I wish I could find a video of Axios CEO Jim VandeHei‘s embarrassing rant at the recent National Press Club gala that wasn’t tricked up like this one, but it’s sufficient to make the point. Naturally, Axios called the thing “inspired” and the assembled hack propagandists at the Press Club applauded like seals. He passionately defended “fearless reporting,” meaning with no fear of accountability. “Everything we do is under fire!” he warned. Yes. That’s because what you do so often is destructive, reckless, incompetent and biased. It should be under fire.

“I hate this damn debate about,‘ Oh, we don’t need the media,’ he said last week night as VanderHei and co-founder Mike Allen accepted the Fourth Estate Award for “lifetime achievement.” “It’s not true!”

Let me explain, Jim: we don’t need the unethical, arrogant media we’re currently stuck with, which is untrustworthy and dangerous. “But at the core of that is maybe transparency, maybe a free press, maybe the ability to do your job without worrying about going to jail, maybe the ability to sit in a war zone and tell people what’s actually happening!” Oh, bite me.

There’s no transparency in the news media: look at all the stories based on anonymous sources, gossip, rumors and agenda-driven leaks. If the news media’s job is to “tell people what’s actually happening,” then it is a worthless sham…and it is. Every day I see the Axis media bury stories and distort facts for their own purposes. Every day! “The work that we do matters,” he shouts. Yeah, the fact that you do it so badly and are so proud of yourselves really matters. It matters because it makes democracy all but impossible to practice competently.

Being a great reporter “is really, really hard,” VanderHei said. It must be, because almost nobody does it ethically, which has to be part of the requirement for being “great” at anything. “You have to get up every single day and say: I want to get to the closest approximation of the truth — without any fear, without any favoritism,” he said. Unbelievable! The fact that he can say this without dissolving in giggles marks him as pathologically deluded. How many reporters woke up over the past six month thinking that rather than, “I want to do everything I can to stop Donald Trump from winning the election!” Without favoritism! Without favoritism??? WITHOUT FAVORITISM???!!!

The man is either lying his head off or is completely in denial.

“You don’t do that by popping off on Twitter! You don’t do that by having an opinion! You do it by doing the hard work.” Yeah, the “hard work” of using your opinion to distort how you report the facts.

The biggest problem with journalists, I have concluded over years of reading them, listening to them, being interviewed by them and knowing many of them is that they really think they are smart enough to use their positions to influence the public and persuade them to do what is right and responsible. They just aren’t that smart. With some notable exceptions, they are of average intelligence at best, under-educated with closed minds. If such mediocrities don’t strictly employ journalism ethics to keep them within their narrow skills and abilities, and they don’t, then they abuse their position, function, duty and influence causing immeasurable harm to society, the nation and our government—all while proclaiming, like this guy, how special and indispensable they are.

Oh, I believe that the U.S. needs a competent, reliable, trustworthy news media….desperately in fact. VanderHei’s rant nicely demonstrates why we don’t have it, and are unlikely to get it as long as deluded egomaniacs like him are in charge.