Hillary Clinton has been on the defensive as of late, blaming everyone but herself for her devastating election loss in 2016. It’s so bad that even the Hillary-fawning media has told her to “shut up and go home.”

But it’s The New York Times that is being more self-critical than she and is blaming journalists for tipping the scales in Donald Trump’s favor. Opinion columnist David Leonhardt writes:

There have been some emotional exchanges on social media in recent weeks between journalists and people who work in Democratic Party politics. The journalists have criticized Hillary Clinton for not being more self-critical about her loss. The Democrats have told journalists to let it go — and to be more self-critical about their own role in the stomach-turning 2016 campaign.

I’m not taking sides in those fights, which often turn bitter and angry. But I do agree that journalists have a responsibility to look back on last year and acknowledge where they fell short.

Leonhardt’s latest column takes a lesson from the recent French election in which liberal winner Emmanuel Macron’s e-mails were hacked during the election but didn’t lead to a scandal like it did here in the states with Clinton. That leads the columnist to conclude, “I argue that the over-hyping of the Clinton campaign’s hacked emails — the ones stolen by Russian agents — was the media’s biggest sin.”

“The circumstances were not identical, but the French media faced its own version of this test last weekend and fared better,” he adds. “French journalists did a better job distinguishing a sensationalist story from an important one.”

Leonhardt downplays, to the point of ignoring, the revealing contents of the e-mails showing the DNC’s meddling with the election, from feeding questions to Clinton prior to debates to squeezing out Bernie Sanders from any real chance at becoming the nominee. The worst revelations, he said, “qualified as small beer.” He added:

Despite the mundane quality of the Clinton emails, the media covered them as a profound revelation. The tone often suggested a big investigative scoop. But this was no scoop. It was material stolen by a hostile foreign government, posted for all to see, and it was only occasionally revealing. It deserved some coverage, but far less.

While Leondhardt doesn’t think Clinton lying about using a private server was a “nonstory,” he believes that, too, was overhyped:

The overhyped coverage of the hacked emails was the media’s worst mistake in 2016 — one sure to be repeated if not properly understood. Television was the biggest offender, but print media was hardly blameless. The sensationalism exacerbated a second problem with the coverage: the obsession with Clinton’s private email server.

Leonhardt is not alone in his assessment that the media need to take on more blame for Clinton’s loss (aren’t they supposed to stay neutral?). Others feel the same, including investigative journalist Eric Lipton who said this about handling hacked e-mails:

“This is a really difficult question. We played a role in a Russian plot, because we were the ones that actually spread the information. And so we were abused and used in a way that completely answered the desires of the Russians. And that seems really wrong.”

After Macron won the French election, Clinton took a swipe at the media on Twitter: “Victory for Macron, for France, the EU, & the world. Defeat to those interfering w/democracy. (But the media says I can't talk about that).”

But all of this blame shifting to the alleged Russian “plot,” or James Comey, or “overhyped” scandals — the media definitely needs to be more self-critical, but Leonhardt missed the forest for the trees. Here’s Edward Lulie at The Daily Caller for the exit thought:

Legacy media was not a neutral or opinionated reporter of facts, it was in many cases working hand in glove with the Clinton campaign and the DNC…

Why is the legacy media immune from questions about honesty, fairness and their obligation to provide a free and open press?

Did any of the reporting or editors warn the public that their product was biased or slanted and might have statements that could be argued were not necessarily accurate? No.  Because the legacy media’s narrative is precisely that of the DNC and leftist democrats. Pretty much they swim in the waters of one viewpoint and do not see that they are “wet” just that anyone else raising an opposing view is making up “fake news” because it exists outside of their shared reality…

This is an unending assault on a foundation of our nation, on the freedom of the press, on fair and free elections and upon our freedom of speech.  We really don’t need to look as far away as Russia to see the threat to us: legacy media’s bias is on display 24 hours a day and seven days a week. We should be asking serious questions about that interference with our elections.