This week, leading wordsmiths at two of the nation’s major newspapers openly propounded the need for the media to work together (also known as “conspire”) to defeat Donald Trump. The age of metropolitan dailies pretending to be unbiased sources of news officially is over.  

At the New York Times, Thomas Friedman called on the media to defeat Trump in 2020 by targeting specific demographic slices of the electorate. He thereby moves from columnist to campaign consultant.

In a close election it doesn’t take many uncomfortable moderate Republicans to just stay home to make a big difference. 

He calls on his colleagues to focus on random people whom show up at Trump rallies wearing shorts or signs that Friedman doesn’t like:

Yes, I want every American to know that two Trump supporters were spotted at the president’s last rally, in Ohio, wearing T-shirts that read, “I’d rather be Russian than a Democrat.”

Two supporters out of thousands. Would Friedman suggest collectively publicizing the anti-police, anti-capitalist, anti-white, and other slogans on shirts and placards at rallies for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or any other Democrat? The question is rhetorical, because there is a de facto agreement in the mainstream media to hide radical elements of the left.

Friedman wants to play the role of television producer and event manager for the entire media when it covers Trump allies.

No question that the press should not allow itself to be props at Trump’s rallies, and that can be dealt with by using a single pool camera that feeds all the networks, or reporters just sitting among the rally attendees, not in a special pen.

I guess Friedman is shooting for the post of Minister of Propaganda in the next Democrat administration.

Meanwhile, the deputy managing editor of the Boston Globe – a newspaper purchased by the New York Times for 1.1 billion dollars and later sold for seventy million – has reached out to editorial boards nationwide to coordinate anti-Trump editorials on August 16.

‘‘We are not the enemy of the people,’’ said Marjorie Pritchard, deputy managing editor for the editorial page of The Boston Globe, referring to a characterization of journalists that Trump has used in the past. The president, who contends he has largely been covered unfairly by the press, also employs the term ‘‘fake news’’ often when describing the media.

The Globe has reached out to editorial boards nationwide to write and publish editorials on Aug. 16 denouncing what the newspaper called a ‘‘dirty war against the free press.’’

As of Friday, Pritchard said about 70 outlets had committed to editorials so far, with the list expected to grow. The publications ranged from large metropolitan dailies, such as the Houston Chronicle, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Miami Herald and Denver Post, to small weekly papers with circulations as low as 4,000.

These people are living in the past, when their newspapers spoke with authority and were respected as impartial. If they think that by openly conspiring to damage the POTUS they will help their cause, they are sadly mistaken. They are offering proof that they are partisans, that they conspire, and that they wear blinders of fury when it comes to examining President Trump.

The public trust of media is at historic lows, as Gallup most recently found:

I suppose that these newspaper editors will congratulate themselves on their brave moral stand when they publish their editorials in unison. But they will also furnish a huge talking point for Trump about their open and proud bias against him.