Case in point, perhaps the highest profile financial reporter in the United States, the New York Times‘ Andrew Ross Sorkin, who has gotten the vapors over Elizabeth Warren’s opposition to the revolving door between Washington and Wall Street:

Wall Street stenographer Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times complains this morning that Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is making it harder for Wall Street veterans to take on government jobs overseeing the financial industry, calling the former Harvard law professor and longtime industry critic “misinformed” in her opposition to investment banker Antonio Weiss’ nomination to a key Treasury Department post.

Weiss, President Barack Obama’s nominee to be under secretary of Treasury for domestic finance, is currently head of global investment banking at Lazard, which advised Burger King on its merger with Canadian coffee and doughnut chain Tim Hortons — a so-called inversion that will help Burger King avoid taxes. Warren cited Lazard’s work on inversions in explaining her opposition to Weiss’ nomination, but Sorkin contends that her concerns are “misplaced.” Sure, tax avoidance may have been “a consideration” in the BK-Tim Hortons deal, Sorkin concedes, but they weren’t the “primary factor.” At any rate, Weiss was “simply as one of several advisers” of the merger — hardly its mastermind.

Sorkin — who has criticized some inversions in the past — apparently finds no fault with the Obama administration seeking to enlist Weiss even as it pledges to crack down on corporate tax avoidance schemes.

While the inversion issue formed the crux of Sorkin’s substantive defense of Weiss, Warren has also pointed to the nominee’s financial industry background as a broad concern in itself.

Sorkin has been thoroughly captured by the financial industry, and he cannot be trusted to report on wrongdoing in the financial industry.

It could be argued that his role never was to reporting on wrongdoing, but instead his job is to document the official actions of the banking sector.

He reports on things like mergers, interviews CEOs, etc.

Of course, if that IS is real role, he is not a journalist. He is a stenographer.