Debate depressive disorder

And four years ago, we also endured the spectacle of Clinton adviser–turned–ABC newsman George Stephanopoulos pushing the Democrats’ “war on women” propaganda by pressing Republicans on a nonsense contraceptive ban.

Yet the debate commission and the Republican National Committee keep drawing from the same tainted well of cloistered media personalities. Establishment journos Anderson Cooper of CNN and Martha Raddatz of ABC News were repeat moderators this year — with disastrous results. Raddatz, another left-wing PBS alumna and Beltway fixture, created her own Bitter Candy moment at the second presidential debate last week when she lost her marbles over Syria and scrapped with Donald Trump. He was right to call the town-hall charade a “one on three” battle.

Actually, “one on three” is not quite accurate. As the Center for Public Integrity revealed this week, a whopping 96 percent of the nearly $400,000 in presidential campaign donations from “people identified in federal campaign finance filings as journalists, reporters, news editors, or television news anchors — as well as other donors known to be working in journalism” has gone to Hillary Clinton.

Wham! There’s your fact-check of the year, my fellow journalists. I’m looking at you in particular, Washington Post reporter Chris Cillizza. Annoyed by mounting social-media criticism of liberal reporters tilting their coverage, he tweeted this week: “Let me say for the billionth time: Reporters don’t root for a side. Period.”