Spayd, like Berliner, was a veteran journalist whose departure was a study in the limited tolerance at elite American news organizations for contrary thinking and inward-directed criticism. Spayd left the Times in 2017 when her position as in-house critic was unceremoniously dissolved. Berliner was suspended without pay soon after his essay about NPR was posted this month at the “Free Press” site on Substack. He resigned within days, closing a 25-year career at the public broadcaster.

The two cases, while dissimilar in their details, are both instructive, signaling a distaste for challenges arising from within newsrooms of major media outlets, even when raised by journalists with many years of experience. They also point to an eclipse of values of impartiality, fair-mindedness, and ideological distance that defined American journalism, at least nominally, for decades.

Spayd alluded to those diminished values in her swan song column, writing that “in the long run stories that are measured in tone are more powerful. Whether journalists realize it or not, with impartiality comes authority — and right now it’s in short supply.”