JON GABRIEL: Journalists: Heroes in Their Own Minds.

Sometimes, a selfie is worth a thousand words. CNN White House reporter Jim Acosta, the definition of journalistic self-regard, posted a photo to Twitter midway through the Trump presidency. Taken just before his 2018 appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Acosta stares longingly into his Broadway-style lighted mirror, grasping a director’s chair emblazoned with the show’s logo. His reflection gazes into the camera’s eye revealing his bottomless well of self-satisfaction, insolence, and unearned pride. An open box of Zantac sits on the vanity.

The image was widely mocked across social media, much to the shock of the D.C. press corps. That picture revealed far more than the flaws of one spotlight-hogging reporter. It laid the soul of modern political journalism bare: the media’s supercilious id and ego, perfectly framed in an ignorant instant. Acosta quickly turned into a lightning rod, getting banished from the White House after a set of tedious stunts and histrionic hatred for the president of the United States. Yet he is far from the only Narcissus on the Potomac. The legacy media’s love for itself is topped only by its contempt for its audience.

Read the whole thing, which is an except from Against the Corporate Media, due out next month.