Over the weekend as the  2016 campaign’s first Presidential debate loomed, four news organizations published major stories pronouncing Donald Trump a liar, and essentially conferring on the Rationalization #22-ish Hillary “She’s not the Worst Liar” endorsement.

This was a new maneuver in the mainstream news medias full and open opposition of Trump that has left objectivity, neutrality and American journalism ethics in the dust. First came the The New York Times attack—the Times, as the flagship of U.S. journalism, had already given its blessing to biased coverage—with its “A Week of Whoppers“on Saturday. Politico, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times all followed the leader in short order. (Or followed orders in short…never mind, that doesn’t quite work.)

Contacted by a curious but gullible Brian Stelter, CNN’s biased but maybe a little less biased than he might be “media watchdog,” publication editors who were involved swore the timing was, as John Travolta says in “Face-Off,” “a  coinkydink!” Marty Baron, the executive editor of The Washington Post, told Stelter indignantly, “We don’t coordinate coverage with anyone else!”

“The four stories were welcomed by the Clinton campaign,” Stelter wrote.  “Aides cited the statistics in television interviews on Sunday.  However, there is no indication that the Clinton campaign was involved.” (That’s my emphasis, if you couldn’t tell.)

NO indication? No indication??? Isn’t a media watchdog required to know what reporters do and how they are supposed to do it? Stelter made that statement exonerating the four liberal-biased outlets without doing any of his own investigation, obviously, for here is what I’d call an “indication”:

On Friday of last week, one day before these remarkably similar articles appeared, Hillary Clinton’s campaign website published  “Clinton Campaign: Trump Cannot Pass Debate Test If He Repeats These Debunked Lies.” The entry documented 19 pages of Trump statements rated lies by liberal-leaning “fact check” outlets like PolitiFact and the considerably more trustworthy FactCheck.org

It sure appears that the four news media took their talking points directly from the Clinton campaign and lied about it. Stelter, who works for a news organization whose own pro-Hillary bias has been consistent and at times embarrassing, complicitly stated that the Clinton campaign had nothing to do with their anti-Trump articles, suggesting that either he asserted this  without doing his due diligence research–how hard would it be to check the Clinton site?— or was lying himself.

As an American citizen, do you consider this a fair, open, transparent, objective and healthy way for our Presidential campaigns to be covered? Are you willing to accept a system where journalists decide who should be the President, and then use their power and influence to make it so? Really?

I’m not.

Even if you honestly and foolishly believe that Hillary Clinton is fit to be President, this is an indefensible attitude.

Meanwhile, none the four publications possessed even the minimal integrity to include in their posts, “Information provided by the Clinton Campaign was used to prepare this article.”

…because, you know, that might have made people think that collusion was going on, and that the coverage of this campaign is rigged.

Surely the NY Times, the Post, Politico and the LA Times don’t want anyone to think that.

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Pointer: Hot Air

Facts: CNN

Graphic: Getserialkey