Using the term "mainstream media" makes me wince, but I agree with you. It's their ham-handed attempt to recover from being exposed as puppets of the Democratic Party; doubling down on the big lie that anything that runs counter to their narrative is "fake news" and that social media is to blame, not lack of journalistic integrity in previously (somewhat) trusted organizations.

Unfortunately, they'll be around for a long time, and definitely long enough to get away with the current popular trick: publishing lies, waiting for other organizations to reprint those lies, then issuing corrections quietly so that rubes talk about how that's proof of integrity.