It's easy to forget that the news media once did actual reporting, and what it meant to a society when the "Fourth Estate" was a functional entity. Every once in a while you see a brief glimpse of it even today.

Reporter: “It’s an action that you say they have taken, but you have shown no evidence to confirm that. [...] This is like - crisis actors? Really? This is like Alex Jones territory you’re getting into now.”

Must-watch exchange between @APDiploWriter Matt Lee and @StateDeptSpox. pic.twitter.com/RPIPb2zwf5

— The Hill (@thehill) February 3, 2022

This after a month or so of the U.S. Administration insisting that a Russian invasion of Ukraine was “imminent.” It was a claim dramatically refuted by none other than the one political leader who on paper would benefit most from such a narrative – the Ukrainian president himself – who told Biden on a phone call to go take his meds and stop fear-mongering about a Russian invasion of Ukraine!

So a new threat needed to be cooked up in the bowels of Foggy Bottom and Langley.

Enter Ned Price from the State Department, who had the thankless task today of selling the hollow narrative that U.S. intelligence had uncovered a fantastical plot by the Russians to bring in crisis actors and fake bodies to sell a false narrative to justify their no longer “imminent” invasion of Ukraine.

State Dept.: Russia is going to launch a false flag attack as a pretext to invade Ukraine.

Reporter: What's your evidence?

State Dept.: I just gave it to you.

Reporter: No, you made an allegation.

State Dept.: Yes, that's the evidence.

Reporter: pic.twitter.com/lC1pRxNiso

— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) February 3, 2022

Price’s pathetic talking point was this: we are declassifying intelligence information that Russia is about to release a fake video of a Ukrainian attack on Donbas as a false flag to open the door to Russian involvement.

Here’s a summary of what followed:

AP’s Matt Lee replied with a question any normal journalist would ask before our current era: “OK, but what evidence do you have that this is indeed the case?”

Ned: “Well that’s it – my ‘declassified’ claim that Russia is about to do it.”

Matt Lee: “Well, that’s not ‘declassified’ information, that’s just you claiming it. Surely you understand the difference. I mean, crisis actors, fake dead bodies – that’s Alex Jones territory.”

Ned: “You are a Russian propagandist.”

Yes this is the Reader’s Digest version, but essentially this is what took place in the extraordinary State Dept. briefing on Thursday. [Price told Lee: “If you doubt the credibility of the U.S. government, of the British government of other governments and wanna, you know, find solace in information that the Russians are putting out, that’s for you to do.”]

The U.S. government’s position position is that if you ask for any evidence of a U.S. government claim … you are a Putin agent!

anyone who questions a statement delivered from a podium is a tool of the russians, the islamic state, or both

sorry, you know the rules

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) February 3, 2022