Are Jour­nal­ists ‘Anti-Author­i­tar­i­an’ as They Seek to Ban­ish Con­ser­v­a­tive Views?

On Fri­day, Asso­ci­at­ed Press media reporter David Baud­er looked at recent inter­nal news­room debates that went pub­lic, “Jour­nal­ists tak­ing the crit­i­cal gaze they deploy to cov­er the world and turn­ing it inward at their own employ­ers.” He cit­ed Uri Berlin­er’s essay on NPR, NBC dump­ing RNC chair Ron­na McDaniel, and a fight at The New York Times over a sto­ry on sex­u­al assault by Hamas. 

Jour­nal­ism as a pro­fes­sion attracts peo­ple who are anti-author­i­tar­i­an, who see them­selves as truth-tellers. Many believe the way to make an orga­ni­za­tion bet­ter is by crit­i­ciz­ing it, said Tom Rosen­stiel, co-author of The Ele­ments of Jour­nal­ism and a pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land.
“We’re taught to hold pow­er to account,” said Kate O’Brian, pres­i­dent of news for the E.W. Scripps Co.

There’s one dif­fer­ence in these con­tro­ver­sies: Berlin­er was basi­cal­ly forced out for expos­ing the Left. The oth­er con­tro­ver­sies were the Left enforc­ing their wok­e­ness. Baud­er sum­ma­rized that “NPR man­age­ment says he is wrong. But Berlin­er quick­ly became a hero amo …