What these outlets owe their audience is an apology and a promise to reflect inwardly on how their skewing of the coverage created this whole scandal. Yes, Andrew Cuomo is apparently a monster with or without the media’s help, but because they made him out to be such a hero in the first place, they had to ignore clear signs of problems and abuse as they popped up.

Cuomo’s accusers popped up for weeks and received very little coverage. At no point was the media really interested in following the pattern. They absolutely dropped the nursing home deaths scandal as quickly as they could. They wanted nothing to do with any of it, and in the end, their propping up Cuomo actually makes him look like more of a monster because he had that much further to fall in the public’s eyes.

If the media had any sense of shame and any devotion to the actual ethics of journalism, they would work on becoming better than they have been. But you and I both know they won’t do that. Much like they created the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s campaign by giving him the equivalent of millions of dollars worth of free airtime, they created the circumstances in which Cuomo had a ways to fall.