Hillary Clinton may have demonstrated poor judgement by using a private, unauthorized email server when she worked at the State Department, but there are bigger issues at stake in the 2016 election and it is time to move on, media declared this week.

The editorial boards of the Washington Post and the New York Times, for example, both claimed after a presidential forum moderated by NBC News' Matt Lauer Wednesday evening that enough is enough.

"There are a thousand other substantive issues … that would have revealed more about what the candidates know and how they would govern," the Washington Post's editorial board said this week, griping that Lauer spent so much of his time Wednesday evening asking Clinton about her email woes.

"Judging the amount of time [he] spent pressing Hillary Clinton on her emails," the Post added, "one would think that her homebrew server was one of the most important issues facing the country this election. It is not."

The email scandal, which amounts to little more than Clinton acting "cavalierly" with national secrets, has not only "exceeded the boundaries of the facts," the Post wrote, but it is distracting from GOP nominee Donald Trump's many failings as a presidential candidate.

"Imagine how history would judge today's Americans if, looking back at this election, the record showed that voters empowered a dangerous man because of . . . a minor email scandal," the Post opined. "There is no equivalence between Ms. Clinton's wrongs and Mr. Trump's manifest unfitness for office."

The New York Times' editorial board was similarly dismissive of Clinton's email scandal following the presidential forum with Lauer, as the paper complained that the story has overshadowed more pressing campaign matters.

"Mr. Lauer seemed most energized interrogating Mrs. Clinton about her use of a personal email server while secretary of state," the Times' board wrote. "Focusing on it meant that other critical issues — like America's role in Afghanistan and its ties with China — went unaddressed."

Huffington Post's media reporter Michael Calderon echoed these sentiments, though he didn't go so far as to suggest reporters should move on from covering the email story.

Rather, he wrote this week that Lauer indeed spent far too much time on the email scandal, and not nearly enough time hitting Trump with tough questions and real-time fact-checks.

Lauer " grilled Clinton from the start on her handling of classified information while using a private email account as secretary of state. After several questions on the subject, Lauer turned to a member of the audience who also referred to the email situation in asking Clinton about handling sensitive information," he wrote.

He added, "Clinton's use of a private email account is perhaps the most litigated subject of the presidential campaign. That doesn't make it unworthy of resurfacing. But the amount of time Lauer lingered on the topic drew befuddlement from Clinton's backers and some second-guessing from other media members, who wondered why other weightier topics weren't given the same attention."

Newsrooms have been beating this drum — that the email scandal has run its course and that newsrooms need to focus on more pressing matters — for weeks now; well before the Lauer-hosted forum and well before the editorials this week from the Post and the Times.

The Dallas Morning News, for example, published an editorial prior to the forum arguing that the email scandal amounted to little more than a non-story.

"[Clinton's] use of a private email server while secretary of state is a clear example of poor judgment," they conceded.

However, they added, it pales "in comparison to the litany of evils some opponents accuse her of. Treason? Murder? Her being cleared of crimes by investigation after investigation has no effect on these political hyenas; they refuse to see anything but conspiracies and cover-ups."

"We reject the politics of personal destruction. Clinton has made mistakes and displayed bad judgment, but her errors are plainly in a different universe than her opponent's," they wrote.

Before that, on Monday, MassLive.com published an editorial saying nearly the same thing: Though it doesn't look good for Clinton, the email scandal is not as bad as it sounds.

"What Hillary Clinton did with her use of a private email server was foolish in the extreme. But it wasn't the crime of the century," the editorial read. "If she'd had a reasonable, rational opponent during the party primaries, we might well have supported him or her."

"And if Clinton's opponent in the general election were a normal Republican, someone grounded in reality, we could understand how some who'd generally support the Democrat, but who'd grown weary of the Clinton drama, might be tempted to consider backing the GOP's candidate. But not this year," they added. "With clownish reality TV star Donald Trump as the Republican Party's presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton must get a pass on her email shenanigans."