Lawrence O’Donnell’s commentary last night is a reminder that our “mainstream” political journalists have learned exactly nothing from their ongoing failures over the years. It was “2016 all over again,” he said of the TV “news” channels’ live broadcast of the lie-filled “press conference” Trump hosted at his Florida resort. “To make a bad news coverage situation worse,” O’Donnell said, “none of the networks – none of them – carried Kamala Harris’ speech live after the Trump appearance. None of them.”

None of them did any fact checking during the Trump fiasco, either. There was some feeble after-the-fact checking. but as O’Donnell pointed out, how hard would it have been to use part of the screen during the lie fest to point out at least some of the lies? It would have been simple.

What accounts for this ongoing failure? Money. Trump gooses ratings and is pure clickbait. Our news organizations have stopped even pretending otherwise. Which means they’ve stopped pretending – not that they ever really did – to do journalism.

I feel an abiding contempt for Big Journalism these days, especially the TV news channels. The Murdoch family’s vile Fox “News” at least makes no pretense about its scumbaggery. The others do make a pretense of doing actual journalism, and it’s all just theater. Except this is theater that could help lead to dictatorship.