Mockery is sometimes more stinging and effective than open hostility in politics. It seems that this might also be the case in political media. After years of brushing off outright criticism of its leftwing bias, CNN seems at least briefly to have been stung into remedial action because it is the object of open mockery.

Anchor Kaitlan Collins appeared on CBS’s The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on Aug 12. Four minutes into his interview, Colbert offered her and her employer a gratuitous compliment, saying, “I know you guys are objective over there, that you just report the news as it is.”

The live Hollywood audience, which, because of location alone, can be assumed as predominantly of the Left, broke into spontaneous, mocking laughter. Good one, Steve, what a card! Colbert’s statement about objectivity was so obviously absurd that even sympathetic observers couldn’t help spluttering.

Collins responded, “Is that supposed to be a laugh line?,” and her somewhat disconcerted host answered, “It wasn’t supposed to be, but I guess it is.”

Many a true word is spoken in jest, but the powers at CNN seem not to have found this unexpected home truth at all funny. That this was so is hinted at by what happened the next day, on Aug 13. There were clear efforts at the outlet to counter the reasonable and unanimous assumption that it leans so far Left that it has fallen over.

The day after the Colbert fiasco, CNN seemed keen to show it still knows what a news story is even when it makes a Democrat look bad. Its website picked up an exclusive Washington Examiner story which revealed that Kamala Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, has a history of sucking up to a Jew-hating Muslim cleric who is a Hitler fan, whom he repeatedly praised as a “master teacher.”  

CNN also ran an on-air discussion of the story, which suggested a revived awareness of its threadbare reputation, even though some panelists did their habitual best to downplay a Democrat’s flaws. One admitted not having seen the video of Walz’s toadying to the radical imam but nevertheless saw fit to suggest it might be “out of context” — the usual exculpatory guff.

On the same day, CNN took another step that looked like an effort to repair damage inflicted by the Hollywood audience’s ridicule. It picked up a theme that has been circulating for a week or more among conservatives and Republicans. The issue is Harris running for the presidency while hiding from the public, just as Joe Biden did in 2020, but without the excuse that seclusion is required by the scourge of a pandemic disease.

CNN host John Berman repeatedly pressed Harris campaign spokeswoman Adrienne Elrod to explain why her boss was not doing any press conferences. “The reason I was asking about today,” he said, “is because it seems like she has time if she wanted to do an interview with a member of the media or do a press conference, correct?” Harris had no events planned that day.

Elrod blathered and side-stepped awkwardly, spoke of Harris’s plans for four days later, and said the important thing was that Harris and Walz were speaking directly to voters across the country. Berman didn’t let her off the hook, and by the end of the interview, the run-and-hide tactic of the Democratic ticket and its evasions about it were plain for all to see.

CNN’s segments on Walz’s radical imam mentor and on Harris, the Houdini-like escape-questions campaigner, suggest the Democratic ticket may not have the free run it hopes for all the way to Election Day.

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At some point, one at least hopes, journalistic self-respect might kick in, and media acolytes of the Democratic message machine will see that they must ask at least a few searching questions if they are to avoid facing the mockery even from their own audiences, who share their prejudices.

It would not, however, be wise to hold your breath waiting for a Damascene media conversion. If there is one thing that stands out more than anything else as the lesson of Donald Trump’s presidency, it is that news media partisans are willing and able to sustain a storyline indefinitely, whatever the circumstances and gale force headwinds of fact. Even when the left-wing narrative is grounded only in fever dreams, it generally proves impossible to uproot.