The difference between the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times is that the WSJ's editorial board is worse than the NYT's but interferes with their coverage less. The NYT's editorial board is better but interferes with their coverage more. Ultimately, the WSJ does a better job of separating fact from opinion. The whole promise of "free speech" is that the rules are constantly under renegotiation. The current spate of recalibration is due to society expressing that they are sick of white male bullshit. Since white males have infinitely more media access than anyone else, we hear a truly one-sided discussion. For the first time since the '60s someone other than white men are raising their voices and the white men are outraged. The morass over "cancel culture" and "heresy" is not over the lack of debate, it's over the fact that white men are not being allowed to say whatever the fuck they want to say without having to suffer any debate.Ideas aren't to be feared, and we should be able to debate any ideas, even if just to confirm to ourselves that they're bad.
Your analysis of the difference of WSJ and NYT tracks very well my experience with them. Also the comments sections are very unique. NYT is full of people trying to prove how smart they are despite how little they might know about any given topic, while the WSJ is almost entirely "Literally every problem America faces is the fault of the Biden crime family." They've yet to discover a problem that can't be summed up that simply. Not sure why I click on them, but I can't help the voyeurism sometimes.
Yeah the WSJ comments are like Youtube if Youtube was only watched by Principal Skinner and Mr. Burns. Both John Carreyrou's Bad Blood and Hope & Wright's Billion Dollar Whale discuss at length how their reporting for WSJ's investigative news division was generally at odds with the WSJ's editorial stance, and how they kept expecting it to be a problem yet it somehow never was. The NYT, on the other hand, brought us Jayson Blair and Judith Miller. If I could figure out how to pay for just the journalism in the WSJ I would. Well, that and Mansion because it's the most gobsmackingly out-of-touch bit of reportage I see on a weekly basis. They do more than lean into the stereotype, they roll around in it like a dog with a gopher carcass.