The Wall Street Journal will not give in to “cancel-culture pressure.”
The paper’s editorial board wrote a column published on Thursday titled “A Note to Readers,” which was in response to nearly 300 of its news division employees signing a letter earlier this week expressing concern to the publisher over the lack of distinction between the news and opinion sections at the site.
The editorial stated that its objective is to provide “reassurance” that the outlet will not “change our principles and content” following the letter.
“In the spirit of collegiality, we won’t respond in kind to the letter signers. Their anxieties aren’t our responsibility in any case,” it read. “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.”
The paper also took a shot at the New York Times, which has faced a lot of internal turmoil stemming from the differences between the news and opinion sections both in terms of who is given the platform to write for the opinion division and what they were writing.
The editorial concluded by reiterating the Wall Street Journal‘s promise to “publish contributors who speak their minds within the tradition of vigorous, reasoned discourse” without giving in to “a culture of growing progressive conformity and intolerance.”
The letter from the news division to the paper’s publisher, Almar Latour, sought for clearer delineation between the news and opinion pieces with recommendations for how to do so. The employees also criticized the opinion section for its “lack of fact-checking and transparency, and its apparent disregard for evidence,” arguing that both “undermine our readers’ trust and our ability to gain credibility with sources.”
The newsroom letter also specifically referenced an op-ed written by Vice President Mike Pence about the coronavirus pandemic, which needed corrections. It also mentioned a piece written by conservative commentator Heather Mac Donald, who wrote a story claiming that systemic police racism is a “myth.”
The Wall Street Journal employees said the article from Mac Donald, which led to employees of color to speak out about it, “selectively presented facts and drew an erroneous conclusion from the underlying data.”
