DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Progressives Really Struggling With the Idea the Right Got This Right.
It really is maddening over time to be part of this never ending game of media Calvinball. Sure, the right said Joe Biden was slipping for years, but even when it turns out they were absolutely right almost no one will admit that or remember it for next time. No one wants to talk about why the rest of the media dropped the ball either. And no matter how many cycles of this game we go through, right up to Jason Arday, the Left never can credit the right for just speaking the truth.
Needless to say, this is not a healthy media landscape. It’s a recipe for failure that always harms one side more than another. And that’s exactly the point. If they can’t have resistance journalism that demonizes the right and favors the left, many people would rather have no journalism at all.
If you think I’m overstating that, watch this clip.
As part of an ongoing self-imposed struggle session, a professional journalist criticizes Novara Media for digging into Jason Arday's academic credentials. I'd love @malonebarry and others in this camp to more clearly lay out what they think journalists *should* do. https://t.co/Jw6iidEEsq
— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) August 19, 2026
Update: Another hot take suggesting the Guardian in particular should have just shut up and maybe never covered this at all.
The Good Law Project’s Jolyon Maugham insists that only the right-wing media ever should have covered the Jason Arday story, because he insists it was only ever a culture-war story. This despite the fact that Times Higher Education, a nonpartisan outlet, was the first to spend…
— Benjamin Ryan (@benryanwriter) August 19, 2026
When the Arday story breached the containment field of conservative-adjacent British media (the London Times and Telegraph, the Spectator, and Spiked) and crossed over to the Grauniad and American left-leaning publications such as The Atlantic and The New York Times, it was obvious it had serious legs. So no wonder the British left are having yet another case of autophagy:
The reason they decided to focus their ire on The Guardian is that it's a progressive leftist outlet they think they can bully into retracting its journalism under the idea that they are supposed to be an ally. https://t.co/v2JGka21SX
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) August 19, 2026
Related:
"Media harm." The people who ruined your life for making an OK sign are now worried about "media harm." https://t.co/3l2I0ChaGa
— jimtreacher.substack.com (@jtLOL) August 19, 2026