THE PRESS UNDER ATTACK – AT 9:44 A.M. ET:  I don't think it's my imagination.  The good guys are starting to win their fight to expose corruption in media.  CNN has been humiliated twice in the last week alone – once when three employees had to resign after their story was proved false, and again when a CNN producer was caught on secretly recorded tape admitting that the Trump/collusion with Russia story had no real evidence behind it. 

Michael Goodwin, of the New York Post, puts the episodes in context:

In the sixth month of Donald Trump’s presidency, we are witnessing an unprecedented meltdown of much of the media. Standards have been tossed overboard in a frenzy to bring down the president.

Trump, like all presidents, deserves coverage that is skeptical and tough, but also fair. That’s not what he’s getting.

What started as bias against him has become a cancer that is consuming the best and brightest. In rough biblical justice, media attempts to destroy the president are boomeranging and leaving their reputations in tatters.

He accuses them of publishing fake news, and they respond with such blind hatred that they end up publishing fake news. That’ll show him.

CNN is suffering an especially bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, even trying to make a virtue of its hostility to the president. In doing so, executives conveniently confuse animus with professional skepticism, and cite growing audiences as proof of their good judgment.

The bottom line matters, and there is certainly an audience for hating Trump all the time. But facts and fairness separate major news organizations from any other business looking to make a buck, and a commitment to them creates credibility and public trust.

That’s how CNN sold itself for years — boring but trustworthy. Now it’s boring and untrustworthy.

COMMENT:  Read the rest of Goodwin's column.  It is packed with good information, which is the basis of real journalism.

June 28,  2017