Text(edited for length): A bit of antipathy between the press and the political, business, and religious elites of the world is to be expected, and in fact desirable. The consequences of excessive coziness (see: the Iraq War) or veneration (see: the 2000s tech press) are unfortunately well documented and widely understood. Still, there’s a distinction between rhetorical jousting or throwing barbs and active efforts to constrain what reporters can cover, as the Pentagon tried to dictate to its press corps, or weaponizing official entities like the FCC to actively shift the fundamental missions of news organizations. I’ll acknowledge that there’s bound to be some discomfort with this realization. Industry conversations around the correct approach to things like intent have simmered continuously since journalism really professionalized around the turn of the twentieth century.... The last decade has marked a shift, largely a generational one, through which institutional journalism educators like me tend to no longer teach a balance model but a fairness one, with the latter holding that while a journalist should give a full and fair hearing to all views, our job isn’t to just repeat them. We have a crucial additional role, a curatorial one, where we, as something like an agent of our audiences, use all our reporting and expertise to parse which position, if any, is closest to the actual truth and which will best help audiences make decisions...