Guess which one. Three tries, and the first two don’t count.

Yes, it’s journalism of course. I hate to keep harping on this, but until I stop seeing, reading and hearing corrupted individuals who were once fair and honest insisting that there is no mainstream media bias (or telling me that they get their news from MSNBC), attention must be paid. This year is already an orgy of disgraceful, slanted reporting employing flaming double standards, and it is sure to get much, much worse.

Here is a column in the Columbia Journalism Review, a publication of perhaps our most respected journalism school (though not by me). The author is Jon Alsop, who writes for the New York Review of Books, Foreign Policy, and The Nation (a red flag there, and by “red” I mean “Marxist”) , among other outlets, and he authors CJR’s newsletter “The Media Today.” It is an unapologetic argument for reporters to deliberately report on Donald Trump negatively and with the explicit purpose of undermining his image and support.

The pretense for this smoking gun is the latest example of intentional Trump-smearing, the Big Lie that Trump called for a literal “bloodbath” if he loses the election.

Some, Alsop writes, “claimed that the media was taking the ‘bloodbath’ comment out of context: it came during a section of Trump’s speech about the state of the US auto industry, and was clearly meant, these people said, in an economic sense.” “Claimed”? It was taken out of context and deliberately distorted. Later in the piece, Alsop even concedes “on balance, that he was using the word in an economic sense.” So why does Alsop excuse and offer support those who “countered that it was fair to highlight the remark, arguing, variously, that Trump doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt given his long history of violent rhetoric, that it’s not at all clear that he was only referring to the auto industry, and that even if he was, his use of the word ‘bloodbath’ was still hyperbolic to the point of demagoguery”? Alsop thinks this is a dilemma, you see: it’s ” the latest installment in the debate (which we’ve covered often here at CJR) as to how the media ought to handle [Trump’s] rhetoric, given its frequent violence and dishonesty.”

Thus Alsop sympathizes with MSNBC refusing to broadcast Trump’s victory speech after he won the Iowa caucuses in January because, as Rachel Maddow told viewers, “that to do so would come at the cost of knowingly airing lies.” This was actually hackery and propaganda, for Joe Biden lies as much as Trump does, arguably more; his State of the Union was filled with dishonesty. Alsop neither acknowledges this hypocrisy nor justifies it. “Network executives debated the fine line between journalistic responsibility and handing Trump free publicity,” he writes. What “fine line?” Since when did the news media decide that reporting on what a Presidential candidate does and says is “free publicity”? The media covered Barack Obama giving his bracket choices in the college basketball tournament when Obama was running for re-election. It covered Joe Biden’s “all supporters of Donald Trump are fascists” rant….

…with the kind of respect one would get from the crowd during the Sermon on the Mount.

“As I’ve covered this debate over the years, my thinking on it, too, has gone back and forth,” Alsop writes. Hmmm…should we practice objective journalism, or should we do our best to sabotage and undermine Donald Trump because we hate the SOB and we’re all Democrats? Tough one! Alsop’s essay is full of self-rebutting garbage. Here’s highlight: “Ultimately, journalists cannot—and probably should not—make voters feel a certain way about Trump, or even make them pay attention. But we can make sure that we are presenting the full truth of his remarks to those who are.”

Ugh. Journalists “probably” shouldn’t make voters feel a certain way (that is, hate, fear and distrust ) about Trump? Yeah, I’d agree that reporters “probably” should allow the public to make up their own minds without having the news pre-distorted, censored and spun, but I’m funny that way: I believe in ethics. Then Alsop says, without realizing how foolish and arrogant it is, that these same journalists “can make sure that we are presenting the full truth of his remarks.” The “full truth”! You know: “This guy is a lying, fascist asshole that you should fear and hate! If you don’t vote Democratic, our democacy is over!” This is the delusion and conceit of Alsop’s disgusting, corrupt, toxic and arrogant profession: that journalists are qualified to determine what is the “full truth,” and justified in presenting their biased and partisan versions of facts as the “right” view of reality.

Journalism.

Dead.