Caveat Lector: Gell-Mann Amnesia and WSJ Energy Reporting

The media has always enjoyed special protections in our unique form of republican democracy – with the First Amendment of the Constitution serving as Exhibit A. A free press is vital to the proper functioning of America, providing transparency on key issues and holding those in power accountable.

Yet today, the mainstream media is failing us, particularly with its inability or unwillingness to expose the seeming malfeasance of the expert elite, the Left, and the administrative state. Indeed, sensing mainstream media bias in news reporting these days is certainly more prevalent. Hindsight over the past few years has confirmed the media’s shortcomings when reporting news across a spectrum of critical issues.

But a few outlets avoided the self-inflicted trauma to their reputation better than their peers. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) is one such organization, still enjoying the badge of objective authority on business matters.

That was certainly my view. For years, I held The WSJ in great reverence and viewed it as the standard of excellence in news.

But I slowly realized I was afflicted with a condition that clouded my rational assessment of The WSJ. I was giving the outlet’s news reporting too much benefit of the doubt. After self-analysis and a little research, I learned that I suffered from a severe case of the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.

Since the diagnosis, my view of The WSJ’s news reporting has changed. I became concerned and desperately wanted to help the newspaper regain mastery of journalistic fundamentals, so that it could once again be the rightful beacon for other news organizations to follow.

That was my intention at the start of this effort, and that’s what I hope will manifest.

Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect

The late, great author Michael Crichton coined the condition in a 2002 speech. It is a form of cognitive bias. The reader of news will critically assess media stories on a topic the reader is knowledgeable about, noticing flaws in reporting, but will continue to trust the reporting in other, less familiar areas blindly.

Crichton named the condition in honor of Murray Gell-Mann, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist whom Crichton explored the effect with.

Here is how Crichton explained it in 2002:¹

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story—and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I’d point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. [ ] But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn’t. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.

As Crichton pointed out, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect can be triggered by media coverage of issues journalists don’t understand. Ignorance (or incompetence) leads to misreporting of issues, confusion of cause and effect, and so on. You recognize the reporter’s cluelessness on an issue you know well, but then you flip the page and read on to other stories outside that subject matter, faithfully accepting the story to be accurate and representing competent reporting.

But the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect can also be triggered in readers of news when the reporter intentionally shuns the facts and objective truth, replacing them with ideology, opinion, bias, or fiction. The news becomes cheerleading for a side instead of objectively stating the key facts of the issue. You identify the behavior on topics you know well. You are annoyed by the misreporting, but then you gullibly read on to other topics and articles, assuming the newspaper or reporter is offering a down-the-middle, stick-to-the-facts, objective perspective.

Under either variation of the effect, the reader behaves counter to common sense and self-interest. Which, ironically, is the opposite of how the reader would act in similar situations. For example, if a customer buys a watch from a jeweler who warrants that it is a high-end luxury brand, but later finds out the watch was a cheap counterfeit, the purchaser will not buy from that jeweler again. Or if an acquaintance lied to you on an important matter, it is doubtful you will unconditionally believe them the next time they warrant something.

But with news, you identify the poor or biased reporting in your area of knowledge and then instantly forget about it when turning to the next story about a topic you don’t know as much about. That’s the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect in action.

WSJ Energy Reporting

Energy is a space I immersed myself in, studied, toiled in, and lived within for decades, spanning a professional lifetime. With this came an understanding of the science, economics, and realities of the industry, as well as the policies that affect it.

So, when reading an energy story on the web or in the paper, I can assess it with a knowledgeable, or dare I say, an expert eye. Doing so exposes scores of energy stories in mainstream media that reflect a lack of knowledge, bias, or sloppy journalism. Unfortunately, it’s the new normal with energy reporting.

But The WSJ is supposed to be different and a cut above the norm, especially when the norm has sunk so low. Yet sadly, I found The WSJ’s energy reporting riddled with articles that are nonobjective, inaccurate, incomplete, or promotional of specific ideological leanings.

Approach to Diagnosing

I started tracking The WSJ’s energy reporting more closely. Although I always focused on the details of energy stories because they were part of my long-standing personal and professional interests, I began to methodically mark and tabulate each incident I came across in energy reporting that contained bias, inaccuracy, key omission, or misinformation.

At first, the approach was rudimentary and old school, consisting of circling the sentence or paragraph in the article where I identified a problem (I still prefer the physical product to the digital form). When an energy industry feature had something that warranted the pen, I would cut out the article. It would be added to a pile on the desk, joining prior WSJ energy pieces in which similar issues were identified.

Interestingly, I soon realized a major recurring flaw in several energy stories that I could not circle or highlight because it was not explicitly stated in the article. Instead, the flaw was the omission of a crucial fact or key reality. These errors of omission could be as substantive as explicit flaws in the article’s text. I started noting the errors of omission in the margins of the article to preserve the thought before I forgot it. And I would cut out the article and add it to the steadily growing pile on the corner of the desk.

The opinion section of The WSJ was excluded from the screening process, and the focus was exclusively on the news sections, where journalist opinions are assumed not to impact what is presented as objective news.

Over the first few weeks of this simple process, a few realizations dawned. First, The WSJ reports regularly on the energy industry and energy policy; this was a target-rich environment. Second, a high percentage of its energy news stories either carried critical flaws or omitted crucial pieces of information, either of which drastically impacted the legitimacy of the conclusions. Third, the energy stories that made it to my desk’s ‘cutting corner’ were written by a broad but often recurring group of WSJ reporters; I began to know their names well because they kept appearing on the stories that warranted the pen editing, scissors, and desk corner stacking.

The dataset of WSJ energy stories that carried a crucial error or omitted a critical fact was accumulating rapidly as the daily routine unfolded over a few months. The pile of marked-up news clippings on the desk started to creep beyond a corner and soon became conspicuous to everyone entering my office.

While colleagues who entered my office and eyed the pile of clippings likely began to worry about my mental state, I contemplated what the pile might be telling me.

To answer that question, a more organized process would be needed. A platform where the overall picture could be tracked as The WSJ continued to publish energy stories.

This was an excellent application for a spreadsheet. The accumulated news clippings were entered into a file, and the database was updated as each new WSJ energy story was identified that met the selection criteria.² Of course, this analysis may not be exhaustive, and it relies on my subjective judgment, informed by 35+ years in the energy industry.

The effort started over a year ago. Since, WSJ energy stories entered into the database exceed one hundred, and the total increased by the week. That’s quite a bit of cumulative reporting with identified flaws on just one topic, energy. I began to doubt The WSJ’s objectivity and credibility on energy matters. I had a growing collection of data points to justify the doubt. Sadly, the opinion section of the paper felt much more accurate and objective than the news articles. It was as if The WSJ flipped the roles of the news and opinion desks, but didn’t bother to tell readers of the change.

The Dirty Dozen: Common Tactics in WSJ Energy Reporting

More than 120 WSJ energy news stories were identified from mid-August 2024 through December 2025 that contained flawed assumptions, errors, misstatements, key omissions, other problems, or combinations thereof. Across this population, the following twelve tactics kept reappearing.

These ‘Dirty Dozen’ collectively comprise the toolbox from which The WSJ energy news staff errs and misreports energy news.

• Repeating the mantra of the ‘existential threat of climate change’, ‘increasing severity of weather due to climate change’, and the ‘high consensus level of climate science’ without providing tangible, measurable evidence in support. This tactic sets the stage for many of the tactics that follow; if there is no certain, existential crisis, there is no need for drastic actions. But The WSJ commits the same error that many mainstream media outlets succumb to: taking incredibly complex and scientifically debatable propositions and unilaterally converting them to core beliefs of an ideological faith. Climate change has been occurring for eons. But matters are far from settled regarding the nature, extent, and projections of climate change. Yet The WSJ regularly reports on energy matters as if these complex issues were definitively resolved years ago. What was once an objectively agnostic news desk has morphed into one of climate alarmism faith.
• Promoting the myth that wind, solar, batteries, and EVs are ‘clean’ and carry zero CO2 footprints. Only if one believes that these forms of energy or transport carry zero CO2 emissions footprints can one warrant that an economy and society could plausibly function under net-zero policies. But a sober accounting of the life-cycle carbon footprints of these activities reveals a substantial carbon footprint for each. What The WSJ promotes as zero-carbon and clean is neither.
• Warranting the most expensive, unreliable, and non-scalable forms of power (wind and solar) are the lowest cost, most reliable, and easily scalable. This necessary follow-up tactic must be applied after the prerequisite myth that these sources have zero-carbon and zero-emission footprints is promoted to convince readers that a net-zero society and economy are not only possible but also efficient and happy. Yet the real world is providing data point after data point showing that attempts to scale wind and solar in state, regional, or national economies bring high costs, energy inflation, poor grid resilience, and energy scarcity. Beyond the obvious site-specific niche opportunities, such as solar in Arizona or wind in Iowa, wind and solar are uneconomic, non-scalable, and quality-of-life inhibitors.
• Citing a quoted source and assigning it the respect of an expert, decisive study, or established authority on the matter despite lacking credibility or carrying an apparent conflict of interest. The WSJ energy news staff takes liberty regularly to subjectively credential entities or individuals, and their ‘studies’, as objective authorities on energy topics. Many of these sources are academics, environmentalists, NGOs, lobbyists, bureaucrats, business executives, or investors who have strong, vested financial or career interests in seeing climate policies imposed, industries such as natural gas and oil attacked, and the myths of climate alarmism propagated. They are often the least objective on these matters, because their status, job, budget, and reason for being rely on promoting such positions. Yet the apparent conflict is brushed aside and replaced with an aura of reasoned objectivity in the stories. It would be ridiculous to cite fast-food chain executives as unbiased, objective voices regarding the supposed benefits of fast food. Yet The WSJ regularly presents environmental NGOs or wind/solar executives as balanced and fair voices on energy matters and climate policy. A slight variation of this tactic is to reference unnamed experts, for example, ‘certain analysts’ or ‘many scientists’, without naming or quantifying them.
• Cherry-picking data sets and time periods to manufacture a desired conclusion or to ignore a reality that is counter to the desired conclusion. Although nothing explicitly inaccurate is stated when applying this technique, it becomes highly suspect when the specially tailored data set is used to support a flawed or questionable conclusion. A hypothetical example of this is to select a month’s worth of temperature data that represents the driest month in Seattle in a century and use it to justify a conclusion that climate change is making the Pacific Northwest a desert; yet the longer data set of a decade of precipitation data shows no change in rain levels in the greater Seattle area. This tactic illustrates the Twain adage of there being lies, damn lies, and statistics.
• Applying inconsistent logic or different standards within the same article or across energy articles. This tactic did not become apparent until the database was constructed and individual stories could be compared and contrasted side by side. The tactic is effective because it is clever; the reader may not notice it when the tactic is applied across individual articles on different days. But once comparison was possible across a broader period of WSJ energy news reporting, the tactic became visible. Granting favored forms of energy looser, less rigorous standards while holding unfavored forms of energy to stricter, unreasonable standards is a way of stacking the deck to achieve desired optics.
• Making obvious errors of omission. This common tactic appears in many WSJ energy stories, sometimes with more than one serious error of omission in a single article. Indeed, no one expects The WSJ to include every detail related to a news story; such a standard is unreasonable and would make a newspaper unreadable in a world where time is precious. But when key facts that fundamentally impact an analysis of a situation are not included in a story, it bolsters preferred conclusions so that the non-expert reader is likely to assume the reporting reflects a thorough and objective assessment. One common way The WSJ applies this tactic is to ascribe only a subset of root causes to a problem without including the most significant root cause. For example, stating that electricity cost inflation is high because of AI demand and tariffs, but failing to mention that the biggest drivers of power price inflation are wind and solar mandates, inefficiencies, and intermittencies.
• Avoiding the opportunity to expose obvious problems or flaws. It wasn’t long ago that journalism prided itself on outing and daylighting such things. In fact, most people consider it an ethical responsibility of the free press to do so, whether the problems or flaws come from government or the private sector. But WSJ energy reporters don’t seem to sense an urgency or see an opportunity to do so, because the database shows far too many lost golden opportunities. Sometimes, the journalist will state a fact in the energy story that, on its face, implies a potentially serious problem, yet the opportunity to expose it is not pursued. If The WSJ energy team had been paying attention, it could not only have provided a service to its readers by exposing numerous controversies over the past year or so, but also might have won a Pulitzer Prize or two in the process. So, why hasn’t it done so? Perhaps because the issues that could’ve been called out would be committed by favored entities that fall within the zone of The WSJ energy team’s leanings. The WSJ may struggle to call out who it deems to be the ‘good guys’ in an ideological war over energy and climate policies.
• Applying theatrical language and descriptors that trigger emotion and paint a desired picture. The WSJ energy desk must have a well-worn thesaurus, because the words utilized in both energy headlines and articles are often vivid and intense. At times, it feels as if the energy journalists are more creative writers for Hollywood dramas than newshounds. Usually, adjectives are not a problem if the salient facts are included and retain primacy in a story. But at some point, the adjectives become so extreme and so prevalent in a news story that the facts become subservient to the descriptors. As the great Thomas Sowell observed, “Whether in politics or in the media, words are increasingly used, not to convey facts or even allegation of facts, but simply to arouse emotions. Undefined words are a big handicap in logic, but they are a big plus in politics, where the goal is not clarity but victory – and the votes of the gullible people count just as much as the votes of people who have common sense.” Examples of this tactic include: ‘ax regulations’ versus ‘deregulate’; ‘bludgeon’ electric-vehicle incentives versus ‘ending’ incentives; and ‘spewing’ versus ‘emitting’. The objective of journalists should be to inform readers with facts, not to trigger them with emotive language. When subjective qualitative language replaces, contradicts, or supplants objective quantitative descriptions, the journalist has failed.
• Implying that companies and industries are ready and willing to do the right thing, but for being stopped by pro-fossil fuels or pro-capitalist interests or policies, despite the lack of substantive supporting evidence. Examples of this tactic would be positing that the free market would willingly march toward a net-zero world but for the Trump administration stopping it; or that the US auto industry would’ve met zero-carbon commitments on its own but for the Trump administration EPA rolling back climate regulations. This tactic reduces WSJ energy reporting to tabloid-like rumormongering. Rarely will the story include tangible and verifiable evidence to support the proposition.
• Cheerleading the favored beliefs and unfairly criticizing the disfavored views in headlines and stories. This tactic is usually accompanied by the tactic of applying theatrical language to emphasize what the reader should like and dislike. Sometimes the application is so obvious that one wonders whether The WSJ energy staff is self-aware of the practice.
• Abusing simple statistical associations to imply causation. This tactic may confuse readers about energy matters. Just because atmospheric CO2 increased over the past 50 years, at the same time the S&P index increased, does not mean more CO2 caused the stock market to go up; they are merely simple associations. But show a period of multi-year drought to a climate reporter, and chances are they will inevitably take the opportunity to mischaracterize an association as implying statistical causation with rising CO2. Abuse of implying causation via statistical association is also used to assign credit: if a grid avoided blackouts during the peak summer months and the grid had added solar or wind in prior years, the reporter might take the opportunity to imply that solar or wind should be credited with the blackout’s avoidance. WSJ energy reporters need a crash course in Statistics 101.

Many WSJ energy stories in the database used a combination of the Dirty Dozen to leave readers with a misinformed view or the wrong conclusion. Here is a hypothetical example that illustrates the use of combinations of the Dirty Dozen tactics:

There was a massive rain deluge in a year when atmospheric CO2 concentrations were higher than they were 100 years ago, and therefore, the use of fossil fuels is making heavy rain events more common. John Doe, the Director of Existential Threats at Enviro.Org, said, “Clearly, the use of fossil fuels is placing millions of Americans in danger of drowning and historic flooding.”

This hypothetical applies several tactics. It uses theatrical language to paint a sensational, emotional picture, using words such as ‘deluge’ or ‘historic flooding’, but without providing quantitative comparative context to justify the qualitative descriptors. It implies that heavier rain was caused by rising CO2 levels, using the flawed tactic of confusing statistical association with causation. Yes, rising CO2 coincided with the proffered heavier-rain period, but it also coincided with a rise in the price of gold and the number of Taylor Swift social media followers. A quote or two is included from an environmentalist or academic who is presented as not just authoritative, but also objective, when in fact they are neither. The manufacturing process is complete when the reader infers that a higher atmospheric CO2 level is the cause of more severe rain events and that statistics, science, and experts support the inference.

Analyzing the Data

The following are the key statistics from the database:

• The analysis identified 122 WSJ energy articles, appearing from mid-August 2024 through December 2025, that carried at least one of the Dirty Dozen tactics.
• Over 500 instances of Dirty Dozen tactics were identified across the 122 energy articles.
• The vast majority of the 122 articles contained multiple Dirty Dozen tactics, with more than four Dirty Dozen tactics being found within individual articles, on average.
• The three most frequently occurring Dirty Dozen tactics were: Inconsistent logic or different standards within the same article or across energy articles (found in over 60% of the 122 articles); Cheerleading the favored beliefs and unfairly criticizing the disfavored views (found in over 60% of the 122 articles); and Making obvious errors of omission (found in over 75% of the 122 articles).
• Often, an article would contain multiple instances of a particular Dirty Dozen tactic. The most likely tactics to be found more than once within a news article were: Making obvious errors of omission; and Applying theatrical language and descriptors to create subliminal triggers to paint a desired picture.
• The Dirty Dozen tactic appearing the fewest times was promoting the myth that wind, solar, batteries, and EVs are clean and carry zero CO2 footprints (found in over 10% of the 122 articles).

Assessing the Reporting Pool

The analysis compiled the backgrounds of The WSJ journalists who wrote the articles that made it into the energy news database. Seventy reporters comprised the population. Experience levels ranged from interns to highly seasoned veterans. Many held degrees from elite universities, and many held graduate degrees. The group was a multi-national collection of professionals reflecting a global scope of experiences.

Despite the impressive credentials and backgrounds of the energy reporting pool, there were three significant shortcomings.

First, no reporters were identified who held degrees in classic STEM disciplines. Many English, journalism, history, and political science majors. But the study did not identify a single reporter in the population that held a degree in chemical engineering, electrical engineering, petroleum engineering, mechanical engineering, physics, or chemistry. The only traditional STEM educational backgrounds identified were two reporters with undergraduate degrees in computer science.

The dearth of STEM education among 70 journalists reporting on energy for The WSJ creates a serious blind spot, particularly for topics such as energy and climate, which are complex, rapidly evolving, and steeped in STEM. The lack of STEM training raises legitimate questions about whether the energy reporting team understands the science and engineering underlying the issues they report on.

Second, the problem of not having an energy and climate reporting team trained in STEM education is compounded when one considers that many of The WSJ reporters in the assessment earned their degrees from academic institutions that at times express hostility to domestic energy (coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear), public corporations, Middle America, small government, and consumer choice. Instead, these elite institutions are often supporters of heavy regulation of domestic energy, net-zero policies, big government, and climate alarmism. A rational concern is that many of the reporters in The WSJ energy and climate newsroom not only lack STEM training but also have been subjected to some degree of anti-domestic energy and pro-climate alarmist policy indoctrination during their academic journeys.

Third, it appears that none of the seventy reporters assessed in this study spent significant portions of their careers working directly in the energy industry or related industries. The cumulative prior experience of the energy reporters at The WSJ consists mainly of working at other media outlets, whether covering energy, climate, or other areas. Granted, some of the prior jobs listed in the bios were at impressive, noteworthy outlets. But you won’t find career stops in the oil, power generation, pipeline, auto manufacturing, solar, battery, or aviation industries, which are some of the key sectors these reporters cover when working the energy and climate beat.

The WSJ’s extended energy reporting team consists of well-educated and highly credentialed journalists, many with impressive resumes built across the media complex. But none were identified that combine a classic STEM education with a career built, at least partly, in the energy industry. Furthermore, in many cases, the journalist’s education and career experiences were with institutions that may have held entrenched ideological views on energy and climate matters.

The situation is odd and problematic for a large and talented team dedicated to reporting on an impactful, complex industry. And for a storied institution with access to substantial means and resources.

The brilliant WSJ columnist Gerard Baker articulated the concern in a November 2025 op-ed when he lamented institutions that have been, “…captured by the cultural revolution that has swept the world of graduate-level work, seized by an activist class not content to report the news but insisting instead on telling people what to think.”³ Perhaps that dynamic is at play with his host institution.

The Official Policy of the Publisher of The WSJ

The WSJ is published by Dow Jones, a subsidiary of News Corp. Dow Jones has a code of conduct.⁴ The document is clear and concise and outlines the approach a media outlet should embrace to achieve excellence in news reporting.

A key portion of the code of conduct follows:

“…it is an essential prerequisite for success in the news and information business that our customers believe us to be telling them the truth. If we are not telling them the truth – or even if they, for any valid reason, believe that we are not – then Dow Jones cannot prosper. Dow Jones will suffer, for example, if our customers cannot assume that:

• Our facts are accurate and fairly presented;
• Our analyses represent our best independent judgments rather than our preferences, or those of our sources, advertisers, or information providers;
• Our opinions represent only our own editorial philosophies; or
• There are no hidden agendas in any of our journalistic undertakings.”

A sober, clinical review of WSJ energy and climate reporting over a significant period demonstrates that its work product is consistently falling short of the principles articulated in its publisher’s code of conduct.

Corrective Actions

Fortunately, the situation is easily remedied. If The WSJ, its owners, or its readers desire the needed course correction for energy and climate reporting, a few critical yet straightforward adjustments should be made.

First, the position of news editor has either been asleep at the desk or part of the problem when it comes to flawed energy reporting at The WSJ. News editors supervise news operations and decide which stories to cover. They are the leaders who ensure news stories are accurate and are the gatekeepers for factual accuracy and compliance with ethical standards. Any editor worth their professional salt would recognize the problems enumerated in this piece regarding WSJ energy reporting. The WSJ editors need to start doing their jobs, or the paper should find ones who can.

Second, The WSJ should hire energy reporters who have direct energy industry experience and who are reasoned thinkers with STEM education backgrounds. Too many of the journalists who comprise the current WSJ energy team lack professional experience in the real-world energy industry. Too many of The WSJ energy reporters hold degrees in journalism, English, communications, or history from elite universities. These areas of study at modern universities do not expose students to the realities of today’s energy industry. Worse yet, the curriculum and faculty found in these programs, and particularly at elite schools, may carry strongly biased ideologies that discriminate against certain forms of energy and favor others. The graduates end up in places like The WSJ energy news desk and might not be critical thinkers; instead, they might be indoctrinated ideologues.

Third, The WSJ would do itself, its news staff, and its readership a service by clearly revisiting and then following its publisher’s excellent code of conduct. A refreshed review of the code of conduct, applied with a self-reflective, critical eye, would be fruitful for The WSJ energy and climate team and the newspaper’s stakeholders. Ideally, the process should be made public so all stakeholders have the benefit of knowing how The WSJ approaches its publisher’s code, and so that the paper can be held accountable to its standards.

Last, but not least, the readership of The WSJ could provide a vital corrective action. If readers realize how The WSJ’s energy reporting suffers from serious, recurring flaws, they can demand reform from the paper and, in the interim, assess its reporting with a healthy dose of skepticism. Readers of The WSJ who are experts in fields beyond energy might consider performing and then sharing a similar analysis to the one provided here. The Gell-Mann Amnesia effect tells us that news readers place too much trust in the media’s accuracy and objectiveness when reporting on areas outside of the area in which the reader is an expert and knows is being misreported. Indeed, readers demanding transparency and accountability while questioning what is being reported would do wonders to improve The WSJ.

Caveat Lector

Of course, the approach presented here is far from perfect. It surely is not exhaustive. And it relies on subjective interpretation provided by yours truly. Reasonable readers may have reasonable differences in the interpretation of particular stories or statements therein.

So, caveat lector.

If you have a different interpretation for particular stories or points found within them, please feel free to comment at nick@nickdeiuliis.com . If something was missed, please advise. Feedback will inevitably improve the analysis.

The goal is not to vilify The WSJ. Instead, the objective is to help return it to best-in-class news reporting.

Making The WSJ News Again

I have a long-standing fondness for and owe a professional debt to The WSJ. It has been a steady companion throughout my journey. But the old standby needs reform of its energy news reporting.

Until The WSJ regains reliability in energy news reporting, I cannot hold confidence in its reporting in areas beyond my expertise. If I see flaws in energy reporting, how can I trust WSJ reporting on tariffs, current US administration policies, geopolitics, healthcare, or a host of other contemporary issues it regularly covers?

Machiavelli noted that whoever desires constant success must adapt their conduct to the times. Times have certainly changed when it comes to media objectivity in reporting on important issues. If we desire and need constant success for the free press, domestic energy, and other vital industries, we will need to cease placing default trust in the news and replace it with a critical eye toward what we are told. That’s what’s called for when once-trusted institutions take a turn for the worse. And it is just what the doctor ordered to cure Gell-Mann Amnesia.

Let’s make The WSJ news again so it can serve as a template for others in the profession to follow.

Author’s note: If you have input, corrections, or additions you wish to provide, please submit them to nick@nickdeiuliis.com so they may be considered for inclusion in the analysis. I would like to especially thank CNX Resources colleague A’Layzia Cain for her crucial assistance in building The WSJ energy news story database.