A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher of the New York Times, wrote an op-ed for the Times’ arch rival the Washington Post that was so jaw-droppingly infuriating that it took me three tries to finish it. It had the Axis-speak headline “How the quiet war against press freedom could come to America.” (I have a pay-wall-escape link for you.)

The publisher of one of the most influential fake news purveyors in the media thinks Donald Trump is planting the seeds of censorship by correctly, fairly, and invaluably having the guts to call what the current plague of “advocacy journalism” really is. His tagging of the mainstream media as an “enemy of the people” was similarly apt, and just as important.

At its core, Sultzberger’s indignant screed amounts to “How dare he?” That is a ludicrous stance for the publisher of a newspaper that has abused its mission openly by (among other things) stating on multiple occasions that it would slant its reporting against Donald Trump. “Fake news,” far from being an invitation to censor the press, is a necessary reminder not to trust the press as well as the rest of the mainstream media.

Indeed, the op-ed is, ironically, an excellent example of why this bunch is so untrustworthy. Althouse wrote today,

The #1 thing I didn’t say but wanted to say was that contrary to Sulzberger’s perverted argument, criticizing the press is not censorship. Criticizing the press is more speech. Trump has been criticizing the press. It is Trump’s antagonists who have pursued censorship, for many reasons, including his criticism of the press.

The news media was given great power by the First Amendment as well as the right to abuse it, which it has increasingly in recent years. Media censorship of the news that doesn’t support the narratives and policies favored by alleged journalists who lack the skills and intellect to responsively wield control over public knowledge is the real threat to democracy, not Donald Trump calling it what it is.

Althouse also quotes Glenn Reynolds, who wrote yesterday,

Well, if you guys would stop lying so much — *cough* Russian Collusion *cough* — and start reporting actual news *cough* Hunter’s laptop *cough* — maybe he wouldn’t have gotten traction with [“fake news”]. But in fact you’re the guys trying to shut down reporting and opinion that run against your chosen storylines, which are often false. And now that people have noticed you’re trying to shift the blame. Stop trying to pretend that we have healthy, normal institutions. We don’t. You aren’t.

I would have coughed a lot more, notably after Sulzberger’s repeated defense of “independent journalists.” Does he really think that anyone paying attention regards Times reporters and pundits as “independent”? Or is “independent” his deceitful way of making readers think he’s talking about objectivity?

I suspect the latter. Objectivity only intermittently creeps into the reporting of the Times, the Post, and…well, you can recite the list. Because you often can’t tell when that blessed event has occurred, the default attitude of any alert citizen has to be skepticism. That, Mr. Sulzberger, is why it is so important to call attention to fake news as a phenomenon and the frequency of its appearance in your media product and others. Its proliferation precludes trust.

And the news media has no one to blame for that but themselves.