Top White House adviser Kellyanne Conway published a note on the popular social media platform Tuesday morning that read, “In 1300-word story, NYT Fails To Mention Federal Criminal Defendant Bob Menendez Is A Democrat.”

Her tweet linked to a Daily Caller report titled, “NYT Writes 1300 Words About Dem Senator’s Corruption Trial Without Mentioning He’s A Democrat

The Daily Caller article and Conway are 100 percent accurate.

The initial run of the Times’ report on the New Jersey senator appeared online Monday evening without a single mention of his party affiliation. Social media users noted the glaring omission, and a few even accused the Times of deliberately shielding the Democratic Party from the Menendez scandal.

The author of the Times report, Nick Corasaniti, explained Monday on Twitter that the omission was just an “oversight.” Times editors updated the online story later that evening to include the senator’s party affiliation. The report was also updated in time so that the print version Tuesday morning mentioned that Menendez is a member of the Democratic Party. Neither the print nor the online version of the story contained an editor’s note mentioning the update.

These are the facts of the story, and they’re carefully detailed in the Daily Caller report shared by Conway. This isn’t a difficult story to track. You’d think otherwise, however, based on how certain members of the press reacted Tuesday to Conway’s tweet.

Some reporters rushed to “correct” the White House adviser, noting smugly that the Times report to which she referred actually mentioned that Menendez is a Democrat.

“Love to crtl+f,” CNN’s David Wright said in a since-deleted response to Conway, referring to the keyboard shortcut used to search the text of a webpage. His comment included a screengrab of the Times report with the word “Democrat” searched and highlighted.

“Deleting this tweet because the New York Times did, in fact, correct this story to mention Menendez’s Dem affiliation,” he clarified later after he decided to read up on what he was talking about in the first place.

Politico’s Jake Sherman said elsewhere, “4th paragraph: “Mr. Menendez, a Democrat.”

CNN producer Dan Merica also tweeted in response to Conway, “Line from the story: “Since his indictment more than two years ago, Mr. Menendez, a Democrat,”

He added later (somewhat sheepishly), “Missed yesterday that it was added after it was initially posted.”

The Nation’s Joan Walsh noted in a tweet that revealed more about her than she probably realizes: “‘Since his indictment more than two years ago, Mr. Menendez, a Democrat…’ Fifth sentence, dudes. Try harder.”

MSNBC producer Mary Emily O’Hara suggested Conway didn’t even read the Times report, adding, “If she had read it, she would have seen where it says ‘Mr. Menendez, a Democrat’ in the fourth paragraph.”

Speaking of “if she had read it.”

It would be nice to laugh this episode off as just some silly laziness on the part of these reporters and news producers, but these amateurish attempts at Sick Owns have become routine in media and few things are as unhelpful to this industry as the journalist who fails to perform even the most basic fact-check.

There has been a lot of that going around lately. It seems like it is getting worse.

Indeed, it has become something of a reoccurring issue in the Trump era: A journalist will wind up for what he thinks will be a rhetorical knockout punch against some member of the White House only to end up flat on his ass because he has no idea what he’s talking about.

It’s embarrassing not only for that journalist, but also for everyone in this industry, which is already extremely disliked and deeply distrusted. And all because the desire to stick a thumb in the eye of a member of the Trump administration is apparently stronger than collecting the basic facts of a story.

Of all classes of workers in the United States, you’d think journalists would be the least likely to step on rakes of their own design so hard and so often. But that’s the world we live in now.