Any editor, news producer, journalism professor or J-school dean should be appalled at the now-infamous performance of CNN reporter Susan Roesgen “interviewing” a participant at the Chicago Tea Party event on Wednesday. Sadly, that’s not the case.

The level of blatant bias and contempt for the people she was covering would have gotten any reporter fired a generation ago, but not today. I’ve seen not a word of condemnation from CNN in reaction to her outrageous performance earlier this week, but that’s not surprising. They’ll probably reward her with a prime time show for abandoning her journalist’s role for the role of public-relations shill for the Obama administration.

In the YouTube clip of her report she asks a man holding his two-year-old son why he’s there at the Tea Party event.

He begins to talk about liberty when she cuts him off and asks, “What does this have to do with taxes?” He tries to explain to her that keeping the fruits of one’s labor is the essence of liberty when she interrupts again: “Don’t you realize you’re eligible for a $400 credit?” And later she shouts at him: “Did you know that the State of Lincoln gets $50 billion out of the stimulus? That’s $50 billion for this state, sir.”

By this time other Tea Party participants are yelling at her to let the man finish what he wanted to say. As the participants tell her to let the man have his say, she announces to the in-studio CNN anchor: “I think you get the tenor of this. It’s anti-government, anti-CNN, since this is highly promoted by the right-wing conservative network Fox. And since I can’t really hear much more and since this is not family viewing, toss it back to you.”

This is straight out of the street activist’s handbook. Make yourself as obnoxious as possible to provoke a reaction, and then play the victim when your obnoxious behavior is challenged. This is what passes for journalism these days.

I remember a time when a lack of journalistic professionalism was a serious thing. Many years ago a good friend of mine was sent, along with a reporter from our sister paper, to cover a national politician’s appearance at a local university. The two accounts of the speech were so different that our managing editor, executive editor and publisher investigated. It turned out that my friend was the one who let his personal biases get in the way of his news writing. For his transgression he was put on probation and his pay was docked.

I don’t have his story in front of me, but I would bet there is nothing in it that would raise an editor’s eyebrows in this era of no-standards journalism.

In another instance, this one while I was press secretary to a governor at the time of an impending execution, a reporter came to me and said she wanted to make a statement against the death penalty by holding the hand of the convicted murderer as the current was sent through his body. She then gave interviews to that effect to the national media that had gathered for the event.

She was immediately fired, but today her action would probably be seen as a noble statement of principle, leading to an appearance on “Oprah!”

My first city editor demanded that his reporters lapse into referee mode when interviewing sources. He was fond of saying that a reporter should act no different whether interviewing a member of the Black Panthers or the Ku Klux Klan, a neo-Nazi or a Symbionese Liberation Army member. No arched eyebrow, smirk, giggle or guffaw should alert the interviewee as to the feelings of the reporter, he instructed.

But most of all, that impartiality should characterize any story written by one of his reporters, which explains why my friend was put on probation for what today would probably be seen as colorful reporting.

It was a huge deal back then to break these rules. But not any more.

Jon Ham is vice president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of its newspaper, Carolina Journal.