By All Means–Tell Me More, Milk Boy

What’s that—a journalism lesson? From Bret Stephens? Yes, please, my anticipation could not be any more sincere!

In the post-Kavanaugh world, however, we have new editorial standards. The Gawker standards.

Oh!

These are: Report first, verify later (if ever). Use the accumulation of unproven accusations as evidence of their plausibility, rather than as charges to be investigated separately or as variations of the same fundamental untruth. Apply a presumption of guilt standard to the people you oppose, and a presumption of innocence standard to the people you favor. Hear something you like about someone you don’t — what used to be known as gossip — and repackage it as “news.”

If journalists don’t understand why this is destructive to our profession, they have no business being in it.

Love to be lectured about journalism by the poster boy for “affirmative action for conservative writers in elite media” who denies climate change and opines on “the problem of the Arab mind” such as the “Palestinian blood fetish” and calls institutionalized racism “imaginary.”

Please—continue.