An Act of Protest

Around the time he departed the Toronto Star in May 2017, leaving behind a column that brought him a wide audience if not big money, Desmond Cole was pressed to confront a question: Was he a journalist or an activist? To the people who doubted Cole’s fitness to write for the Star, those roles were distinct and incompatible. An activist takes a position, while a journalist weighs all sides and seeks the truth somewhere in the middle. The latter definition, which assumes that everyone operates in good faith and that no one is flat‑out wrong, has been proven inadequate in today’s media environment. For one thing, it can’t deal with the lopsided polarization that gave rise to Donald Trump and that might see him re-­elected this fall. When one side takes an extreme position, it drags the middle with it. But the truth usually doesn’t budge: it just gets lost in the scramble for supposed balance.

A devotion to the appearance of neutrality spurred Cole’s...