"Verify first. Then do it again. And again. And again. Ad nauseam. And only then, if you must, trust."

This post by Roger L. Simon is over a week old in PJ Media.

...What possible credential makes one a journalist? A degree from the Columbia School of Journalism? Well, that proves your parents can afford a hundred grand. Either that or you're heavily in debt. Anyone can be a journalist. All you have to do is start typing.

And as for journalists we know, whether they write it or speak it and wherever they do it, they're all basically pundits, whether they admit it or not. Beneath the verbiage and the proofs, the quoted experts and anonymous sources, deny it though they might, everyone's got a narrative.

...Even the Wall Street Journal appears to be part of the "get Trump" competition that makes up whatever one calls journalism today. "Fake news" is actually a misnomer. It's far more deliberate than that. It's straight-out good old-fashioned disinformation.

But let's go back to the issue of "journalism" as a trade. It wasn't always this way. Back before the New York Times, et al., got pretentious with the "All the News That's Fit to Print" nonsense and Woodward and Bernstein got turned into movie stars because they could answer the phone, people knew journalists — more properly reporters — were working stiffs trying to make a living, not culture heroes. And I think we liked them better too then, even though, like all human beings, they were biased.

An example of how far the bias has gone in our time is, as someone noted on Twitter, that not a single media outlet dared to question the BuzzFeed report until the Mueller investigation itself spoke up. All of them were too engaged in the Get-Trump Derby to do, well, a little investigating.

...We know — oh, how we know — not to trust any so-called information coming out these days. Trust but verify is no longer operative. Verify first. Then do it again. And again. And again. Ad nauseam. And only then, if you must, trust.

Read more here.