Wall Street Journal Editor Admonishes Reporters Over Trump Coverage<br />This is commentary dressed up as news reporting,” Mr. Baker wrote at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday morning to a group of Journal reporters<br />and editors, in response to a draft of the rally article that was intended for the newspaper’s final edition.<br />Some staff members expressed similar concerns on Wednesday after Mr. Baker, in a series of blunt late-night emails, criticized<br />his staff over their coverage of Mr. Trump’s Tuesday rally in Phoenix, describing their reporting as overly opinionated.<br />The draft also described Mr. Trump’s Phoenix speech as “an off-script return to campaign form,” in which the president “pivoted away from remarks a day earlier in which he had solemnly called for unity.”<br />That language does not appear in the article’s final version.<br />Contacted about the emails on Wednesday, a Wall Street Journal spokeswoman wrote in a<br />statement: “The Wall Street Journal has a clear separation between news and opinion.<br />Gerard Baker, the editor in chief of The Wall Street Journal, has faced unease<br />and frustration in his newsroom over his stewardship of the newspaper’s coverage of President Trump, which some journalists there say has lacked toughness and verve.<br />Several phrases about Mr. Trump that appeared in the draft of the article reviewed by<br />Mr. Baker were not included in the final version published on The Journal’s website.
