I'm not really sure that the job of the news media should be to "moral clarity and leadership" as Will Bunch suggests, but it's obviously the role that many of them have imagined for themselves. It is David Broder's job, and he sucks ass at it. He's an enabler of moral monstrosities, wrapping sociopaths in neat WASP packages. But I think much of the problem is that elite journalists have styled themselves as the country's shepherds, trying to herd the wayward flock towards its appropriate destination.
But, more generally, it is the case that journalists should stop pretending they can't make judgment calls. They do it all the time, both explicitly (I think they're allowed to think that racism is "bad," even if the details are messier than that), and in ways which require them to spend a lot of time going through contortions to pretend that they aren't.
