The anguish at the New York Times is palatable. The mother ship of fake news is now complaining that conservative activists are scrutinizing journalists for signs of bias that can be found on the internet and social media. The lead paragraph in the Times' front-page story of lament is:

A loose network of conservative operatives allied with the White House is pursuing what they say will be an aggressive operation to discredit news organizations deemed hostile to President Trump by publicizing damaging information about journalists.

The most prominent member of the media exposed thus far is Tom Wright-Piersanti, editor at the political desk of the Times itself. After Breitbart exposed this bigot for mocking Jews and Indians, Wright-Piersanti was demoted by the Times (but not terminated). His excuse for his bigotry was that he was in college.

There are others. Through it all, the Times confesses that, although the information released so far is stripped of context — "context" meaning the excuses liberals give for themselves but not for others — it has been authentic and harmful to its targets.

Arthur Schwartz is a central player in this media exposure operation. When the NYT apologized for its editor's ant-Semitic comments, Schwartz tweeted that if the people at the Times think this settles the matter, they're wrong, adding that we have "lots more where this came from."

Lots more, indeed. According to people familiar with this effort, information on several hundred people in the mainstream media has been collected from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram so far. And stored images of the posts can be publicized even if the user deletes them. The unearthed information has the potential of leading to the offenders being fired.

One who was forced to resign for anti-Semitic tweets was CNN photo editor Mohammed Elshamy. His excuse was that he did it while growing up in Egypt and did not fully grasp the meaning of words in English.

The Times sees this as taking the war on the media to a new level. Nonsense. What is happening is that the bigots in the media are being exposed. If they are purged, then there may be a chance that the public will get some unbiased reporting. The liberals don't like this. It's okay for them to smear any conservative they want with immunity, but it's not cricket for the opposition to hit back. Such have been the rules for the longest time. No more.

The difference between Schwartz's operation and what the media regularly do is that Schwartz's information is factual. The media, on the other hand, often make things up out of thin air. Anyone remember Sarah Palin, Brett Kavanaugh, or a boatful of others? This is why Rush Limbaugh coined the term "the drive-by media." The media will slime a conservative with innuendos and falsehoods and call it news, and then, when facts later come out to refute the original charge, they will be long gone, their damage long done.

This effort to put the spotlight on the media and the personalities therein is long overdue. It is healthy for the country and, in the long run, even for the media themselves. And it is coming just in time, as the Left is gearing up to go after President Trump and all those who support him for the 2020 election.

The Times will go to the pains to say Donald Trump is behind this. Actually, he is, but not in the way the media think. Trump has done it by showing that the media are not invulnerable. Just as importantly, by his example, Trump has shown conservatives how to fight.