Speaking of unpleasant things appearing in the Wall Street Journal, the paper has recently updated their policy on printing vulgarities.
Standards evolve, including The Wall Street Journal’s treatment of bad words. As you might have noticed, we now allow the printing of most vulgarities if they are in direct quotations and our news judgment is that the quotation is important to include because it gives insight into how the person communicates, his or her depth of feeling on a subject, or character. Thus, an executive referring to a “shit storm” or a politician (guess who) vowing to “bomb the shit” out of Islamic State’s oil operations.
This change is surely not entirely due to Donald Trump, but as the parenthetical jab above indicates, he’s certainly part of the problem.
