The Free Press started as a reaction. Many of us were stuck in the stifling cultures of legacy media, which saw curiosity about the “wrong” subjects—and therefore curiosity itself—as a threat, and the old norms of honesty and fairness as insufficient tools in our uncertain age. There was no such thing as hyperbole in language directed at the hyperbolic Donald J. Trump and his supporters. If journalists broke the old rules of their craft—even flagrantly so—it was in the service of the cause, a good cause, the only cause.
No apologies are likely to be issued for all those stories that were, in the end, wrong. The Pulitzers for Russiagate coverage still sit on their mantels.
Underpinning all of it was an idea that norms could be shattered—just for a little while—in order to beat the ultimate norm-breaker. As though norms formed by the traditions, values, and discipline of the generations who crafted them, trusted in them, and handed them down would be sitting there waiting to be picked up again just as soon as this was all over. Because it would certainly be over soon enough.