We're All Fox News Now

I was going to write on the coverage of the latest Clinton "scandal" by the New York Times, but Paul Waldman has done a very thorough job:

Whenever some new piece of information emerges about Hillary Clinton or people close to her, we’re told that it “raises questions” of some kind, which means it’s being shoehorned into a larger narrative that says something fundamental about her: That she’s tainted by scandal, or corrupt, or just sinister in ways people can never quite put their finger on.

Yet somehow, stories about Donald Trump that don’t have to do with the latest appalling thing that came out of his mouth don’t “raise questions” in the same way. They’re here and then they’re gone, obliterated by his own behavior without going deep into question-raising territory.

The "newspaper of record" has had a kind of tarnished reputation since the days of Judith Miller and the lead-up to Bush II's invasion of Iraq. The real problem is, since the major news outlets have become so unreliable, if you really want to know what's going on, you have to hit a lot of sources, and most people won't.

We have always been at war with Eastasia.

Via Digby, who sums it up nicely:

The papers have done a good job reporting on many of Trump's business dealings over the years. But since there isn't any left wing Judicial Watch or Citizens United spoon-feeding them new new drips of information on a daily basis, they report it out and that's the end of it.

They are being manipulated by the character assassins and they know it. But they don't care. They seem to convince themselves that at some point one of these scandals will add up to a big scoop (Monica!) and until then they'll keep the scandal mongers happy by publishing their hit jobs. The way they drool and grunt over every little nugget the right wingers throw in front of them, however, is embarrassing. (Some of them should stay off twitter.)