The Press Has Learned Absolutely Nothing

 Despite its willing collaboration in nearly turning the country into a dictatorship, they go blithely on their way, refusing to distinguish truth from falsity, at least when the falsity is on the side of the Republicans.

Today's case in point- this miserable excuse for journalism from the Washington Post:

"A Senate report on President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election offers new details about an Oval Office confrontation between Trump and the Justice Department, revealing the extent to which government lawyers threatened to resign en masse if the president removed his attorney general.

Democrats charge Trump nearly provoked a constitutional crisis, but for the steady hands of senior Justice Department officials; Republicans say Trump was “faithful” to his sworn duty as president in seeking assurances about voter integrity."

No way of knowing which side is telling the truth and which side is spreading malignant lies.  No way of determining whether the Republican President actually did try to overthrow the government, or whether inciting seditious riots is just part of his "sworn duty as President."  In brief, no reason to tell the truth when one political party wants it to be denied.

This article ends with these stirring words:

"Given Trump’s long-running distrust of the FBI’s handling of the 2016 election, the (Republican) report says, it was “reasonable that President Trump maintained substantial skepticism concerning the DOJ’s and FBI’s neutrality and their ability to adequately investigate election fraud allegations in a thorough and unbiased manner.”

No comment on whether that "long-running distrust" was itself justifiable or even real, or whether it was just an attempt to steal the election in the face of the simple truth that Biden beat him by a large margin.  No, it was Trump and the Republicans who were really concerned with "election fraud allegations," and wanted to investigate them "in a thorough and unbiased manner."

This is not even both-siderism.  It is simply collaborating with the Republicans to spread their lies as far as possible.  And the unchecked reign of such reporting for the last four decades or so has done as much as anything the Republicans could hope to do to end our democracy.