When the media views its entire mission through a lens of meting out social justice while presenting itself as the opposition to the current administration, it completely misses the forest for the trees. Usually this just leads to harmless sparring between ideological opponents on the pages of the New York Times opinion section, but its lazy coverage of the early spread of coronavirus had national and international consequences.

President Trump’s order to halt all travel from China on January 31, for example, was met with hollers of xenophobia from the loudest corners of mainstream media.