First things first: the belief that anything remotely like objectivity has been practiced in newsrooms is a delusion, although it is a delusion held by Leonard Downie Jr.

Mr. Downie was the Executive Editor of the Washington Post from 1991 to 2008 and is now a professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. These are credentials sure to send a thrill down the leg of liberals, and raise red flags for conservatives who know what these facts mean.

In any case, Leonard published a piece on the Washington Post opinion page that surely raised my eyebrows, although he is only arguing that newsrooms should continue to do what they have been doing for decades: push a narrative rather than try to be objective in their reporting. That is, of course, not how he frames the argument, but it is the substance of it.

First: I am not pretending to be objective myself. I am giving you my take on the piece, as I always do. Usually, I try to be fair enough to the other side, in the sense that I don’t (usually) create a straw man to attack. I occasionally use hyperbole, but I try to make sure that the hyperbole is obvious enough.

But I am not a “reporter,” but a commentator. I often rely on reporters to deliver the facts, as is their job, and am usually disappointed. The whole point of opinion pages is to separate the factual coverage from the opinion since both have their place.

That’s a long way of saying that I am going to savage Mr. Downie’s argument because I believe it is absurd and based upon a completely distorted view of how journalism is done today and should change for tomorrow.

Downie argues:

Amid all the profound challenges and changes roiling the American news media today, newsrooms are debating whether traditional objectivity should still be the standard for news reporting. “Objectivity” is defined by most dictionaries as expressing or using facts without distortion by personal beliefs, bias, feelings or prejudice. Journalistic objectivity has been generally understood to mean much the same thing.

But increasingly, reporters, editors and media critics argue that the concept of journalistic objectivity is a distortion of reality. They point out that the standard was dictated over decades by male editors in predominantly White newsrooms and reinforced their own view of the world. They believe that pursuing objectivity can lead to false balance or misleading “bothsidesism” in covering stories about race, the treatment of women, LGBTQ+ rights, income inequality, climate change and many other subjects. And, in today’s diversifying newsrooms, they feel it negates many of their own identities, life experiences and cultural contexts, keeping them from pursuing truth in their work.

Already you can see where this is going. All the “power relations” critical theory BS has overtaken every aspect of intellectual society. White this, male that, hetero this, climate that…

Now to be fair, Downie does have a point about “bothsidesism,” but less of one than he thinks. There are times when presenting a liar’s point of view as a fact (the earth is flat) would be wrong, but then again it is important, if you are doing a flat-earther’s point of view, to state his position clearly and without ridicule. The rest of us can do that. And if you have decided to cover the “debate” over the shape of the earth you already have an agenda anyway, since there is no debate. Likely you are trying to do something like: “Mr. Flat Earther, a conservative Republican, believes…” That is not a story, but a hit piece on Republicans, implying that a false belief is widely held by a despised group.

Downie’s real point is simple: intersectionality is the truth. The power structure of newsrooms has backed the White heteropatriarchy power structure, and that must stop because it does not reflect the reality that critical theory posits.

Just giving us the facts doesn’t help us see the underlying reality of a White power structure imposing heterosexual capitalist patriarchy upon the starving masses.

Something like this occurred during my early years in the field in the 1960s and ’70s. Under the leadership of a few editors, including especially The Post’s Ben Bradlee, our generation of young journalists moved away from mostly unquestioning news coverage of institutional power. I was one of the editors on The Post’s Watergate story, which spawned widespread national investigative reporting that continues today. Colleagues at The Post, other newspapers and broadcast networks reported skeptically on the unwinnable Vietnam War.

Throughout the time, beginning in 1984, when I worked as Bradlee’s managing editor and then, from 1991 to 2008, succeeded him as executive editor, I never understood what “objectivity” meant. I didn’t consider it a standard for our newsroom. My goals for our journalism were instead accuracy, fairness, nonpartisanship, accountability and the pursuit of truth.

Nonpartisanship was particularly important for a paper that was a national leader in covering politics and government. As the final gatekeeper for Post journalism, I stopped voting or making up my own mind about issues. As Bradlee had, I insisted on noninvolvement of Post journalists in political activity or advocacy of any kind, except voting. I also worked to make The Post newsroom more diverse, and encouraged everyone to have a voice in our decision-making.

That highlighted paragraph sounds good, but Downie has already let the cat out of the bag with his opening paragraph. His version of the truth is that there is a White heteropatriarchy keeping people down, and he wants that story to get out. He doesn’t consider that this, too, is contested. He is like the Just Stop Oil activists who blindly parrot talking points that they 100% believe are true, but they don’t have a clue that there is legitimate disagreement on these issues.

The third paragraph in this quote proves my point: does anybody, or can anybody, believe that he stopped making up his mind on the issues as he claims? Or that requiring journalists not to man the barricades in protests is the same as them not having agendas?

Please. My sides are splitting from laughter.

The first paragraph of his opinion piece makes clear he has an agenda, which is fine. What isn’t fine is pretending that his agenda is indistinguishable from the truth and hence should guide all coverage. His mind is closed.

Now, the mainstream news media is coping with economic and digital disruption, along with increasing competition from misinformation on cable television and the internet. Meanwhile, American society itself has been in upheaval over discrimination against and abuse of women; persistent racism and white nationalism; police brutality and killings; the treatment of LGBTQ+ people; income inequality and social problems; immigration and the treatment of immigrants; the causes and effects of climate change; voting rights and election inequality; and even the very survival of our democracy. Reporting reliably on all of this has critically challenged newsrooms, calling into question their diversity, values and credibility.

Diversity, values, and credibility. These are the things that are the most important to him. And it is obvious from his recitation of the issues what his values are. Does he believe that the reason the American people distrust the media is that it fails to be sufficiently diverse in the sense he means it?

Perhaps he does believe that. And that is why nobody trusts the media. What they care most about is vastly different than the average person. Their choice of facts, narratives, values…all of that doesn’t reflect the reality that most people see in front of them.

To better understand the changes happening now, I and former CBS News president Andrew Heyward, a colleague at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, investigated the values and practices in mainstream newsrooms today, with a grant from the Stanton Foundation. What we found has convinced us that truth-seeking news media must move beyond whatever “objectivity” once meant to produce more trustworthy news. We interviewed more than 75 news leaders, journalists and other experts in mainstream print, broadcast and digital news media, many of whom also advocate such a change. This appears to be the beginning of another generational shift in American journalism.

Among the news leaders who told Heyward and me that they had rejected objectivity as a coverage standard was Kathleen Carroll, former executive editor of the Associated Press. “It’s objective by whose standard?” she asked. “That standard seems to be White, educated, fairly wealthy. … And when people don’t feel like they find themselves in news coverage, it’s because they don’t fit that definition.”

What a crock.

How about objective in the sense of not having a predetermined narrative in mind when telling a story, or when choosing the stories to tell? Because it is obvious to all who watch and read the news that the media today are pushing a particular version of reality, neatly packaged to lead people to a predetermined conclusion.

Remember: the NYT had a revolt among its reporters because the management allowed a US Senator to speak on its pages. They screamed at the editors for not keeping him silent. People were fired for allowing a point a view that reporters don’t like to be read.

Consider this for a moment: throughout his opinion piece, Downie has asserted the marginalization of LGBTQ+ voices in the news. Is that your experience? Are such people marginalized? Treated unfairly? Targeted for scorn? Find an example in a mainstream news source of this. There is no group more celebrated than the Alphabet people by the MSM.

So much for the value of accuracy and fairness in Mr. Downie’s world. He is blind to an obvious reality.

More and more journalists of color and younger White reporters, including LGBTQ+ people, in increasingly diverse newsrooms believe that the concept of objectivity has prevented truly accurate reporting informed by their own backgrounds, experiences and points of view.

Yep, that is true. And that is why the news media is increasingly reviled. A large group of people has an agenda that they shove down our throats. We can’t escape it, and J-schools like the Walter Cronkite School are pounding into them that “objectivity” isn’t even a worthy goal. Just tell your story from your perspective. It is, after all, your truth.

“There is some confusion about the value of good reporting versus point of view,” said current Post executive editor Sally Buzbee, who noted that many journalists want to make a difference on such issues as climate change, immigration and education. “We stress the value of reporting,” she said, “what you are able to dig up — so you (the reader) can make up your own mind.”

“The consensus among younger journalists is that we got it all wrong,” Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor in chief of the San Francisco Chronicle, told us. “Objectivity has got to go.”

Well OBVIOUSLY SO! That is why we distrust the media, you know. It is filled with activists who don’t even try to be fair and accurate, because they have an agenda.

We’re not idiots. We can see it.

Garcia-Ruiz is among a vanguard of print, broadcast and digital news leaders who have increased their newsrooms’ diversity and created new avenues of communication among their reporters and editors to discuss issues and coverage. Some have assembled affinity groups or caucuses of staff members — for women, Blacks, Latinos, Asian Americans and LGBTQ+ people — and involved them in newsroom decisions.

Vanguard is the perfect description, in the sense that all revolutionary groups of a communist bent have a vanguard of the proletariat, of whom none are in fact proletarians. This is how they see themselves. And since most Americans don’t want to have that communist revolution they so desperately are trying to lead, our trust in them has evaporated.

Their solution? More beatings until morale improves. Quit even pretending to be objective.

At USA Today, editor in chief Nicole Carroll told us she seeks a diversity of staff participants, experiences and views in daily brainstorming sessions about news coverage. In these discussions, Carroll said, she and her editors “have found more value in diverse people’s lived experiences.” She has no prohibitions against staff members working on stories involving their identities or life experiences unless they demonstrate a strong bias.

At the Los Angeles Times, reporters and editors have many personal identities, explained editor Kevin Merida. “We find ways for our journalists to share more of that,” including first-person essays on the front page. He cited a Latina reporter’s story about the low vaccination rate in her community, and a gay police reporter’s story about his own marriage and a potential U.S. Supreme Court threat to the legality of gay marriages.

We don’t WANT their damn personal identities in the news. We want the news.

Do you see where we are? Downie teaches at a journalism school! When he was an editor he didn’t even know what objectivity was–which explains why the Post sucks so badly so often, and now he is on a campaign to get reporters to cover…themselves. Their views. Their perspectives.

Even on the front page.

Unbelievable. Or not.