Klein, Coates, and what journalism is for

I wrote recently about a piece by Ezra Klein in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination that I found unsettling. The column, linked here, did a poor job of necessarily separating the circumstances of Kirk’s death with the need to plainly account for his life. They are separate things, but Klein’s piece was of the type I saw a lot of in the first few days after the killing—out of desire to rightly call the murder a horror, it is possible to stray too far into hagiography because it can feel like any intellectual discussion of Kirk’s work and rhetoric could be seen by partisans as justifying Kirk’s murder.

I’ll reiterate what I said before, that one of the complicating factors here is that Kirk was a public figure who built a media company and existed as a media brand in much of the public consciousness. There is a person behind the words, but the words are public texts that live on past the person. While it might feel like criticizing the dead to shine a spotlight on the life he lived as a media figure, those media artifacts have resonance with people and indeed people have sought them out since the shooting given the publicity Kirk’s work got. So we have to treat his work as a separate thing from his life and the cause of his death, because the publicness of his life means his work has a type of immortality. What we do with that cultural object and how we treat it matters a great deal, particularly because people whose mental image of Kirk goes straight to anecdotes and factoids about Kirk the person is often uninformed by his own words as Kirk the media personality.

I say all this because of the debate Klein’s piece stirred. Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote a brilliant critique of Klein’s piece for Vanity Fair that laid plain what I’d call a debate about the purpose and role of journalism in this moment. Coates’ piece is worth your time (as is Klein’s piece for context). Coates is, in my estimation, one of the great writers and compelling public intellectuals of this age. He has such a gift for writing with precision and urgency (I use “gift” with a bit of jest; writing is a muscle that has to be developed and honed, but God he is so good). A passage:

What are we to make of a man who called for the execution of the American president, and then was executed himself? What are we to make of an NFL that, on one hand, encourages us to “End Racism,” and, on the other, urges us to commemorate an unreconstructed white supremacist? And what of the writers, the thinkers, and the pundits who cannot separate the great crime of Kirk’s death from the malignancy of his public life? Can they truly be so ignorant to the words of a man they have so rushed to memorialize? I don’t know. But the most telling detail in Klein’s column was that, for all his praise, there was not a single word in the piece from Kirk himself.

What Coates does in his piece is sketch out both a historical argument and an argument from the body of Kirk’s own work to paint a different picture than Klein did. It casts the horror of Kirk’s murder in the historical context of ongoing political violence, not just of last month or the past year but as an arc of American history. He notes, for example, that it’s impossible to tell the story of being Black in America without giving serious treatment to the big and small acts of violence that this community has faced for centuries and how generations grow up having absorbed those tales as lessons for how to think about our politics in the present era. Coates is coaxing us to think bigger about the “how we got here” question, as something more than just the moment or a vapid discussion of how corrosive political discourse is in 2025. In doing so the piece gives Kirk’s murder a much broader frame by asking us to think about what political violence is writ large, what incendiary rhetoric looks like, and perhaps why we are blind to seeing what some call violent rhetoric as “just politics” because we are so enmeshed in our own social bubbles.

I’m writing this post, though, because Klein had Coates on his NYT podcast last week to talk through their disagreement. The episode also is really worth a listen. I know, I know … I am assigning a lot of homework today! But really, when I say something is worth your engagement I don’t take that advice lightly. I promise to give you a good grade for doing the reading.

To be clear, this is a conversation between two people with an interest in progressive policy and should be heard as such. But it’s also a useful frame because you can sense the split in how these two opinion journalists think of their role. Klein is what I’d call a pragmatic, someone who interested in how to build coalitions and win elections and is fueled by the belief that policy gains are made by winning office and exercising power that comes with it (and thus the most important goal here is winning elections). Coates is much more of an idealist in his work, and implicit in his argument is the belief that the journalist’s role is to both describe what is and to play in a role in describing what could be. Broadly, I’d say his work treats winning elections as important but not as important as approaching politics with a strong clarity about humanity and moral purpose; in fact, that can inform one’s approach win or lose because you are continually arguing for your ideals and hold your own side to account when you win.

There were a few snippets that stood out to me.

Klein: I don’t know what my role is anymore. I’ll be totally honest with you, man. I feel very conflicted about that question. The role I want to have is a person curiously exploring his political and intellectual interests in political peacetime. And the role I somehow have is sometimes that. But I’m a political opinion writer and podcaster and so on, and I’m in the business of political persuasion. And I feel like me and the people who believe what I believe — not narrowly speaking, but the whole broad coalition — have failed in a really consequential way.

Coates: All I can go to is my role as a writer, and my role as a writer is to state things as clearly as I possibly can, to make them in such a way that they haunt, to state truths and to reinforce the animating notion of my politics — which is that all humanity is equal and is worthy of that.

These are clipped from longer parts of the conversation, but in different ways their conversation was about a difference of opinion about how journalists ought to meet a moment in American politics where public character is less a driving force in a time when dominance is the coin of the realm.

Over the years I have generally liked Klein’s work, even as I know many center-left and left types find him exhausting. He is at his best when he’s able to engage with people he agrees with and disagrees with to make clear different points of view and investigate areas of agreement that could be a basis for compromise. But in the past year, as he’s dedicated a lot of his writing and podcasting to trying to understand how the GOP has come to power again with a president who isn’t even universally loved in his own party and how those of his voters that loathe him could betray their own stated ideals and pull the lever for him anyhow. His work this year has read to me like an existential crisis because his idealistic belief in dialogue and the efficacy of the marketplace of ideas is being severely tested in a time of blatant corruption and state-sponsored censorship (see: Kimmel, Jimmy).

I would posit that Klein’s self-described style of “curiously exploring his political and intellectual interests in political peacetime” is a bad fit for the moment because it relies on a level of unity of purpose or at least common baseline for it to work. It’s a style that works well when the debates are focused on what comprises good policy and when common ground is possible, but it’s ill-matched to a moment when late-night raging on social media, personal insults and chest-beating are the ethos of how leaders operate. In Klein’s work over the course of this year (yes, I am a regular listener to his pod even if I am a critic), I have detected a sense of searching for purpose in the moment. And then he just said it out loud during the conversation, as seen in the quote above. He doesn’t seem to know what should be the raison d’être of his work and has spent the year trying to work that out on his podcast.

Coates’ quote on the other hand represents a different type of ideal for the journalist right now, which is to tell unflinching truths. There are other points in the conversation which demonstrate he knows this can be a lost cause, that speaking the truth does not always guarantee success. He also separates the role of the journalist from that of the politician. Politicians have to lead, and that means they sometimes compromise:

We don’t all have the same role. When I wrote “The Case for Reparations,” it was not my expectation, nor did I even think it would be politically intelligent, for Barack Obama to go up and yell: I’m for reparations. But that’s different than my role.

And later

That’s a separate thing from why politics happen the way they do. Let me give you an instance that often also comes up that’s not the Civil War and that’s the New Deal. It’s pretty clear that the New Deal did quite a bit to create the social safety net, expand and create an American middle class, right? That’s true. Did F.D.R. want to, in his heart, exclude Black folks in the way that they were excluded from it? No. That was the price of getting the thing done. I understand that as politics. But were I there in that time, it would have been incumbent on me to yell at F.D.R. to not do that. And I just think that’s really, really, really, really important.

What Coates is articulating here is that the role of the journalist, as I said before, is in part to help us imagine a world that could be as we try to square it with what is. The work of politics is practical and rooted in the context of the moment, such as how you govern with clear majorities vs. situations that require compromise. Coates is clear-eyed about the political contexts FDR or Obama were up against even as they didn’t stand for the most pure versions of the policies he’d have argued for, but he also separates out the notion of wielding power from holding power to account.

All that to say, the podcast conversation is fascinating because it points to why Klein is struggling with his role and Coates is not. Coates’ view of journalism is much better suited for this moment precisely because the most compelling case against many of Trump’s actions this year is rooted in humanity—who gets to be treated humanely, and who gets to be referred to in humane terms. The latter is of no small consequence; the first step in crushing a people group often is to dehumanize them with language because it creates permission structures for the public to excuse what they’d otherwise find disturbing.

So the basic framework for discussion that starts with acknowledging the humanity and rights of those affected by a debate is a necessary precondition for Coates. Another place of the conversation, where they were talking about dialoguing with the other side, illustrates this.

Coates: Just in terms of bridging gaps and everything, I have a basic level of respect that I accord to everybody. I want to say what I have to say. I don’t want to shrink back from it. But I do think, on a basic level, there’s a respect that has to be had for people with whom I disagree. At the same time, I recognize that part of my audience — and I would say an important part of my audience — is people who have never enjoyed that respect. People who, in fact, are subjects of the kind of hate that Charlie Kirk was harvesting. And I can’t ever a) contribute to making them feel like they’ve been abandoned, and b) I can’t ever stand by and watch somebody do that and in the name of unity or whatever, act like that’s not happening. Because there are real consequences. So, when I read his words toward trans people, the language toward Haitians, specifically, which was: Haitians will become your masters if you don’t elect Trump. I mean, this is very, very familiar to me. It’s this idea of Haitians or other immigrants coming into the country, raping your daughters. This was really, really, really dark stuff. It’s at the core of this country. So, I feel for Haitian immigrants who are in Ohio, who are living under the weight of this. For trans kids who are dealing with being — I don’t even want to use the term “bullied” — beaten up, attacked, threatened. It’s very, very important to me, given the post I have, to say: I see you. But also: This dude was wrong. I’m all for unifying, I’m all for bridging gaps, but not at the expense of my neighbor’s humanity. I just can’t.

You can see the gentle way Coates is pushing Klein here. Klein’s strengths lie in ideas and talking through those, and it’s well suited to honest debates. Coates is acknowledging that this is important, but also about the need to draw lines because while compromise is part of politics, leaving behind the stories of the vulnerable to serve the needs of the political moment cannot and should not be the role of the journalist. It’s the journalist’s job to tell unflinching truth. There are moral dimensions that ought to guide debates and discussion lest the truth get lost in antiseptic discussions of policy, a check against people being described as variables in a policy debate rather than as humans with hopes, dreams, rights, and agency. Good-faith debate doesn’t work if there isn’t a moral baseline of common respect for human beings. Coates is arguing it’s possible to have debates about immigration or LGBTQ policy with people that disagree, but the social contract relies in part on language and discourse that treats those affected by those policy discussions as humans who can be helped or hurt by what is decided. A baseline ethic for talking about humanity provides a natural guardrail against our worst impulses and worst outcomes because it is embedded in an acknowledgement that those affected can thrive, or suffer, or grow, or bleed. The results of what we decide are not abstract but rather the direct consequences of how we treat the least of these. Theoretically, it forces us to listen to one another because a moral ethic like this can be invoked when proposed policy ideas cross those lines; we debate as much on moral terms as ideological ones.

I get the sense Klein is uncomfortable with all of this in part because journalists (and in some cases I’d argue some on the left) are fine speaking about moral issues but at least in the past couple of decades has been reluctant to make moral arguments in a time of expansive pluralism. For the journalist, it’s a nod to an older mode of the industry that treated debates as abstract because the temperature of our politics was a bit lower. Klein himself, though, noted the line has shifted such that a lot of what he thought was commonly accepted values in the U.S. are no longer the case, that political leaders speak of others in grossly dehumanizing terms.

What Klein leaves out is that Democrats have been unsure how to respond. It hasn’t been party leaders but rather grassroots activists, for example, who have been making the moral case for the inhumane way immigrants and U.S. citizens of color have been treated during Trump’s second term. And it has exposed an underlying problem with Democratic opposition. In making common ground the central operating principle rather than a common understanding of values, Democrats stake out these weird cases of acknowledging GOP arguments on immigrants or trans rights rather than arguing about the morality of how we treat the least of these as a baseline value that guides their own policy ideas. It undercuts their ability to offer a compelling alternative vision because they’re fighting on someone else’s terms, and more importantly fighting a losing battle to create substantive opposition when the GOP frame of an issue is the only territory that gets disputed. The argument ends up being about what the opposition is against, leaving little room for an expansive vision of what the opposition is for and and how it would solve problems differently.

Klein has argued this year from the view that the line has shifted and we have to find a way to live together, which comes across as a tacit acceptance not only of the left’s rhetorical failure but also a broad intractability in our politics that favors overwhelming dominance through force by those currently in power. That his imagination doesn’t allow for a different response—to argue this is not how a good people act, and that our political rhetoric should be centered around this urgent question—is telling. It’s also a recipe for learned hopelessness. Speaking the truth even in such dark times is its own good, because the darkness isn’t forever and it’s easier to march on in the service of building something new when you are writing about what you believe and who you are rather than what comprises the best strategy to winning back power.

Klein’s best work was rooted in a time of comity and relative calm. But now our debates are not about policy. Democrats, by reality subjected to the role of loyal opposition, are shut out of power in Washington. Perhaps there is a time when Klein’s desire to have discussions and debates about policy can be ascendant again, but that would require different times than we are in now and the question is how to build a bridge to that. In offering a different vision for what journalism can be, the discussion between these two reveals Coates’ solution: meeting the urgency of the moment with a sense of moral clarity. Not just to call something wrong, but to eagerly make the case as your mode of persuasion. Coates is arguing that the opposition’s problem isn’t policy, it’s that even in exile it is treating debates as theoretical and abstract rather than making the moral case about what it means to acknowledge the humanity of the most vulnerable people affected by our debates. The moment has shifted in ways that make every day’s news feel more awful. Rather than argue every story or every atrocity and achieve nothing in a time of information overload and feelings of helplessness, Coates is arguing we stitch those together into a compelling critique of the ethos of Trump II.

It’s a tough ask, particularly for an old-school journalist. I can see why Klein hesitates, because he is one of them. But I think back only a century ago to the work of the muckrakers, famous journalists such as Upton Sinclair and Ida B. Wells, who attacked Gilded Age issues of corruption and exploitation with a type of moral frame that made their work compelling and led to a lot of reforms that made lives better in the U.S. The muckrakers weren’t trying to ride the debate and present both sides. They were attempting to reframe the conversation such that the interests of the vulnerable were not hand-waved away but rather made central to the story. I would argue this is always the role of journalism, because the job is to hold powerful people accountable and lift up those with the least amount of voice and power—to defend citizens who have less resources and proximate power against the powerful interests prone to the drift of negligence or corruption. It’s an ethic that got lost in the 20th century as news became an industry and standardized forms in service of corporate ownership.

How news production reacts to the social context of the moment can change, and the conversation between Klein and Coates illustrates how the moment should be making opinion journalists at least think hard about whether couching policy discussions purely in abstract, debate-worthy terms is truly meeting the moment.

I’ll close with this from the discussion, because I think it represents how Klein is wrestling with this in real time (whether posting through it is a good idea is a whole other discussion):

There’s a Buddhist meditation I like. This is a weird place to go. But it goes like this: I’m of the nature to grow sick. I’m of the nature to grow old. I’m of the nature to lose the people I love. I’m of the nature to die. How then shall I live?

He’s so close to getting it!

Jeremy Littau is an associate professor of journalism and communication at Lehigh University. Find him on Bluesky for short-form commentary and analysis about digital media and society.