This article exemplifies the dangers of the style of journalism it is trying to promote. It proposes - without any proof – that Mark Felt was an unsuspecting tool manipulated by the “Deep State” into leaking information as part of a plot to destroy the Nixon presidency. Hunter then goes on to list a conspiracy theorist’s smorgasbord of issues on which he claims the media has, wittingly or not, acted as promoters of malign, secret, state agendas.

Hunter says there has been a decline in the credibility of what he calls “legacy journalism”. Sadly, I think he’s right. But the decline in journalistic competence and ethics that has been both a cause and a consequence of that decline will not be remedied by so-called “independent media”, which don’t even pretend to adhere to traditional journalistic values of evidence, argument and balance.