'Pro-Democracy' Journalism's Problem With the Facts

It takes all of two paragraphs in her memoir-cum-polemic Newsroom Confidential for press critic Margaret Sullivan to unwittingly undermine her thesis that journalism in the age of Donald Trump needs to "shout…from the rooftops" that the fate of democracy itself hinges on the victory of truth over (mostly right-wing) lies.

"By the spring" of 2021, Sullivan writes, in a passage deploring conservative "denialism" about the January 6 Capitol riot, "a Republican congressman would describe the violent attack as something that looked like 'a normal tourist visit.'"\

Sullivan, the recently retired Washington Post media columnist best known for...