The Guardian is unafraid. And it’s independent. (No billionaire bosses.) In this media climate, those qualities are as rare as they are crucial to good journalism.

Good journalism is also crucial to the informed citizens we need for a functioning democracy. From too many legacy media outlets based in the US we’re getting something else entirely: horse race coverage, scraped-up and reheated scandals of little significance, credulous repeating of claims, polite evasions about the threats and crimes of the right, and what’s been dubbed “sanewashing”: the translation of the luridly loopy utterances of Donald Trump and his minions into coherent-sounding policy statements. And now we’re seeing billionaire owners of major papers suppress their own editorial department’s endorsements.

As we face another momentous election in the United States, I think hard about what the last several years might have been like if these institutions did their job with the fearlessness of the Guardian when it comes to calling lies lies, crimes crimes, and........

© The Guardian