Someone unsatisfied with the lack of "verve" of Trump coverage inside The Wall Street Journal has leaked emails to The New York Times to complain about the boss. Times media reporter Michael Grynbaum reported:
Gerard Baker, the editor in chief of The Wall Street Journal, has faced unease and frustration in his newsroom over his stewardship of the newspaper’s coverage of President Trump, which some journalists there say has lacked toughness and verve.
That's code for "Not as much bias and hostility as The New York Times." The story continued:
Some staff members expressed similar concerns on Wednesday after Mr. Baker, in a series of blunt late-night emails, criticized his staff over their coverage of Mr. Trump’s Tuesday rally in Phoenix, describing their reporting as overly opinionated.
“Sorry. This is commentary dressed up as news reporting,” Mr. Baker wrote at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday morning to a group of Journal reporters and editors, in response to a draft of the rally article that was intended for the newspaper’s final edition.
He added in a follow-up, “Could we please just stick to reporting what he said rather than packaging it in exegesis and selective criticism?”
The actual Journal story by Rebecca Ballhaus, Ted Mann and Ian Lovett is far milder than the cable-news panic on CNN and MSNBC. Grynbaum reports some of the passages Baker opposed were removed:
The draft, in its lead paragraph, described the Charlottesville, Va., protests as “reshaping” Mr. Trump’s presidency. That mention was removed.
The draft also described Mr. Trump’s Phoenix speech as “an off-script return to campaign form,” in which the president “pivoted away from remarks a day earlier in which he had solemnly called for unity.” That language does not appear in the article’s final version.
Those passages, though again mild compared to Don Lemon et al, hint at the way liberal reporters "reshape" Trump's presidency daily by their lights.
Grynbaum then wrapped up the article by reminding the Times readership that "apprehensivess in the newsroom has persisted" about Baker's apparent coziness with the Trump family and his making "small talk" with the president during an interview. This comes with all the usual lack of consideration of how the Times is cozy with the Democrats, from the Clintons to the Obamas. No one leaked to us or other conservative blogs their persistent "apprehensiveness" about liberal bias.
