Here's President Obama at a press dinner in Washington, politely pointing out that if news reporters aren't going to do their jobs then America is pretty much boned.
"When our elected officials and our political campaigns become entirely untethered from reason and facts and analysis, when it doesn't matter what's true and what's not, that makes it all but impossible for us to make good decisions on behalf of future generations," Obama said at the awards dinner for the Robin Toner prize, which honors the late New York Times political correspondent.
Well, yes. If one candidate points out that taxes are what pay for us to have nice things like roads and grenade launchers, and another candidate responds by saying that we could pay for all of that by growing and selling magic beans, it might be a wee bit helpful if reporters pointed out that magic beans do not actually exist and therefore basing the entire United States economy around them is likely to be fundamentally flawed. You know: journalism. Or you could whip up a television punditry program in which you pitted the two sides against each other, the side that knows as fact that magic beans do not exist and the side that says eff you, they'll exist if we want them to, and just let them bicker with each other for 30 minutes with absolutely no hint to the viewer that half of the panel is robustly and earnestly lying. We could call it Crossfire.
Not enough is made of the extent to which political pundits are merely extensions of two-party partisanship. It's in nobody's interest to point out when a politician is flat-out lying to the public, because if you say that then the politician won't grant you interviews anymore and your network will look less important and influential. It's in nobody's interest to point out when one of the pundits is themselves flat-out lying, because pundits do not want to be part of a business model in which there is accountability for saying false or stupid things. That's a long, dark road to go down, a road where maybe Bill Kristol doesn't get to be on television anymore and George Will has to stick to anecdotes about baseball.
You can't have an adversarial press if the press is forever worried about whether they'll be getting invitations to this winter’s Magic Bean Ball. It's the social event of the season, after all, and anyone who is anyone will be there. If the price of attendance is not pointing out that some of our politicians and supposed issue experts are selling things that do not actually exist, then "future generations" can jolly well fend for themselves.