Is it the role of the press to save the country from small new parties with unsympathetic or crazy agendas? No is the obvious answer. It is the role of the voters. But still, isn’t it the duty of the press to help voters understand what is in their best interest? Now it gets harder.

Every now and then in the media debate, the expression “consequence neutrality” comes up. A person who lauds consequence neutrality as a journalistic principle believes that the decision to publish should only be founded on the news value of an event, not on a consideration of the potential consequences of publishing. People should publish everything that is true and relevant without thinking about whether the headlines will be favourable or unfavourable to one party or another, one interest or another.

I have to point out straight away that this argument is about news journalism in a broader sense. It should be said that opinion journalism neither can nor should be cons...