Candidates for office who launch slanderous attacks on journalists for their own self-serving ends need to be called out for their calumny.

Some may see this as circling the wagons, a reflexive defense of a brother in arms. But it’s not. I let many instances of this noxious and insidious garbage go nearly every day because it’s so juvenile or over-the-top.

But not this time. A year before the election, this must be exposed, nipped in the bud, seen for what it is.

There is a corollary here with those who are trying to inculcate the public that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, that elections in this state and country are insecure. They have no evidence for their claims of widespread fraud or conspiracies. They just want the opportunity later to say “we told you so” if they lose, just as these media critics want to be able to cry foul if a negative story is written.

They are working the refs, but this is no game.

Once you get a majority of the public – not just one party’s base – to distrust anything they read or hear and any election results they don’t like, it’s over. The system collapses.