Shame on the Los Angeles Times. Shame on the entire dishonest White House press corps.

It’s clear some members - if not most - are engaging in a repulsive version of Kabuki Theatre to curry favor with the president and help hide his true mental state from the American people.

Depending on your favorite news source you may already know what happened Thursday during Joe Biden’s brief press availability. As Biden approached the lectern he accidentally flashed his cheat sheets in the direction of photographers.

Careful there, Joe.

The top card was a photo of LA Times white House reporter Courtney Subramanian with “Question #1” written on it and essentially the same question she dutifully asked when the president followed orders and called on her first.

This is an appalling breech of faith by journalists.

I’m not an expert in much, but I spent 42 years in newspapers and this violates basic journalistic ethics. And yes, there was a time when journalists had a strict set of ethics. Numero uno was that we did not allow the people we covered to have any sort of control over us. They weren’t our friends. We didn’t have friends. We were supposed to be dispassionate observers.

Subjects couldn’t see our questions in advance, and they couldn’t read what we’d written until it was published. (You’d be surprised how many people begged to be able to read newspaper copy before it hit the streets.)

Can you imagine cub reporter Bob Woodward giving his questions to Richard Nixon before a press conference?

Never would have happened.

But the press corps is no longer inquisitive. Or ethical. Or honest.

In a post about the president’s advanced age this week I wrote that Biden was counting on “lickspittles in the press corps to continue protecting him.” But as cynical as I am, I never envisioned the extent of the collusion between members of the press and the White House staff to try to make the president look sentient.

Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Thursday denied getting questions from friendly reporters in advance of a press availability even though - according to The New York Post -  her aides do exactly that before her own press briefings.

“It is entirely normal for a president to be briefed on reporters who will be asking questions at a press conference and issues that we expect they might ask about,” Jean-Pierre told members of the White House press corps at her regular briefing…

“We do not have specific questions in advance, that’s not something that we do,” Jean-Pierre added — despite that fact that her own briefings have been heavily pre-scripted for months, with an aide generally canvassing reporters for their questions ahead of time and the press secretary then declining to call on those who balk.

Remember the bootlickers in the press room jumping all over poor Simon Ateba from Today News Africa a couple of weeks ago because he’d been waiting 7 weeks to get the worst press secretary in the history of the White House to call on him? Apparently he’s a balker.

The LA Times denies that its reporter gave her question to Jean-Pierre’s staff before the press conference. Does this mean that the staff gave HER the question? Or are we supposed to believe this is just some sort of happy accident?

The entire legacy media is disgraced by this incident. 

Once again, as we head into a presidential election, the American people will lose because journalists no longer do their jobs.

We have an aging, decrepit president and the public has few chances to watch him perform unscripted. Turns out, he ALWAYS has a script.

Journalists disgraced themselves repeatedly over the past five years, from the way they covered Trump to their lemming-like coverage of the covid pandemic. From 2020 until recently they did little more than parrot government talking points and ignore clearly unconstitutional actions. Worse, journalists happily acted as megaphones for the hysterical fear-mongering of public health officials.

I used to be proud of being a journalist. These days I’m just glad I got out.