Wall Street Journal editors hit back at ‘misinformation’ and ‘racism’ claims
The Wall Street Journal’s (WSJ) editorial staff have launched a scathing rebuttal of allegations that their articles propel misinformation surrounding issues such as coronavirus and racism, saying the paper vows not to “wilt under cancel culture pressure”.
Almost 300 journalists at the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper on Tuesday sent a letter to WSJ’s publisher accusing the paper’s opinion pages of a “lack of fact-checking and transparency” and a “disregard for evidence”.
The letter, sent to Dow Jones chief executive Almar Latour, earmarked a widely-read article headlined “The myth of systemic police racism” published in WSJ’s opinion section a week after the death of George Floyd by a US policeman. Journalists argued that the article “propelled misinformation” about racism.
The Harvard researcher whose data was used in the article complained that his work was “widely misrepresented and misused” by the paper and “wrongly cited as evidence that there is no racism in policing”.
Hundreds of reporters, editors and video journalists at the paper also called for a greater distinction between WSJ’s opinion page operations and its news output, claiming the opinion section “selectively presented facts and drew erroneous conclusions from the underlying data”.
However, editorial staff last night hit back at the allegations, arguing that the opinion section answered directly to chief executive Latour and that the “anxieties” of news staff “aren’t our responsibility in any case”.
The editorial board made the comments in an article published on WSJ’s website last night headlined “A note to readers”, with the sub-headline: “These pages won’t wilt under cancel-culture pressure”.
“It was probably inevitable that the wave of progressive cancel culture would arrive at the Journal, as it has at nearly every other cultural, business, academic and journalistic institution. But we are not the New York Times,” the article read, referring to the rival’s embattled opinion section, which has seen two high-profile resignations in recent weeks.
“Most Journal reporters attempt to cover the news fairly and down the middle, and our opinion pages offer an alternative to the uniform progressive views that dominate nearly all of today’s media,’ the editorial board added.
“As long as our proprietors allow us the privilege to do so, the opinion pages will continue to publish contributors who speak their minds within the tradition of vigorous, reasoned discourse,” they added.
However, more than a dozen media experts and journalists, including two WSJ staffers, publicly spoke out against the letter from the editorial board within hours of publication.
“To call the letter, which I signed, an example of ‘cancel culture’ is a gross mischaracterization,” tweeted WSJ reporter Lauren Weber.
Fellow WSJ staffer Dustin Volz added: “We specifically didn’t call for canceling anything. The letter asks for modest changes to more clearly label opinion articles.”
In their initial letter leaked to US media on Tuesday, WSJ staff also highlighted a recent article by US vice-president Mike Pence, headlined “There isn’t a coronavirus ‘second wave’”, which journalists said contradicted evidence-based reporting in WSJ’s own news pages.
The article cited figures that would have been undermined by “no more than a Google search”, the letter to Latour said. It added that figures in Pence’s essay were published “without checking government figures” and noted that the piece was later corrected.
Latour responded to the letter in a statement to The Hill, saying that the publication is “proud that we separate news and opinion at the Wall Street Journal and remain deeply committed to fact-based and clearly labeled reporting and opinion writing”.
He added: “We cherish the unique contributions of our Pulitzer Prize-winning Opinion section to the Journal and to societal debate in the US and beyond.”