Editorial board at The Wall Street Journal
The editorial board is known for its strong conservative positions which at times brings it into conflict with the Journal's news side.
As former editor William H. Grimes wrote in 1951: On our editorial page we make no pretense of walking down the middle of the road.
[citation needed] It was written by a former editor, Vermont C. Royster, whose Christmas article In Hoc Anno Domini has appeared every December 25 since 1949.
One reference work in 2011 described the editorial pages as "rigidly neoconservative" while noting that the news coverage "has enjoyed a sterling reputation among readers of all political stripes".
[10] When Rupert Murdoch bought the Journal from the Bancroft family he promised Paul Steiger that “What is on the Opinion pages will never be allowed to flow into the news pages,” and “The two must be kept distinct and while I sometimes find myself nodding in agreement with the comment and commentators, even I occasionally find the views a little too far to the right.”[11] In 2016 the environmental business group Partnership for Responsible Growth took out ads in the opinion section of the Journal which criticized the Board's position on climate change.
As a result of the conflict a number of staff including Bret Stephens, Bari Weiss, Robert Messenger, and Sohrab Ahmari left the WSJ.
[13] In July 2020, more than 280 Journal journalists and Dow Jones staff members wrote a letter to new publisher Almar Latour to criticize the opinion pages' "lack of fact-checking and transparency, and its apparent disregard for evidence", adding that "opinion articles often make assertions that are contradicted by WSJ reporting.
[18] Defunct Newspapers Journals TV channels Websites Other Congressional caucuses Economics Gun rights Identity politics Nativist Religion Watchdog groups Youth/student groups Social media Miscellaneous Other During the Reagan administration, the editorial page was particularly influential as the leading voice for supply-side economics.
In a July 3, 1984, editorial the board wrote: "If Washington still wants to 'do something' about immigration, we propose a five-word constitutional amendment: There shall be open borders."
In particular, it has been a prominent critic of the Affordable Care Act legislation passed in 2010, and has featured many opinion columns attacking various aspects of the bill.
[26][27][28] On October 25, 2017, the editorial board called for Special Counsel Robert Mueller to resign from the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections and accused Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign of colluding with Russia.
[40] That year, the Associated Press described the Journal's editorial pages as "a place friendly to climate change skeptics".
[45] In the 1980s and 1990s, the Journal published numerous columns opposing and misrepresenting the scientific consensus on the harms of second-hand smoke.
[46][47][48] A 1994 opinion article said that “the anti-smoking brigade relies on proving that secondhand smoke is a dangerous threat to the health of others.
"[56] In 2005 Joe Morgenstern was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for criticism for "reviews that elucidated the strengths and weaknesses of film with rare insight, authority and wit.
[66] In 2013 Bret Stephens was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for commentary for "incisive columns on American foreign policy and domestic politics, often enlivened by a contrarian twist.
"[73] In 2017 Peggy Noonan was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for commentary "For rising to the moment with beautifully rendered columns that connected readers to the shared virtues of Americans during one of the nation’s most divisive political campaigns.
