Before the social-media age, the groupthink of the old-media oligopoly was transmitted relatively slowly. The network newscasts and the New York Times were released once a day, after all. So the orthodox take on things might take a few days to reach everybody, and in that time, some other reporting, some other opinions, some other takes might break through.

Now all reporting is instantaneous — and the only “correct” way to look at a news story follows with similar instantaneity.

One of the correct ways to look at things, it appears, is to quash them if and when they are politically and ideologically inconvenient.

It was members of the mainstream media who demanded their fellow journalists refuse to follow up on The Post’s initial story about the revelations on the Hunter Biden laptop — and used Twitter to attack some journalists who dared to retweet The Post story even if they were criticizing it.