CNN and MSNBC still refuse to engage in good faith with DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s document dump, which implicated the former Obama administration in a conspiracy against then-President elect Trump. Instead, hosts and guests alike on these outlets have unanimously deemed the whole thing a “baseless conspiracy theory,” as well as an attempt by the Trump administration to distract the public from Democrats’ sudden intense interest in Jeffrey Epstein. 

Over the past seven days, pretty much every left-wing cable news segment about Russiagate has followed the same formula:

1) The host introduces the topic as a fanciful Trump-world delusion.
2) Someone calls it “a distraction from Epstein” and is rewarded with vigorous head pats.
3) The entire panel chants: “baseless; unfounded; conspiracy theory,” in unison, until the segment cuts to commercial. 

That’s barely even an exaggeration. Watch:

Consider what the corporate media’s apathy towards this story reveals about their priorities. They’re apathetic because they believe, in hindsight, that it was worth sacrificing their credibility to basically hamstring the first Trump administration.

From a corporate journalist’s perspective, Russiagate was the two-year period in which the media destroyed their own credibility by pursuing an utter fabrication. And yet, none of them appear upset about being so disastrously misled. None of them even want to know where the conspiracy theory came from. Whose idea was it? Who helped concoct it? How many people helped disseminate it? They don’t care to know.

Clearly, therefore, the corporate media’s loyalty — whether to Barack Obama, or the Democratic Party writ large, or both — takes precedence over their concern for their own credibility and journalistic integrity. Otherwise, they’d be doing something other than blindly defending the people who led them around by the nose for almost the entirety of 2017 and 2018.