When the New York Times launched an ad campaign after Trump's inauguration proclaiming truth is “ more important now than ever,” we rolled our eyes. The truth is always important. No White House resident changes that.

But with a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court on the line and allegations of sexual assault rattling the nation’s capital, the truth really is more important now than on many other occasions.

A substantial number of major news outlets are not rising to the occasion. Under pressure from not least the opposed forces of their ideological agenda on the one hand and the importance of the nomination on the other, they are losing their cool, abandoning standards, and showing bias more than usual.

Instead of chasing down conclusive leads and hounding the facts behind allegations that Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford in the early 1980s, reporters are gorging rumors, gossip, and lurid innuendo.

Perhaps it’s because editors fear Kavanaugh will overturn the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion nationwide. Perhaps reporters fear Kavanaugh will push any number of conservative issues while on the court. Whatever the reason, much of the coverage has been atrocious, unprofessional, and below what should be the standards of self-respecting newsrooms.

"Accuser's schoolmate says she recalls hearing of alleged Kavanaugh incident," NBC News trumpeted on Wednesday and Thursday. The casual reader would believe that someone had corroborated the accusation against Kavanaugh. Instead, the piece was based on a tweet, which was later retracted, by a woman who admits, "I do not have first hand knowledge of the incident."

NPR followed up on the schoolmate's claim, reporting that she says she has “no idea” if the assault happened or not. That misleading and suggestive NBC News headline is still drawing in duped readers, popping up on social media and Google News homepages.

On Sept. 20, the Guardian published a salacious article claiming that a “top professor at Yale Law School” told students last year that it was “not an accident” that Kavanaugh’s female law clerks all “looked like models.” This professor also reportedly said she “would provide advice to students about their physical appearance if they wanted to work for him.”

It’s not until the 10th paragraph of the story that Guardian readers are told, “There is no allegation that the female students who worked for Kavanaugh were chosen because of their physical appearance or that they were not qualified.”

CNN, MSNBC, and Politico circulated a dishonestly edited video this week of Kavanaugh saying in 2015, “What happens at Georgetown prep, stays at Georgetown prep.” The remark came in the larger context of a joke, but MSNBC and CNN viewers weren't shown that. Neither were Politico's readers. Audiences are left instead with the impression that Kavanaugh was somehow admitting bad behavior.

Then, there is the Kavanaugh-related misinformation that various reporters have shared on social media, scoring huge viral hits while also giving birth to abjectly false narratives.

The one thing these reports and misleading tweets all have in common is that they cast Kavanaugh in a bad light. This is the greatest indicator yet that many in news media are less interested in facts and more interested in achieving a political end.

Curious, considering the truth is supposed to be more important now than ever.