This matches my thinking. Mostly it just reinforces that most reporters are… I don’t want to say lazy, I’m sure they work hard. Incredibly credulous? Passive observers to the point of enabling? Again and again they frame articles from the point of view of the first person to make a claim, regardless of facts, and only report in a he-said, she-said way instead of applying even the most basic analysis.

So because Trump and his coven are constantly saying things, every article seems to begin with an assertion he or one of them made, then discusses the statement in context, then follow it with a counter-reaction somewhere near the middle-bottom. Maybe it says it’s “legally untested” or similar, but at no point does it go one level deeper and report on what we’d expect to see if the intention behind it were true.