If there was any curiosity – or dare we say, HOPE - that the press would begin working on repairing their crumbling reputations and evaporating credibility, we are here to say they are already showing no such effort. Two aspects of the media problem have collided in one disturbing piece from CNN; knee-jerk defenses of Democrats and the over-hyping of their own self-worth. Add in their inherent desire for control of narratives and censorship, and you get this delivery that is entirely repugnant.

Donie O’Sullivan is labeled as the network senior correspondent covering the intersection of politics and technology; that is to say, he covers online controversies and attends Trump rallies to capture wing-nut comments by festival attendees. Donie wanted to weigh in with his take on the announcement last week that Facebook will do away with fact-checkers, and he manages to trivialize the biggest human tragedy playing out on our TV screens and front pages of news outlets today.

With the rampant tragedy still unfolding with the Southern California wildfires, most rational people have the deepest sympathies and support for the victims, and minimizing their plight is the farthest from their minds. For O’Sullivan and his editors green-lighting this mess, the fire plight is grist for aggrandizement. He begins his disturbing piece with this headline: "Soon to be out of a job, Meta’s fact-checkers battle a blaze of wildfire conspiracy theories."

Seriously, he is comparing the mealy-mouthed, mewling fact-checkers to the first responders battling grueling conditions and diminished resources to fight the wildfires in California?! Yes, yes he is…

As fire crews scrambled in vain to contain the resulting firestorm, the fact-checking partners, still working for Meta, took on their own fight: trying to slow viral misinformation rapidly spreading around the wildfires. Rumor and speculation about the disaster began to swirl online like glowing embers, before eventually becoming a wild blaze of vast conspiracy theories.

Just unreal tastelessness from this CNN hysteric, and he managed to actually find another heartless and self-centered sort who shared his insensitive hot take.

“Cutting fact checkers from social platforms is like disbanding your fire department,” said Alan Duke, a former CNN journalist who co-founded the fact-checking outlet Lead Stories, one of dozens of such organizations around the world funded by Meta.

Why anyone would think it was a good idea to compare the disposable fact-checking component of the news industry to the firefighters literally putting their lives on the line for residents, and that losing the opportunity to engage in their task of policing the language is comparable to residents losing their entire livelihoods - and in some cases, their lives - is beyond repugnant.

This disturbing use of analogous hype is far worse than being tone-deaf, and yet, it is commonplace with these self-inflated journalists. There is a history of describing their work in these overwrought heroic comparisons, firefighters being just one example. They love to elevate what they do, such as acting as if covering Donald Trump makes them some sort of war heroes. Jim Acosta is one of the most pathetic practitioners, writing a book about his plight at the White House and when he likened himself to a beaten slave for covering Trump.

Most decent and rational people would never think of diminishing the tragedies in California to some stringer journalists no longer being allowed to monitor social media posts or correct the jokes from satire sites. But these are the types of journalists who love to lecture the gentry on decency and morally acceptable language, and here they are trying to suggest that the silencing scolds from Facebook being told to take their censorship efforts elsewhere is on par with families and communities who have lost everything.

This is the state of our press today. Donie O’Sullivan and his type have outlasted their usefulness and have completely used up our tolerance. This is as pathetic as things can get…and yet, they always manage to somehow go even lower.