Media

For all its good intentions, art that tries to minister to its audience by showcasing moral aspirants and paragons or the abject victims of political oppression produces smug, tiresome works that are failures both as art and as agitprop. Artists and critics—their laurel bearers—should take heed.

“Journalists are in general a bunch of insecure overachievers, so being in one ‘room’ with your ‘peers’ giving you constant feedback and information creates a truly awful petri dish in which the most terrible forms of groupthink thrive,” says Polgreen. “It can be very hard to resist for reporters, which makes it tough for editors to reorient their... See more