How Not To Be Thought Partisan

Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt echoes the point I made yesterday. Acting like partisan operatives will cause journalists to be seen as partisan operatives:

The answer to dishonest or partisan journalism cannot be more partisan journalism, which would only harm our credibility and make civil discourse even less possible. The response to administration insults cannot be to remake ourselves in the mold of their accusations.

Our answer must be professionalism: to do our jobs according to the highest standards, as always.

And I think this is a step in the right direction:

We must distinguish between words and deeds. We must sort the good from the bad. And, in a political culture inclined to view every adverse action as the onset of a potential apocalypse, we must distinguish the merely regrettable from the genuinely harmful, and the genuinely harmful from the irreversibly damaging.

When, as one of his first executive actions, Trump blocked a fee reduction for federally insured mortgages, he was taking a prudent, modest step to protect federal finances, not opening a war on working people.

When Trump ordered the creation of an office to assist the victims of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants, he sent an inaccurate message about the prevalence of such crime, but the office itself seems unlikely to do much harm. But barring refugees from war-torn countries, and favoring one religion over another — that defaces our democracy. It betrays a tradition of American generosity and tolerance that we have occasionally strayed from in the past — and always have come to regret doing so.

Note that he has intermingled opinions with facts in those statements. The opinion page is the right page for that not the front page. I’ve already presented my suggestions for increasing the professionalism of the press in my post linked above.