets of Minneapolis will expand to troops in the streets across the nation, they’ll move from snatching immigrants to snatching “troublemakers,” and sending them to reeducation camps, and somewhere in the distant future, if there one, historians will ask why did they (that’s us!!) allow it to happen 😫
Of course Trump leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth. Ipso facto a priori. So is web AI. The fact is it’s not news that the rest of the world has a distinct distaste for American intervention. The lies we hand down sanctimoniously for children to rehearse on rote tests is absurd. Jarvis who heads the Natonal Park Service wrote a piece this week about the replacement and/or removal of signs that our pontiff in charge finds is bad for business to mention.
From Mr.Jarvis' substack:
"In March of 2025, President Trump issued an Executive Order “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” requiring the Secretary of the Interior to:“Take action, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to ensure that all public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties within the Department of the Interior’s jurisdiction do not contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times), and instead focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people or, with respect to natural features, the beauty, abundance, and grandeur of the American landscape”.
Pick up digression here: News Corp a tiny smidgen of the corpse it used to be owns the WSJ. Times has been an equivocating pile of garbage for quite some time and it’s doubtful online subscriptions will maintain the flotsam and jetsom. You don’t need an editorialist to write up how wonderful SA is you just buy the space and hand in your masterpiece.
Speaking of Trump's lies and Trump's liars, you gotta read this. Sam Freedman has written a chilling and detailed profile of Stephen Miller, the dark heart of the Trump regime.
https://kathleenweber.substack.com/p/the-most-dangerous-man-in-america
The truth is out there. NYT and many journalistic sources have given us the “blow by blow”.
I think the overriding causes are FOX (et al) spouting coordinated lies giving people a righteous victimhood to inhabit, and larger a national spoiled altitude that was dying for permission to feel god about being horrible.
Hi jared. Lets connect 🌸
But, respectfully, Mr. B., the WSJ did an entire piece setting the record straight, according to your piece. I see no harm in giving 'em enough rope to say fully what they intend to say, and then going into a full revealing of the facts. Is that not the very definition of fair, unbiased journalism? A live shouting match only wins over tribal instincts, not minds
This gets to my point as an oped writer myself. In a decent newspaper--and I happily subscribe to the WSJ (though I stay off the opinion pages)--the opeds are opinion pieces, but their facts are carefully checked. I've had a few opeds in the Journal and this is absolutely their process. That way, people can read what I wrote and, agree or disagree, know that I'm arguing from facts, not falsehoods.
If we instead follow the path you cite above, we read an argument and cannot know whether it's fact based or fantasy. That fact that we can tune in later to find out is better than nothing, I agree. But I think this is highly corrosive and adds an unnecessary, destructive step (ie, having to tune back in later to find out if what you read is true!).