Reliable Source

When I retired in 2015 after nearly 30 years in corporate communications, I unsubscribed from The Wall Street Journal. The reason had nothing to do with its editorial direction or the accuracy of its coverage and analysis. My “problem” with the Journal was that it largely controlled my work life for three decades and I needed to officially cut the cord as I rode off into retirement. I needed a break.

You see, for any communications executive at a public company, particularly before social media dumbed down how we all consume news, the Journal was by far the most important news outlet out there. Its reporters were aggressive, honest, and well-sourced, calling almost daily with tips and questions about confidential discussions happening inside the company that would shock me with their accuracy.

“How the heck did they get that?” was a question I asked myself often after fielding a call from our beat reporters at the Journal. Usually, they were spot-on with their sourcing and accuracy, and when they weren’t, those reporters and their editors were open to off-the-record steering of the story back toward the truth.

In the sausage-making of media relations, truth and trust are critical. The shared objective between a good reporter and a good communications executive isn’t positive or negative coverage, but accuracy. You learn to take the bad with the good, as long as what’s being reported is objective and fact-based. The Journal wrote some great things about the companies I worked for over the years. Equally, I can’t even count the number of Journal stories that I and my bosses hated but couldn’t complain about because they were true. That’s how good journalism works.

So, as the mainstream media unraveling picked up steam over the past decade, and my own frustration with the mostly biased, tribal reporting of politics and world events hit a boiling point, I decided to give the Journal another try. I ponied up for an online subscription, because their content isn’t free, and I’m glad I did.

It’s well worth the price to stay informed if you’re looking for thorough, accurate news and analysis, as opposed to a validation of your own worldview, particularly when it comes to current events and politics.

Full disclosure here...The Wall Street Journal was purchased by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. in 2007, folding the paper into its stable of mostly conservative media outlets including Fox News, the New York Post and other overseas publications. Murdoch promised at the time to shift the paper’s focus slightly away from its core business reporting and expanded its broader news coverage, essentially taking on The New York Times as the paper of record for world events.

The result, in my opinion, is a news outlet whose coverage is mostly straight-up and accurate, with an expected pro-business leaning, and editorials and analysis that bravely call a spade a spade.

A great example of this was how the Journal’s opinion section discussed President Trump’s July 16 national prime time address focused on “election integrity,” largely an effort to rally congressional support behind his SAVE America Act.

The editorial board’s opinion piece the next day was titled “The SAVE America Act Backfire.” In it, the paper methodically made the case that the bill doesn’t have the votes to pass, and even if it could, it wouldn’t address the issues that the President was alleging while doing so without offering verifiable facts to back them up.

It also called out the political downside of pushing for the act in the first place, stating: “Unfortunately, the message from Mr. Trump and others has been that America’s elections can’t be trusted, and the only hope is the SAVE America Act. Aside from being untrue, this is a political backfire for the GOP. If Republican voters believe it, and the bill falls short, then why waste time going to the polls in November?”

The analysis wasn’t a breathless freakout about the end of democracy, but a simple articulation of why the speech and its intended outcome made no political sense in the real world.

On the other side of the coin, the paper’s longtime columnist Holman Jenkins had a piece the same day saying that the president missed an opportunity in his speech to highlight elements of the Hunter Biden “hoax” that other media outlets have willfully chosen to ignore for years.

Specifically, he said, “there’s a reason the press never examines the subject. There’s also a reason you’ve never read, in six years, a New York Times ‘news analysis,’ op-ed or editorial denying the basic truth known to every American who looks at the episode,” pointing out that President Biden’s own Justice Department refuted the claim by 51 former intelligence officers who claimed Russia was behind the laptop incident.

In a world where conspiracies have replaced reality, there are reliable sources out there, and The Wall Street Journal is one of them.