Conflict Over Trump Forces Out an Opinion Editor at The Wall Street Journal

[HAB911]

The departure follows weeks of reports of tension on the paper's news side about how to cover Trump.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial features editor has left the paper following tensions over the section drifting in a pro-Donald Trump direction.

News of the departure of Mark Lasswell, who edited op-eds for the Journal, comes as the paper’s internal tensions over Trump have begun to spill into public view. The reliably hawkish, pro-trade, small government conservative Journal op-ed page has been challenged by the rise of the populist, nationalist Trump movement. The Journal’s opinion pages have been a showcase for the intra-right divide over Trump, featuring Trump-sympathetic writers like Bill McGurn alongside anti-Trump columnists such as Bret Stephens. Lasswell appears to be a casualty of that divide, and his dismissal a victory for the pro-Trump faction on the editorial staff.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/conflict-over-trump-forces-out-an-opinion-editor-at-the-wall-street-journal/516318/

[Botany]

1. please!

a victory for the pro-Trump faction

Trump is a real threat to America and the world.

[dalton99a]

2. Expect more fawning and blatant bullshit in the editorial pages.

[democratisphere]

3. Freedom of the Suppressed

[no_hypocrisy]

4. I admire his integrity to be fired rather than change his assessments and opinions for

political and vocational expediency.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. Murdoch-owned, of course

The tensions at the Journal are not limited to the editorial page. Recent stories in Politico and BuzzFeed News have detailed how rank-and-file staffers on the news side of the Journal have taken issue with what they have seen as editor-in-chief Gerry Baker’s apologism for Trump. There has been a shift, also, at the highest levels of the organization, as the paper’s owner Rupert Murdoch went from Trump skeptic to ally over the course of the election.

Baker told editors to stop referring to the countries in Trump’s controversial travel ban as “majority Muslim” because he considered the term “loaded,” BuzzFeed reported. “The reason they’ve been chosen is not because they’re majority Muslim but because they’re on the list of countries Obama identified as countries of concern,” Baker wrote. The move dismayed Journal staff, one of whom told Politico it was an attempt to “whitewash” the ban. The paper is losing one of its top editors, Rebecca Blumenstein, to The New York Times.

It was later revealed that the first interview Trump gave as president-elect to the British press, to Michael Gove (Tory MP) working for Murdoch's The Times, actually had Murdoch sitting in on it, though Gove didn't mention at all his proprietor was there - see http://www.democraticunderground.com/10028619222 . And Ivanka was a trustee for Murdoch's 2 youngest children. Trump and Murdoch are as thick as thieves.

[Achilleaze]

6. The iKGOP Purge - Phase #6549821D2

Please be patient. The iKGOP is just getting into gear, and will get around to everyone ASAP.