By RAYNARD JACKSON

The mainstream media has become obsessed with the made up story of “collusion” between Trump and Russia, though there has been absolutely no evidence presented to substantiate such intense coverage.

In a lot of ways, an objective observer could make the case that mainstream media (MSM) is actually colluding with the Russian government.

But before I lay out my case, let’s set the stage.

So-called journalists that work in MSM argue that they are the arbiters of the truth and the guardians of our democracy. Their mission from God, in their narcissistic view, is to protect American’s free speech and keep the government in check.

Let me make this perfectly clear: MSM is not an integral part of our democracy; MSM journalists are not the arbiters of truth. The American people are the only integral part of our democracy and the final arbiters of the truth. We don’t need a biased middleman.

I graduated from Oral Roberts University with a degree in tax accounting. When I worked in corporate America, I was bound by the standards established by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA); those standards were my Bible for all things accounting.

Likewise, journalists are “supposed” to be governed by the principle established by the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). But of course, journalists in MSM believe they are not bound by the standards delineated therein.

I wrote about this last October, when I critiqued MSMs coverage of the presidential campaign last year. It was discovered that journalists from CNN, New York Times, POLITICO etc., were shown to be aiding and abetting the Clinton campaign and were never pulled off the campaign beat. This was proven through emails sent from the reporters to the Clinton campaign and revealed by WikiLeaks; not with “anonymous” sources.

Recently, I have written several columns explaining how Russia has unleashed a psychological operations (PSY-OPS) campaign on the American people and the mainstream media has been in direct collusion with them.

MSM has been using Russian officials as some of their anonymous sources. Yeah, you heard right, Russian officials. This is how ridiculous Russia’s pys-ops campaign has gotten. The Russians are good.

The story goes like this: MSNBC reports that The New York Times is reporting that an anonymous source tells their reporter, that Jared Kushner is a person of interest in the FBI probe into possible collusion of the Trump campaign with Russia.

Do you have a headache yet? I do. Furthermore, there is absolutely no such legal term in law enforcement as a person of interest! Either you are under investigation or you are not.

More importantly, MSM and their sanctimonious reporters are in total violation of their own code of journalistic ethics, not that MSM ever had any.

According to the SPJ, “The Society declares these four principles as the foundation of ethical journalism and encourages their use in its practice by all people in all media.”

Their four principles are: Seek Truth and Report It, Minimize Harm, Act Independently, and Be Accountable and Transparent. How many journalists can say with a straight face that the mainstream media has lived up to these standards?

Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy issued an interesting study in May. The center analyzed coverage of Trump’s first 100 days in the MSM.

A few of their findings were: CNN’s coverage was 93 percent negative, NBC was 93 percent negative, and CBS was 91 percent negative. The New York Times was 87 percent negative, The Washington Post was 83 percent negative, and The Wall Street Journal was 70 percent negative.

Juxtapose that with other facts from the study. Obama got 41 percent negative stories during his first 100 days; G.W. Bush received 57 percent negative coverage, and Clinton received 60 percent negative.

The study didn’t survey any Black media outlets, but I know from personal experience that many of them are far worse than the mainstream media.