Igot a surprise phone call last week from the other side of the world, where an American expatriate was worried about the future of his country in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination. We agreed that the dis-United States of America needs calming voices who can command attention — a tall order in a media landscape that is dominated by sources that are provocative, inflammatory and often false. All of us need to help change that.

American public discourse is now driven by opinion, not by facts, largely because of social-media platforms that favor opinion and use secret algorithms that promote the most provocative views to compete in the new “attention economy.” The decline of the traditional news business reflects the reality that the market for fact has shrunk while the market for o

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