From sanewashing to false equivalence, many readers have had it with their favorite news publications. Editors would do well to listen.

Even before the owners of the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post overruled their editorial boards and, without warning or explanation, spiked endorsements of Kamala Harris—triggering resignations of journalists, a public uproar, and mass subscription cancellations—liberal disappointment and anger with some of the largest national news organizations was already boiling over.

Of course, the right-wing has had it out for the press across generations and continents, labeling news media Lügenpresse (“the lying press”) or “fake news.” Donald Trump has attacked and threatened the press. That is not new. Nor is liberal loathing of Rupert Murdoch’s bully pulpits, which act as political agents (though the Wall Street Journal editorial board just mined fresh depths, dismissing the threat of fascism as merely a meme and marking Democrats as “the national socialists”).

What is new and striking is the current wave of grievances regarding political coverage coming from once-devoted liberal readers as well as experienced journalists.

Margaret Sullivan, the ne plus ultra of public editors at the Times before the job was eliminated there and elsewhere, took to The Guardian to accuse media of failing to fairly cover Harris, as multiple outlets uncritically amplified the racist slur of “DEI candidate.” In her Substack newsletter, Sullivan aired the outrage of former Times investigative reporter James Risen over a Times story that he believed equated Harris’s housing policy with Trump’s threat to free up housing stock via mass deportation, dignifying the latter by treating it as a serious plan.