Honor sure isn’t part of their code

How come presidential candidates and paid TV news experts who hold sway over millions of people aren’t held to the same code of honor as cadets at U.S. military academies? At least! That code goes something like this: “A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those who do.” If a cadet gets the questions before a test, he or she faces expulsion.

But if a presidential candidate gets the questions before a debate, she’ll win. Hillary Clinton hasn’t even bothered, so far, to address the issue that debate questions were apparently leaked to her campaign by Donna Brazile, former CNN analyst and interim head of the Democratic National Committee.

As one of the two least-trusted presidential candidates in history, along with Donald Trump, Clinton owes the American people an explanation. Now.

From another perspective, Brazile’s leak to the Clinton camp rightfully also highlights the horrifying breach of journalistic ethics a news organization ensures by hiring a person who is on staff to candidates or parties in the first place.

For starters, serial question-passer Brazile worked for both ABC and CNN while she was vice chair at the DNC, which seemed to present no conflict at all for the networks. Then she even continued as an unpaid contributor to CNN after taking the interim chair job! And we journalists wonder why people don’t trust news organizations anymore?

Brazile, who denies she did anything wrong, appears to be nothing short of a lousy cheat, and should have been let go the second she took the reins of the DNC. By keeping her on, CNN head Jeff Zucker and company put a big nail in the coffin of journalism.

On Tuesday, Zucker finally told staffers Brazile’s actions were “unethical” and “disgusting.” Really? So have CNN’s been for way too long.

I mean, seriously: How does a supposedly legit news organization like CNN justify hiring all those “experts” such as ex-Trumper Corey Lewandowski, while he was receiving “severance” payments of a reported half a million dollars from the Trump campaign? What about the $20,000 Lewandowski received in August from them, which was listed as “strategy consulting?”

What makes it all murkier and filthier is that Brazile was outed as a cheat from hacked emails stolen by the Russians. It’s like a horrible Kafka novel and we’ve all been turned into giant insects without a chance of escape.

Tuesday Brazile tweeted, “Please God, let this end soon.” Amen to that.