But this gets the dynamic wrong. The headlines would be 12 feet tall if any politician’s son behaved as Hunter did in a universe that also did not contain

Donald Trump

and his psychologically distorting effect on every media decision about what to cover and how to cover it. (See the psychiatry of “splitting.”)

Is Mr. Trump so corrosive that he corrupted our media or just rubbed off a thin sheen of professionalism? Herewith a series of headlines, with emphasis added, from the Washington Post beginning on the evening of Oct. 24, 2020: “Biden relies on pattern of activity to blame Russia for release of data from what is said to be his son’s laptop.”

The next day: “Biden blames Russia for data release with no hard proof.” Finally, the headline the Post settled on and still features on its website: “Biden relies on circumstantial evidence to blame Russia for release of data from what is said to be his son’s laptop.”

That’s a lot of circumlocution of facts that, by then, the press would have known were essentially true. Mr. Biden certainly knew it. He knows his son. In the latest of the never-ending laptop revelations this week, he’s seen responding to his son’s requests for thousands of dollars, which his son then apparently spent on Russian prostitutes. With his iPhone, Hunter makes and saves a video of himself haranguing one of these women to confirm for the camera that he didn’t physically assault her.

Joe Biden, when the laptop story surfaced in late 2020, must have thought, “Oh geez, there he goes again.” But then 50 former top intelligence officials signed a statement suggesting the laptop story was Russian disinformation. Mr. Biden cited the claim in a televised debate, giving rise to the Post headlines that so struggled to avoid suggesting Mr. Biden, who would have known for certain whether the laptop was real or not (and certainly would have said so if it wasn’t), deliberately deceived voters.

Flash forward to today.

Vladimir Putin,

that noted collector and cherisher of grievances, has never aired this particular grievance though many former U.S. officials with whom he had personal dealings aided in framing his government to shield Mr. Biden from the Hunter laptop revelations.

A Journal front-page story recently wondered, along with many U.S. allies, why the U.S. alone refrained from imposing sanctions on

Alina Kabaeva,

the former Olympic gymnast and Putin paramour, about whom Mr. Putin is known to be especially sensitive.

Maybe this is why. Because Mr. Biden owes Mr. Putin one and continues to owe him for Mr. Putin’s professional courtesy in not making global headlines by pointing out that the U.S. intelligence community knowingly published false allegations about Russia to protect Mr. Biden from personal embarrassment and help him get elected.

When Donald Trump lies, he does not get help from the establishment. Likewise, I’m pretty sure journalists, though they might regret a particular Supreme Court decision, once understood and properly reported the court’s role in American life. It’s not a policy-making body. Arbitrary decisions, the proper stuff of politicians and legislatures, are anathema to the court. A state legislature rightly is entitled and even obliged to decide, by a vote of 51% to 49%, that life begins at 15 weeks, 24 weeks, 27 weeks or even zero weeks—and try to make it the law of its jurisdiction. A court has no authority to do this. The same Supreme Court that foolishly embroiled itself in arbitrary “viability” debates for 50 years nevertheless was restrained enough not to invent a fetal right to life (also potentially implied in Roe v. Wade), though it’s easier to imagine such a right being found in the Constitution than a right to abortion.

But a lot more than objectivity has gone missing in our reporting; intelligence has gone missing. The people in charge of the nation’s newsrooms, I continue to believe, are not as deeply, profoundly stupid as so much of what they put on their homepages, increasingly in positions calculated to attract clicks. Then I realize: The internet waits for no man. Neither does happy hour. Thinking and writing carefully require time and effort. The press hasn’t so much abandoned standards of objectivity; it has abandoned standards of effort under a digital imperative that not only favors low-intelligence “hot takes,” but makes them the calling card of what used to be a “news” industry.