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We learned all this from emails revealed in a Freedom of Information Act request by the Sierra Club and confirmed by The Daily Beast.

It was an egregious breach of journalistic ethics. Thankfully, Pruitt is now out of office. But still, all those interviews are now tainted.

Yet the stunt was not exactly original. We've seen this movie before, where journalists get too cozy and give away the store to folks they're interviewing. They go from doing the public good to doing public relations.

If the media is really bothered by what the Fox producers did with regard to Pruitt, then they should have been just as bothered at what came out from WikiLeaks, in October 2016, about how Glenn Thrush -- then a reporter for Politico -- likewise broke the rules in cozying up to John Podesta. According to emails between the two men, Thrush shared a story pre-publication with Podesta and then begged the campaign chairman for Hillary Clinton not to tell anyone about it. He even called himself a "hack."

There wasn't much of an outcry over that earlier sin against journalism. Why not? You know why not.

Fox News Channel says that it is "disciplining" the producers who coddled Pruitt. Thrush wasn't disciplined for coddling Podesta; he went on to a prestigious reporting job at The New York Times, which was jeopardized when female reporters claimed he had acted improperly at different points in his career.

No wonder the public has so little faith in us. What have we done to earn it?

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Ruben Navarrette's email address is ruben@rubennavarrette.com. His daily podcast, "Navarrette Nation," is available through every podcast app.

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