‘Collision of Power’ explains the journalism of the Donald Trump era

Post investigation into Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore.

Ultimately, Baron writes, it was Project Veritas, “infamous for setting up stings to expose what it considers the liberal bias of mainstream media” Post reporters exposed as the organization behind the effort to discredit the paper.

To any who think the news media march to the same cadences, Baron writes “newsrooms often are a wellsprings of conflict, dissent and grievance.”

Often, though, from spirited arguments, great journalism arises. And columnists sometimes can put an issue in play that reporters cannot.

Baron and colleagues judged that the Post lacked enough evidence of impropriety while examining telephone conversations between incoming national security advisor Michael Flynn and Russia’s ambassador to the United States. However, as Baron writes, “opinion columnists ... have far more leeway than news reporters.”

Respected Post foreign affairs specialist David Ignatius raised questions about the conversations that reporters in the news pages could not and when the Ignatius column published, Baron writes, it prompted more sources to come forward. That helped give the Post news team the sourcing it needed.

“Collision” serves as a reminder throughout of how fragile democracy is, and how the social media era has made it easier to commandeer public opinion.

Baron writes that the Committee to Protect Journalists, which typically monitors threats to press freedom in other countries, began to focus on Trump as a threat within U.S. borders. During the first two years of his administration, CPJ found, 11% of Trump’s tweets denigrated the press.

Perhaps the answer is as Baron quotes Bezos as saying: “We need unifiers, not vilifiers.”