Newspapers Shouldn’t Act Like Super PACs: New at Reason

Should The New York Times be lobbying followers of its Opinion Twitter account to call a senator about the tax bill?

David Harsanyi writes:

Journalists will often complain that readers don’t properly understand the distinction between editorialists and reporters. To be fair, it’s often quite difficult to tell. That’s not only because of some biased coverage or because the internet has largely wiped away the compartmentalization of the traditional newspaper; it’s because reporters now regularly give their opinions on TV, write “analysis” pieces and make their ideological preferences clear on social media. Many news outlets—The Daily Beast, BuzzFeed, etc.—unapologetically report from a left-wing perspective.

I’m not sure whether this kind of transparency is necessarily a bad thing, but whatever the case, an editorial board is still run separately from a newspaper. It offers arguments regarding public policy and culture. Ideally, it publishes op-ed columns by an array of voices with varying points of view, and it even occasionally challenges the preconceived notions of readers. When I was a member of an editorial board, our mission, at least as I saw it, was to offer rigorous good-faith arguments for whatever point of view we were taking. I never once consulted anyone in the newsroom.

In his botched sting on the Washington Post this week, conservative provocateur James O’Keefe demonstrated just how easy it is to either confuse the editorial board with the newsroom or manipulate readers to confuse them. At some point, though, it can also be the paper’s fault. What happens when an editorial board goes beyond arguing for liberal positions and debating policy to actively politicking? There’s a vital distinction to be made between political discourse and partisan activism.

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