When the Justice Department announced its 11-count indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center, it was as if a bombshell had gone off. In a sense, for Republicans and conservatives who have long been smeared by the supposedly nonpartisan outfit as “hate groups” and “racists,” it came as little surprise. That an organization committed to lying about its ideological and political opponents was caught lying to its supporters and donors seems almost inevitable.

That said, the revelation seemingly came as a surprise to much of the mainstream media, which did yeoman’s work covering for the hate-promoting organization.

USA Today reported, “The Southern Poverty Law Center was indicted for paying sources to infiltrate hate groups, a tactic federal agencies have used for decades.”

The New York Times shaded its accounting of the story, reporting, “The Southern Poverty Law Center was formed in 1971 in Alabama and is best known for investigating groups like the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacy organizations.” The Times added, “In recent years, Republicans have accused the group of unfairly targeting conservative and Christian organizations, labeling them as extremists.”

It’s not just that Republicans accused the SPLC of targeting conservatives and Christians; it’s the fact of historical record that the SPLC did indeed target conservatives and Christian organizations, such as the Family Research Council, as “hate groups” simply for holding to Biblically consistent views, particularly on abortion, sexuality, and gender identity.

CBS News covered it this way: “Justice Department charges Southern Poverty Law Center with fraud over investigations into extremist groups, Blanche says. The SPLC is a nonprofit that tracks white supremacist and other hate groups across the U.S. and has been a frequent target of President Trump’s allies. It is best known for its work investigating the Ku Klux Klan.”

The Washington Post misleadingly framed the news with the following headline: “DOJ charges Southern Poverty Law Center over paid informants.”

NBC News’s headline wasn’t much better: “Southern Poverty Law Center indicted on charges that it fraudulently paid informants in extremist groups.”

The Justice Department actually charged the SPLC with wire fraud, conspiracy to commit concealed money laundering, and false bank statements. As Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche explained, “As the indictment describes, the SPLC was not dismantling these groups. It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.” Blanche also explained that the SPLC was involved in a “massive fraud operation to deceive their donors, enrich themselves, and hide their deceptive operations from the public.”

Of course, under our system of jurisprudence, the accused is legally innocent until proven guilty. But that does not mean that it’s the mainstream media’s job to rush to the defense of the SPLC and effectively run an obfuscation campaign in the leftist organization’s favor.

Headlines and reporting like this are exactly why so few Americans trust the mainstream news media these days. It’s clear that these Leftmedia outlets have an ideological agenda they promote and protect, rather than any commitment to reporting the truth, regardless of whether doing so serves their social and political concerns.

The SPLC has, like so many once-respected institutions, fallen to ideological capture. It was once viewed as an important organization keyed in on fighting the good fight against racism and hate by exposing extremist groups that fomented these toxic ideas.

However, as the problem of racism significantly dissipated across the country, the SPLC, to justify its own existence and apparently to make money, began to secretly fund the very racism and hate it claimed to be seeking to stamp out.

The desire for significance and money turned the once widely respected organization into little more than a group shilling for the radical Left. And apparently, because there wasn’t enough racism out there to point to convince donors into shelling out cash, the SPLC literally funded racist hate groups as a means of selling its cause to donors.

And now Leftmedia outlets are running cover for the SPLC because they all share the same leftist social and political ideology. Moreover, they still trust the SPLC as authoritative, and nothing would undermine their credibility more than admitting that their source is a fraud.