Of course, Nicholas Kristof is right when he asserts that the job of journalists is truth-telling, not stenography. He is properly worried that the Press fears being labelled partisan and so simply reports flagrant lies without adequately exposing their known falsity.
While this tendency of the media is troubling, what is more concerning is the conversion of some cable "news" programs into free advertising for a political candidate. Even though these programs concede that they deal in opinion rather than hard news, they surely run afoul of campaign financing regulations (what is left of them after Citizen's United) if they are , in effect, simply a continuing advertisement for a candidate. For example, Trump regularly appears on Hannity programs devoted exclusively to providing a platform for his nonfactual assertions and hate-filled messages. His interrogator acts as a cheerleader, supplying his own distorted data in support. These programs are then shown repeatedly just as though they were political ads, without cost to the Trump campaign.
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