Later in the summer, in a seminal op-ed in the New York Times, writer Jim Rutenberg argued that we reporters had an obligation as citizens to ward off the historical threat Trump posed. Because Trump was a demagogue who played “to the nation’s worst racist and nationalistic tendencies,” you had to “throw out the textbook American journalism has been using for the better part of the past half-century” and “approach [Trump] in a way you’ve never approached anything in your career.” Rutenberg argued that journalists had to cast ourselves free of the moorings of “objectivity,” and redefine
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