Jim Rutenberg

The opacity of tech companies is matched by the efforts of some conservative media outlets to confuse and distract, leaving one to wonder how the nation will come together.

It took the death of a young woman at the hands of one of the neo-Nazis she was protesting to force the ever-expanding media universe to face a question it has been evading for years: Where’s the line? Google, Twitter and the web hosting company GoDaddy appeared to find it this week when they shut down The Daily Stormer, an American Nazi “publication,” after it mocked the peace activist Heather Heyer, who was killed Saturday at a white supremacist demonstration in Charlottesville, Va.

How can America have a feel-good birthday when one of the pillars of our 241-year-old republic is under near-daily assault from the highest levels of the government?

Critics credit shows like The Handmaid’s Tale and comedians like Stephen Colbert for dealing with issues that resonate today. Viewers, it seems, want shows that are “woke.”

Jim Rutenberg: It’s time for other Republicans to take a stand: The journalism that President  Trump and his aides seek to delegitimize today could be the legitimate research they need to use tomorrow.

Jim Rutenberg is emphatic that the news media must draw lessons from this unprecedented and fraught year — not only from its mistakes, but from what it did right. On the latter, he cites its dogged exposure of Trump’s torrent of public lies and exposing the foreign donors to Clinton’s foundation among its numerous important reportorial actions. His takeaway advice: “even as the news media reports the heck out of the story — as it must — it needs to avoid getting ahead of it; let the facts lead, and let them do it at their own pace, not that of Twitter.”