You can't make this up.

Actually, you can ONLY make it up. Read on.

Paul and I have been writing a good deal about how journalism has hit rock bottom. We reached this conclusion from our own experience and from talking with people we know. Polling confirms it as well; Gallup’s survey from five months ago tells us that newspaper reporters are pretty far down the list of trusted professions, and TV reporters (Jake Tapper, Anderson Cooper, call your office) are even farther down. As to them, 13% of the public has a high or very high opinion of their honesty, while more than four times as many, 55%, has a low or very low opinion. This is well below even — dare I say it? — lawyers.

A lot of this doesn’t need much explanation. Constant lies about critical issues like the risks of COVID and Trump’s status as a “Russian asset” come to mind. Perhaps most prominent recently has been (what is now widely acknowledged to have been) breathtaking lying and covering-up about ex-Commander in Chief Joe Biden’s collapsing mental fitness. It’s become so bad that two notorious NeverTrumpers, Tapper and Ezra Klein, just this week felt like they had to spend a loooong time commiserating with one another about how — golly! — they had allowed the wool to be pulled over their eyes. Their manufactured contrition is something to behold, but you can see it, if you care to, here. Still, you can’t help but be impressed, after a fashion, about how sophisticated they are. Like many of the smarter criminal defense lawyers I know, they tell just enough of the truth to make you think they’re being candid — make you think that, that is, unless you know what to watch out for, and to listen for what you’re not hearing.

But I digress. Up to now, journalism’s dishonesty has consisted mainly of two things, namely, (1) misleading and distorted renditions of the truth, and (2) downplaying, minimizing or hiding parts of the truth they would prefer not be noticed.

I have just today seen what I think is a third category: Outright, unvarnished fakery. The story is reported without visible irony by none other than the Washington Post and titled, “Major newspapers ran a summer reading list. AI made up book titles.”

The Chicago Sun-Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer find themselves at the center of an AI-related gaffe after they published syndicated content packed with unidentifiable quotes from fake experts and imaginary book titles created using generative artificial intelligence.

Three things to note right off. First, Chicago and Philadelphia are two of the biggest cities in the country with lots of influence; second, what in MSM reporting is termed a “gaffe” would, were it published by, say, Truth Social, be termed “flagrant deceit;” and third, if this is going on with respect to something the press doesn’t care that much about, like summer reading lists, you can only imagine how much of it is going on in reporting on things it does care about, like reversing the results of last year’s election.

Many [observers] pointed out quotes attributed to experts and professors who don’t seem to exist, or at least don’t have a significant online presence. Similarly, some pieces in the package featured quotes that social media sleuths said could not be found online — such as one from Brianna Madia, the author of a van-life book called “Nowhere for Very Long,” talking about hammock culture to Outside Magazine in 2023. Interviews she did with the magazine in 2019 and 2017 did not feature any discussion on hammocks, and she does not appear in any of the magazine’s 2023 stories online.

To those of us with a mildly cynical bent to start with, the question arises as to why some crypto-Nazi UN spokesman has to trouble himself to concoct a claim that 14,000 babies will die in two days from Israeli-imposed starvation when you can just press a couple of buttons and have AI do it for you?

The section’s “Summer reading list for 2025” recommended not only fake books such as “Tidewater Dreams” by Isabel Allende and “The Last Algorithm” by Andy Weir, but also imaginary titles from authors Brit Bennett, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Min Jin Lee and Rebecca Makkai.

In the very next line, brain frazzle battles to a draw with belly laughs. Ready?:

The list does feature some real books, including Françoise Sagan’s “Bonjour Tristesse” and André Aciman’s “Call Me by Your Name.”

It’s all true. The reported list “does feature some real books.”

The novel “1984” could not have come up with that one.

The fake list is followed by a suitably, and equally, fake apology.

“It is unacceptable for any content we provide to our readers to be inaccurate. We value our readers’ trust in our reporting and take this very seriously,” Victor Lim, senior director of audience development for Chicago Public Media, said in a statement.

“We’ve historically relied on content partners for this information, but given recent developments, it’s clear we must actively evaluate new processes and partnerships to ensure we continue meeting the full range of our readers’ needs,” he added.

Translation: “It was someone else’s (“content partners”) fault, but, gosh darn it, it looks like we’re going to have to read what we’re publishing before we put it in the paper. Life is so hard.”

Much of the content for the section was written by Marco Buscaglia, a Chicago-based freelance writer who used AI chatbots during the writing process, he told The Post in an interview Tuesday. Buscaglia said the insert, which he began writing in February with a March deadline, wasn’t written with any specific cities in mind, and he didn’t know which newspapers would run it.

Buscaglia said there was “no excuse” for not double-checking his work.

Actually, there was an excuse, if you want to call it that: He didn’t care whether what he sent out had any truth to it, and he knew that the newspapers that bought it didn’t care either.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is what sells itself as journalism. Donald Trump has been criticized for ridiculing it. Some of the criticism is well-founded, although not in the way the critics think: The ridicule isn’t nearly as acidic as it should be.