President Trump stands during a joint press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the White House on Feb. 10, 2017 in Washington, DC.  Mario Tama—Getty Images

Don't Dismiss President Trump's Attacks on the Media as Mere Stupidity

Bret Stephens / TIME | 18 February 2017

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Not to look around, or beyond, or away from the facts, but to look straight at them, to recognize and call them for what they are, nothing more or less. To see things as they are before we re-interpret them into what we’d like them to be. To believe in an epistemology that can distinguish between truth and falsity, facts and opinions, evidence and wishes. To defend habits of mind and institutions of society, above all a free press, which preserve that epistemology. To hold fast to a set of intellectual standards and moral convictions that won’t waver amid changes of political fashion or tides of unfavorable opinion. To speak the truth irrespective of what it means for our popularity or influence.