The battle lines couldn’t appear more sharply drawn: Fox News versus “real journalism.” That’s the way former New York Times editor Howell Raines framed the conflict in a Washington Post column last year. He implored honest reporters to take on Roger Ailes’s network, lamenting that:

Through clever use of the Fox News Channel and its cadre of raucous commentators, Ailes has overturned standards of fairness and objectivity that have guided American print and broadcast journalists since World War II. Yet, many members of my profession seem to stand by in silence as Ailes tears up the rulebook that served this country well as we covered the major stories of the past three generations, from the civil rights revolution to Watergate to the Wall Street scandals.

I might have found this argument about the Times’ superiority more convincing a month ago. Around then, Jacobin, the small magazine I edit, hosted a discussion in lower Manhattan on Occupy Wall Street. The event was well-attended — standing room only and dozens turned back at the door. But as inspiring as the Occupy movement is, we haven’t yet gotten to the point where debates on political strategy and tactics are anything but a family affair for committed leftists. We fully expected the tranquility that obscurity affords.