Associated Press media reporter David Bauder found a fascinating nugget in an otherwise predictable lecture on media ethics from former Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron. He gave the keynote address of the Peter F. Collier Awards for Ethics in Journalism at New York University. (This is not the Peter Collier who wrote books with David Horowitz.)  Alongside the usual lectures about the awfulness of Trump, there was a single note about how the press failed in reporting on Biden's cognitive decline:  Each of us probably can point to other instances where we went astray. Here’s one to think about: Did we live up to our truth-seeking mission early this decade as we saw Joe Biden struggling cognitively and physically while holding the most powerful position on earth? I don’t believe we did. Did some among us shy from aggressively exploring his intellectual acuity and physical health for fear of aiding Donald Trump’s campaign and alienating loyal readers, viewers and listeners? My guess is yes. If so, would that be an ethical breakdown in our profession? Again, I’d say yes. One thing is for sure: Our credibility was damaged. I didn't see Baron saying this back in the 2023 or 2024. He was doing the usual War on Trump material. In this speech, he immediately followed up: "Now we are living with an administration that actively obstructs our search for truth. President Trump and his allies seek to extinguish all independent arbiters of fact. The press is among them." Leftists are always "independent arbiters" when they go after Trump.  This was the more typical Baron bellowing:  If one challenge to that ethic of vigilance is the president’s malicious war on the media, another comes from those who enjoy press freedoms but abdicate the corresponding duties. I’m talking, for instance, about cable networks that function as mouthpieces and bullhorns for the administration, who routinely funnel on-air personalities into its top positions and who supply them with lucrative landing spots when they exit. These outlets render themselves largely indistinguishable from the government they are supposed to cover.... If the founders of this country had wanted lapdogs in lieu of watchdogs, they would have at least hinted at that in the formative documents that are their legacy. Those documents had deep flaws, but that was not among them. Stenography and propaganda are clearly not the ethic of the First Amendment. Notice how this conflicts with Baron's notes on failing to hold Biden and his team accountable. Under Democrats, the liberal outlets can be accused of being "mouthpieces and bullhorns" and stenographers and propagandists.  Baron and his pals in the media establishment imagine they aren't pitching their "news" at a partisan audience -- while the Post sells "Democracy Dies In Darkness" T-shirts and baby onesies. Baron slammed the Ellisons and their hire Bari Weiss for aiming for an audience in the political center at CBS News. That's political!  The new owner of CBS and the current editor-in-chief of the news division, for instance, set an explicit objective of appealing to the center right and the center left. That is a political goal. It is not a journalistic one. And it is a far cry from how Jack Knight instructed his newsroom: “Get the truth and publish it.” That is a journalistic goal. Media owners who substitute political goal posts for news values find refuge in sophistry. They lay claim to ethics; instead, they subvert them. Again, who is pretending that The Washington Post hasn't had political goals? The staffers were all furious at owner Jeff Bezos when the Post wasn't allowed to explicitly endorse Kamala Harris for president.