When we look back at this year’s election, the biggest question might well be: Was it deliberate dishonesty, or just incompetence and unconscious bias that explains the media’s treatment of Bernie Sanders’s candidacy?

Let’s review what happened just this last week. First Politico succeeded in drumming up outrage over an anodyne Sanders campaign script that instructed volunteers to tell people they “like Elizabeth Warren” and consider her their “second choice,” but that they had concerns about her more affluent, well-educated voter base, a base that was originally described in another Politico report. This was roundly condemned as a vicious attack by the Sanders camp.

Next, in one of the most finely orchestrated bits of political theater in recent memory, CNN first reported Warren’s allegation that Sanders had told her in 2018 a woman couldn’t win the presidency against Trump, a contested claim her own campaign doesn’t seem to be sure about. Then, during the following night’s debate, a CNN moderator flatly treated Warren’s version of events as fact, all but called Sanders a liar on national TV when he denied it, and teed Warren up for a pre-prepared and factually dubious speech about the candidates’ electoral histories. At a time of extraordinary political division, the incident was notable for uniting everyone from the National Review to NPR to Morning Joe to Hill.TV’s Rising in condemnation of the lack of professionalism involved.