ROSS DOUTHAT: The Tempting of the Media.

Then there are Trumpworld’s possible ties to Russia and the possible Russian attempts to exert influence on his behalf. This is an incredibly serious business, but it has not produced incredibly serious journalism. Instead there has been a rush to publicize all manner of dubious claims, from the midsummer reports of a secret server supposedly linking to Trump Tower and a Russian bank to more recent stories exaggerating Russia’s penetration of the U.S. power grid and accusing a variety of normal left-wing and right-wing websites of being Kremlin pawns.

This pattern peaked (so far) with BuzzFeed’s decision to dump a dossier of completely unverified rumors about Trump’s Russian connections on the internet, with a shrugging, “decide for yourself if it’s true” note accompanying the release. That dossier may well include some dark truths, but the way they were delivered to American news readers was effectively self-discrediting, more likely to help Trump brush aside legitimate allegations than to pin him or his circle to the wall.

The problem is that all of this alarmist journalism, no less than the really fake news churned out by pro-Trump trolls and cynics, has commercial imperatives behind it. There is a large and frightened readership looking for confirmation of its darkest fears in every “unprecedented” (but often, not really) move that Trump and his administration make. These readers trust liberal-leaning mainstream outlets to deliver them the truth. But their clicks and shares will reward those outlets when they make rumor seem like certainty, or make the truth more alarming than it is.

To regain its credibility, all the Mainstream Media needs to do is its job. But most of the older members seem to have forgotten how and the younger ones never knew.