What the Backlash to Jake Tapper Really Reveals

The real threat to democracy is the refusal to confront its failures.

Jake Tapper has long been a trusted voice within the media class—not because he challenged power, but because he helped manage it. For years, he’s played the part of the serious, impartial journalist: not partisan, not conspiratorial, just a sober-minded defender of democratic norms. But that image has always depended on a deeper fiction—that the instit…