Jay Rosen of New York University tells me via email, “From my perspective the Oct. 25 editorial was an important event because it combines so effectively with this development, in which the Journal reporters were told to stand out by their greater willingness to give Trump the benefit of the doubt — greater, that is, than the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, Politico, Bloomberg and others in their peer group.” He continues, “The implicit appeal is not to impersonal and timeless standards of veracity but to an ideological position that, according to the newsroom editors, the others guys have taken while the Journal does not.” He argues, “This is an attempt to give intellectual respectability within the news tribe to ‘the enemy of the people’ attacks. The editors were saying to their reporters: Okay, maybe not enemies of the people, but they’re acting like enemies of Trump! We don’t do that.”