CNN caught Fox News in an error.  To illustrate events in Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, Fox had shown a photo of a man with a semi-automatic rifle standing in front of a fire.  The photo was misleading.  The fellow with the weapon had been on the scene at one time.  The fire had been active at another time.  The man with the rifle had not stood in front of the fire.

Fox apologized and took down the photo.  CNN got a chance to gloat.  The Seattle Times ran a story near the top of their website headlined “Fox News runs digitally altered images in coverage of Seattle’s protests, Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone”.

CNN takes seriously its responsibility to report on Fox News.  If only they and their companions in the media – the New York Times, Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC among others – put the same effort into scandals taking place in plain view.

Consider that we have learned that James Clapper, Loretta Lynch, Susan Rice, Sally Yates, Andrew McCabe and a list of other Obama administration officials testified under oath in secret Congressional hearings that they had not seen any evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the course of the 2016 presidential election.  Yet, some of those same individuals spent years on air accusing Mr. Trump of heinous crimes.

Will these individuals be called to account for the difference between what they said under oath in private and what they said in public?   Surely the misdirection that their activities caused is no less important than Fox’s sin.  Fox’s treatment suggested that two events happened at the same time when they each happened at different times.  The media treatment of the “Russia-Trump Collusion” story told the public that events occurred when their sources knew that the events had not occurred at all.  Fox corrected their blunder and apologized.  Their media rivals have not done the same.

Imagine what would happen if the shoe were on the other foot.  President Trump and his senior advisors and cabinet officials have made countless public statements that the novel coronavirus originated in China.  Suppose that the national security advisor, secretary of state, attorney general, the director of national intelligence, the director of the FBI (assuming he could be found), and others had all testified under oath to Congressional committees that they had no information to support the China connection.

If their statements became public, think of the pounding they would take from the news media.  There would be questions about nothing else at news conferences and press briefings.  ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, and the Washington Post would cover the story relentlessly.  And they would be right to do so.

The case of John Brennan, President Obama’s director of central intelligence, is especially telling.  On air at CNN, he accused Mr. Trump of treason.  When the Mueller report was released and Brennan’s claims were shown to be unsupported by any facts, he was asked, one time, how he got it so wrong.  His answer was that he was relying on bad information.

This from a man who ran the CIA for eight years.  He is supposed to be able to evaluate information, to separate the believable from the dross.

Was he asked a follow-up question?  Who were your sources?  Why did you believe them?

Now we know that there never was any evidence to support the accusations that Mr. Brennan made.  He must have figured that he could keep up the act as long as the sworn testimony of people like James Clapper, Andrew McCabe, and Sally Yates remained classified.  Until now, Mr. Trump’s directors of national intelligence had been content to cooperate.  Richard Grenell, then the acting director, finally declassified this scandalous material.

Where are the tough questions from CNN?  Why did you charge Mr. Trump on-air with treason when your colleagues testified in private that there was no information tying Mr. Trump to Russia?  Why did you mislead CNN’s viewers for so long?

Adam Schiff told us on many occasions that he had incontrovertible evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.  It turns out he had none.  Has anyone asked him what evidence he was relying on?  He now claims that the materials being declassified by the director of national intelligence are being released selectively.  Will the chair of the House Intelligence Committee demand the declassification of the materials he was relying on?  If not, will he be called to account for misleading the public?

As Holman Jenkins points out in the Wall Street Journal, the news media were used by anti-Trump politicians to peddle a narrative that has proved to be false.  But, he notes, the reporters and editors who are among the victims of the hoax, people whose professional reputations should be erased, don’t seem to be upset.

Remember Arthur Conan Doyle’s dog that didn’t bark in the night?  In “Silver Blaze” a valuable horse is stolen from its stable before a big race.  Sherlock Holmes solves the mystery by observing that the dog trained to guard the stable didn’t bark when the horse was taken.  The dog knew the thief and didn’t see him as an intruder.  He thought they were on the same side.

The dog had the excuse that its instinctive loyalty was misplaced.  It was not a willing accomplice to the crime.  The reporters and editors who want to bury the biggest political scandal of our time have the same canine loyalty but not the same excuse.  I count them as willing participants.

For much of our history, news outlets were aligned with political parties.  News media have been moving in that direction for some time and have now come home to their roots.  The only difference is that the reporters and editors of our day pretend to be objective.  The audience is catching on.