What Should Be the Role of the Press in a Trump Presidency

[ThelmaLou]

WSJ staff concerned that Editor in Chief is soft on Trump

“Wall Street Journal editor to face critics”
http://politi.co/2kLFTbn

Amid growing newsroom discontent over his perceived resistance to critical coverage of Donald Trump, Wall Street Journal editor in chief Gerry Baker will host a town hall meeting next week where he is expected to address the paper’s reporting on the new administration and answer questions from his staff.

The meeting, announced in a company email on Wednesday and scheduled for Monday, February 13, is billed as a wide-ranging session on the state of the Journal, but Trump coverage is expected to be high on the list of discussion topics.

“I’m eager to talk with all of you about the challenges and opportunities for our journalism,” Baker wrote.

While other major news outlets, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, have covered Trump aggressively throughout the campaign, the transition and the early days of the 45th presidency, repeatedly stoking the ire of Trump and his aides, the Journal has taken an arguably more circumspect, if not softer approach.

Baker has been hesitant to allow Journal reporters to characterize Trump’s false assertions as lies and has suggested that media “elites” are out to get Trump. During the campaign, reporters say, some of his editorial decisions tended to downplay Trump’s transgressions while he urged his staff to be tougher on Hillary Clinton.

The result, some reporters say, has been a decline in morale that has been exacerbated by the just-announced departure of deputy editor-in-chief Rebecca Blumenstein for The New York Times. All in all, there’s palpable concern among the rank and file that Baker, a former columnist, has placed unreasonable restrictions on the Journal’s Trump coverage…