I clicked on this expecting it to be terrible and, to my surprise, it was even worse than I had anticipated. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/opinion/objectivity-black-journalists-coronavirus.html

The central argument, that objectivity in journalism is not the same thing as "he-said/she-said" reporting, is obviously correct. A journalist ought to strive to tell the truth and it usually falls closer to one side than to the other.

If Lowery were just saying that, I would have no objection, but since this argument has already been made thousands of times there would also be no point in making it again.

The problem is that it's impossible to read this drivel without reaching the conclusion that Lowery and his ideological allies utterly lack the kind of epistemic modesty required for this approach not to result in a one-sided ideological approach to information.

Like most stupid people, they don't realize that many things they regard as obvious are in fact not obvious at all, so they just treat highly disputable claims as if no reasonable person could possibly disagree with them. This is a recipe for a disaster.

I could screenshot practically every paragraph in that op-ed, because Lowery's ideology is obvious from beginning to end, but I particularly like this one.

Of course, calling for the censorship of opinions they dislike is exactly what they're doing, but they're just too stupid to understand it

Note that I'm not even saying they were wrong about Cotton's op-ed. Let's assume for the sake of the argument that they were right that Cotton's op-ed was beyond the pale. It doesn't change the fact that they were calling for the censorship of an opinion they disliked.

People correctly lament the "he-said/she-said" style of reporting, but I think we'll soon come to regret it, because the truth is that, given how stupid the average journalist is, it's probably the only way to prevent newspapers from turning into one-sided ideological machines.

If you ask me, the only good insight in that op-ed is this passage, which is exactly right. But while Lowery thinks it's for the best, I think the consequences will be disastrous, because it means that social media progressive hysteria is going to take over prestige journalism...

To be fair, I did call him stupid.