Quote of the Day (Lewis Lapham, on Journalism as ‘Sculpture in Snow’)

“Journalism is sculpture in snow. To have the expectation that it's somehow cast in stone —that it will reveal the truth to us—is to load it down with a burden it can't carry.” —Editor Lewis Lapham, moderating a forum on “Can the Press Tell the Truth? On the Varieties of Acceptable Reality,” printed in Harper’s Magazine, January 1985

This is cold comfort indeed in the midst of a lengthy winter cold snap. But I do worry that journalists are becoming too self-congratulatory in the Age of Trump. Their ideology blinded them to the widespread support he enjoyed, and the very real menace that his victory might spell to this republic. 

Moreover, I fear that some, in an excess of zeal, might, even now, make errors that might lead the President to give unwanted credence to the notion that they are engaging in “fake news.”