A cloud of “gloom” and “dismay” hangs over The Wall Street Journal’s newsroom, where journalists are reportedly disappointed with the paper’s superficial election coverage and “‘flattering’” treatment of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Reporters at the Journal, whose parent company News Corp. is chaired by Rupert Murdoch, told Politico’s Joe Pompeo that the paper’s Trump coverage has been “‘galling’” and “‘absurd.’”

Pompeo wrote in Politico’s October 14 Morning Media newsletter that there is “seasonally appropriate gloom in the air” at the Journal’s newsroom over the paper’s “‘galling,’” “‘flattering’” pro-Trump “stories on the front [page]” and the “‘false balance in treating him just like another nominee.’” Pompeo’s Journal sources decried the paper’s superficial “‘process stories about the race, who’s up and down,’” and lamented the Journal’s Trump coverage as “‘neutral to the point of being absurd.’”

Pompeo also noted that the “sense of disappointment” in the Journal’s newsroom is especially underscored by the performance of the paper’s rivals, The New York Times and The Washington Post, which have published “earth-shattering news-breaks” about Trump.

“Of course,” Pompeo wrote, the staff “probably saw it coming,” given both that the Journal’s editor-in-chief demanded that his reporters be “‘fair’” to Trump back in May and that the Journal is owned by Murdoch’s News Corp. Murdoch -- who also has played a hands-on role in leading his unabashedly pro-Trump Fox News Channel -- signaled months ago that “he plans to fully back Trump in the general election,” according to New York magazine.

The report of the newsroom’s “dismay” at its Trump boosting coincides with a Journal article elevating Trump’s defensive claim that a global media conspiracy is working to generate negative coverage of him. The October 13 article notes that Trump is planning to claim that “Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim,” a top New York Times shareholder and Clinton Foundation donor, “is part of a biased coalition working in collusion with the Clinton campaign and its supporters to generate news reports of decades-old allegations from several women.”

Irony abounds, as the Times’ Alex Burns notes that the Murdoch-owned pro-Trump Journal is helping carry Trump’s water over an alleged media conspiracy of pro-Clinton boosting: 

Politically connected billionaire media investor alleged to seek influence over elections, the Wall Street Journal reports unironically https://t.co/wVWQEro6ti

— Alex Burns (@alexburnsNYT) October 14, 2016

The Carlos Slim conspiracy article may be precisely the type of “‘galling’” story that Journal reporters are reportedly upset about. Burns needled the Journal about the piece, tweeting, “Can’t fathom writing this as a hard news lede.” Perhaps the article’s author feels the same way.