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This just in: In a disheartening development, the newspaper many consider the world’s greatest — The New York Times — has been caught in the act of braking news instead of breaking it. And breaking some of journalism’s basic rules in the process.

All the above happened last Sunday, when the Times’ was giving its readers the latest look-back at the controversial 2018 Senate confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Tthe Times buried not just not its lead, but buried what seems to have been a real front-page-worthy news story: the discovery of an FBI failure to investigate new information about Kavanaugh’s past.

The article, by Times reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, appeared inside the “Sunday Review” section and was based on their new book, “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation.” But the Times went to great lengths to convince readers this piece wasn’t a newsy investigation at all. A note with the piece called it an “essay” adapted from their book. A label atop their bylines called it a “News Analysis.” The headline was featuresque: “Brett Kavanaugh Fit In. She Did Not.”

The top paragraphs were all about Deborah Ramirez, who got into Yale in 1983, had a sheltered, Catholic upbringing, babysat and dished ice cream at Carvel. The fourth paragraph reported she wound up at a “drunken dormitory party” where she said freshman Kavanaugh had dropped his pants and “thrust his penis at her, prompting her to swat it away and inadvertently touch it.”

The ninth paragraph reported that at his Senate confirmation hearing, Kavanaugh denied the incident ever occurred, saying if it had, it would have been “the talk of the campus.” But then came the first hint of the news that would follow: “Our reporting suggests that it was.”

“At least seven people, including Ms. Ramirez’s mother, heard about the Yale incident long before Mr. Kavanaugh was a federal judge,” the reporters wrote. Two classmates heard about it “just days after the party.” Yet at the Senate hearing, no one publicly verified Ramirez’s account. Confirmation of the account could have helped establish a pattern of youthful sexual misconduct by Kavanaugh. (Whether that is reason to reject the apparently law abiding adult Kavanaugh became for seat on the Supreme Court is another matter, of course.) But without that, senators found it easy to reject the claim of abuse during high school by the only witness who spoke out, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford — and Kavanaugh got his lifetime appointment as a justice.

Eventually, the authors backed into their real breaking news: The FBI failed to fully investigate Ramirez’s account, failed to interview confirming witnesses discovered by these two non-investigative journalists who cover culture and business news. Ramirez’s legal team gave the FBI at least 25 names, the authors wrote, but the FBI “interviewed none of them,” the authors reported.

A big front page Times story would have spurred Congress to demand answers: Why did the FBI fail to investigate? Who ordered the FBI not to interview those witnesses who the culture and business reporters discovered?

But the Times reporters’ article not only missed its breaking news but went too far in a wrong direction — and their Times editors compounded their error. “We also uncovered a previously unreported story about Mr. Kavanaugh in his freshman year that echoes Ms. Ramirez’s allegation,” the reporters wrote. It was about another Yale freshman party and allegedly involved another woman, Kavanaugh and penis-waving. But the one alleged witness wouldn’t talk to the reporters and neither would the woman; indeed the piece originally reported she told others she didn’t recall the incident. Then the Times editors made it infinitely worse: When they deleted the woman’s name they also deleted the fact that she didn’t remember it happened! The whole example should have been deleted. As it ran, it was unfair to Kavanaugh.

Then the matter gets downright bizarre. The Times tried to promote itself via tweet — and only made itself look tabloidy, as Times flacks tweeted: “Having a penis thrust in your face at a drunken dorm party may seem like harmless fun. But when Brett Kavanaugh did it to her, Deborah Ramirez says, it confirmed that she didn’t belong at Yale in the first place.”

“Harmless fun?”

I’m tempted to type here: “There are no words.” But no. There are lots of them — and none other than our president used them all in his tweetstorm of attacks against the Times. Worse yet, reporter Pogrebin admitted on TV that she’s the one who wrote that pathetically misguided PR tweet. Where were the editors who are supposed to protect the paper and save reporters from their worse instincts?

Many days, The New York Times may indeed be the world’s greatest newspaper. But some days it isn’t even a good one.

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Martin Schram, an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service, is a veteran Washington journalist, author and TV documentary executive. Readers may send him email at [email protected].