I am embarrassed to call myself a journalist.
If journalists cannot distinguish between obvious propaganda and reasonable facts, between whether platforming a murderous regime is right or wrong, then we have a much bigger problem on our hands.
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Just a few days ago, in yet another show that Western media is either terribly gullible or has an agenda to deliberately subvert the West, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Iran’s foreign minister, riddled with lie after lie that any amateur editor could spot immediately.
“The protests began peacefully and were recognized as legitimate by the Iranian government,” he wrote. “They suddenly turned violent when foreign and domestic terrorist actors entered the scene, so blocking communication among organizers of the rioters and terrorists was an imperative.”
The foreign minister’s argument is almost comical if it wasn’t purely absurd: He is manipulating Western free-speech avenues to justify why free speech itself is intolerable in Iran. The regime didn’t shut down the internet, he suggests, to silence dissent, but to protect order — recasting mass censorship as a civic necessity. That this explanation is offered to a Western audience, and treated seriously by a major newspaper, raises a simple question: Are we really expected to believe this?
I am a trained journalist. I hold a bachelor’s degree in journalism and worked at NBC News and the Los Angeles Daily News. I know what good journalism looks like — because I was taught it, practiced it, and believed in it. What we are seeing today from many so-called “reputable” news outlets is not the journalism I learned in school or aspired to pursue as a career. It is the very phenomenon our textbooks warned us about: a modern form of yellow journalism — driven by narrative, ideology, and sensationalism rather than verification, skepticism, and truth.
Who thought it made any logical sense to platform the foreign minister of one of the world’s leading state sponsors of terrorism? Why would anyone lend their masthead to a regime that just days ago instructed state security forces to “shoot to kill” protestors and “to show no mercy,” according to Iranian officials with knowledge of the Supreme Leader’s instructions?1
The same people clamoring about “resistance” and “liberation” for Gaza are now eagerly reading words written by a regime that reportedly killed more than 30,000 people in the streets of Iran in less than three weeks for protesting their rights to dignity, freedom, and liberty. Make it make sense. I certainly cannot.
Indeed, since October 7, 2023, much of Western media has pretended to care deeply about Gaza, invoking the language of “occupation” and “disproportionate force” and even “Israeli war crimes” — yet in the same breath, it spits in the face of Iranian protesters by publishing an “op-ed” that is, in reality, a piece of regime propaganda from Iran’s foreign minister. I am genuinely struggling to understand the logic, or the moral framework, that allows both positions to coexist.
Of course, to read this so-called “op-ed” in the Wall Street Journal, readers are asked to pay for what the newspaper advertises as its “unrivaled journalism.” But this is not journalism. Far from it. It is an utter sham and a mockery of the very standards the profession claims to pursue.
Why, then, do so many people continue to treat every headline as indisputable fact — as though reading a few words automatically makes a story true?
We can no longer afford ourselves the naivety to think that news outlets are neutral journalism factories when they are, in fact, narrative engines, each operating according to their own incentives, ideologies, and business models. They are businesses first and foremost, and we are their customers. And yet we consume their product with far less skepticism than many of us apply elsewhere. Why do we readily criticize fast-food companies for selling junk that pollutes our bodies, while uncritically consuming news that pollutes our minds?
I read over the weekend about the tragedy that unfolded in Minnesota, where a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot and killed a 37-year-old man during a federal immigration enforcement operation. No one wants to see anyone shot and killed, yet the narratives circulating in the media differ sharply depending on the outlet, raising an obvious question: Can we trust that the coverage we’re seeing is giving us the whole story, or just the version that reinforces existing biases? When I was in journalism school, we were taught to pursue every side of a story and to scrutinize every claim. Right now, I know for a fact that isn’t happening — not with this story and not with countless others.
I appreciate how Anthony Rispo put it in his article “Manufacturing Injustice”:
“If your default lens is that everything [U.S. President Donald Trump’s] administration does is ‘fascist,’ you’re not morally awake — you’re just captured by a story.”
“But the other side isn’t immune either. If your loyalty to authority is so undying that you take every official line at face value — no skepticism, no standards, no questions — you’re captured too. If you can’t let daylight into your thinking, you can’t be taken seriously. … You’re not engaging a system — you’re throwing a tantrum at reality.”
But I can’t fault everyday people for throwing adult tantrums, because the real responsibility lies with much of today’s media, which has become a tantrum mega‑machine. They don’t just report stories; they manufacture and amplify outrage, scandal, and moral indignation because tantrums sell. Anger, shock, and emotional extremes drive clicks, views, subscriptions, and social media engagement. The more polarized and enraged the audience, the more profitable the outlet. In other words, media companies no longer prioritize truth or nuance. They prioritize attention, and tantrums are their most lucrative product.
Every unfortunate event becomes “proof” of the bigger picture they try to paint — not necessarily because the facts actually support it, but because isolated incidents are endlessly stripped of context, moralized, and repackaged to confirm whatever narrative keeps the audience inflamed. Tragedy is no longer something to be understood; it is something to be instrumentalized. Complexity is flattened into villain-and-victim storytelling, ambiguity is treated as betrayal, and restraint is mistaken for complicity. In this ecosystem, calm analysis doesn’t just lose; it isn’t even invited to the table. What’s rewarded instead is certainty without humility, outrage without proportion, and emotional escalation without end.
The more mature analysis is probably something along these lines: Poor judgment on behalf of ICE agents, for example, does not mean America does not have an illegal immigration problem that should be addressed; it means some agents exercised poor judgment. A bad police shooting does not mean law enforcement itself is illegitimate and deserving of systemic punishment. A reckless statement by an Israeli official does not mean Israel is a genocidal state. A corporate scandal does not mean capitalism is inherently evil. A flawed study does not invalidate an entire scientific field.
But in the tantrum economy, distinctions like these are intolerable. Everything must be totalizing. One incident becomes an indictment of an entire system, nation, or idea. The goal should be understanding, reform, and proportion. Instead, media outlets train the public to have tantrums, over and over again, on command.
This should concern us all, because the consequences spill over far beyond our screens. People get over‑energized by these manufactured tantrums, letting outrage dictate their attention and emotions. They begin curating their social circles around agreement and dissent, treating friendship and conversation as battles over ideology. These dynamics seep into workplaces, schools, and communities, turning ordinary interactions into arenas for conflict and judgment. In the end, the media’s tantrum machine doesn’t just shape what we consume; it reshapes what we think, who we trust, and how we engage with the societies around us.
Hence, it was particularly interesting that, in the Wall Street Journal “op-ed,” Iran’s foreign minister made sure to make one critical point: He offered yet another conspiracy theory to justify the regime’s massacre of unarmed civilians. According to him, shadowy “plotters” sent by Israel were allegedly firing on the Islamic Republic’s security forces to provoke the U.S. into “another war on behalf of Israel.”
It’s unclear whether he meant the 2003 Iraq War, the limited U.S. strike on the Fordow nuclear facility last summer, or something else entirely. What is painfully clear, however, is the age-old logic underpinning it all, the same logic that has fueled antisemitism for centuries: the idea that Jews are always behind wars, manipulating events to serve “the Jewish agenda.”
Most people may not agree with Iran’s brutal crackdown on protesters, but to more and more people in the West, the recent Israel–Hamas war has created (or recreated) a growing distrust of Jews. As Israeli journalist Nadav Eyal has accurately observed, there is a persistent dogma among segments of both the Far-Right and Far-Left across the West: that Israel somehow dragged the United States into the Iraq War, or even engineered it. A few months ago, for example, media personality Tucker Carlson casually suggested that America began preparing for war with Iraq “immediately” after September 11th “at the behest of a foreign government: Israel.”2
So, when the Wall Street Journal gives a platform to Iran’s foreign minister to broadcast blatant lies in favor of the barbaric Iranian regime and simultaneously scapegoat the Jews, the damage doubles. First, it launders propaganda through the credibility of a serious Western institution, transforming Islamist disinformation into something that looks like legitimate debate — signaling that even open enemies engaged in information warfare are entitled to “both sides” treatment, while the moral asymmetry of the situation is deliberately blurred.
And, second, it gives credence to old blood libels repackaged in modern diplomatic language, whereby antisemitism is smuggled back into polite discourse under the banner of “geopolitical analysis.” The result is a media failure on two fronts: a collapse of editorial judgment and a moral abdication that confuses neutrality with naiveté and balance with blindness.
Let’s not kid ourselves, the decision to publish this op-ed is not “free speech absolutism.” It is something far more consequential: directly aiding and abetting an enemy engage in information warfare, all while helping them justify repression, sow distrust, and spread centuries-old antisemitic tropes. Free speech does not require giving oxygen to lies that endanger lives and distort reality, yet that is exactly what much of Western media continues to do.
I vividly remember when, a few years ago, The New York Times faced a firestorm of criticism for publishing an op-ed written by U.S. Senator Tom Cotton. Editorial staff were publicly ridiculed, accused of giving a platform to nefarious ideas, and forced to defend their decision under intense scrutiny. Yet now, the Iranian foreign minister — representing a regime that just killed tens of thousands of its own citizens — is apparently “fair game” for uncritical amplification in the Wall Street Journal.
The contrast is striking: one domestic (democratically elected) politician raising a warning about law and order is treated as overwhelmingly dangerous, while the foreign minister of a terrorist state spreading propaganda and antisemitic tropes is given the benefit of the press’s credibility. It exposes not just a double standard, but a profound failure of judgment in parts of Western media.
If journalists cannot distinguish between obvious propaganda and reasonable facts, between a murderous regime and democratically elected officials, then it ceases to be a profession in the service of society. It becomes a glorified conveyor belt of narratives engineered to divide, inflame, and distract. And when that happens, it is not only the profession that suffers. It is the public itself, our discourse, and the very foundations of a free society.
“How Iran Crushed a Citizen Uprising With Lethal Force.” The New York Times.
Eyal, Nadav. “Israel and the Iraq War: A Lie That Won’t Die.” Between Us.
Exactly why I follow you and ignore MSM. You are a journalist. Thank you Josh.
I must have missed it. When did an Islamist regime purchase the WSJ?