Wall Street Journal Top Editor Trashes Staff Over Trump Coverage: ‘Commentary Dressed Up as News’

Don’t package POTUS news as “exegesis and selective criticism,” warns Gerard Baker in series of late-night emails

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Wall Street Journal editor in chief Gerard Baker trashed his staff’s coverage of President Trump as “commentary dressed up as news reporting,” according to the New York Times.

The Times reported that there is “unease and frustration in his newsroom” after Baker emailed a group of journalists on his staff at 12:01 a.m. ET on Wednesday criticizing the paper’s rough draft of coverage from Trump’s rally in Arizona.

“Sorry. This is commentary dressed up as news reporting,” Baker wrote, according to the Times. “Could we please just stick to reporting what he said rather than packaging it in exegesis and selective criticism?”

The Times reported that “several” phrases about Trump that appeared in the original draft of the WSJ story that was reviewed by Baker were not included in the final version. Specifically, language about returning to campaign form and pivoting away from Trump remarks calling for unity were removed.

“The Wall Street Journal has a clear separation between news and opinion. As always, the key priority is to focus reporting on facts and avoid opinion seeping into news coverage,” a Wall Street Journal spokeswoman told the Times.

Baker was forced to defend the paper’s coverage of Trump back in February and told unhappy staffers to find work elsewhere, the Times also reported.

As Politico pointed out in a transcript that was published to its site, Baker chatted with the president about travel and golf during a recent interview. Baker also referenced a party he attended with Ivanka Trump and made small talk about their daughters, who are both named Arabella, according to Politico.

The Wall Street Journal is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns Fox News Channel.

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