CNN has been going for a new level of gutter-stupid with its ‘reporting’ over the non-threat involving ‘dirty bombs’ at NFL stadiums this weekend, and its ‘newsgathering’ was so awful that I have a hard time keeping any respect for my former employer.

Here’s what happened:

1. Dumbass knucklehead posts alleged threat earlier this month on a public Web bulletin board — not some sort of al-Qaeda site, but just a place where people swap messages on everything. I found the message after I heard the initial news reports; anyone who has spent 10 minutes surfing the web would have recognized it as a heaping pile of BS.

2. Weeks later, the Department of Homeland Security hears about the post and dutifully notifies the NFL in the finest CYA fashion, emphasizing that it isn’t a credible threat  (no kidding, guys).

3. CNN’s Jeanne Meserve finds out about it, apparently forgets how to be skeptical or lacks any understanding of that whole ‘internet’ thing, grabs some airtime and breathlessly alerts the planet about the vicious potential terrorist plot. You had to see this performance to believe it…I felt like we were all gonna die at any moment.

4. Wolf Blitzer sends the non-story into high orbit, spending the top 15 minutes of The Situation Room and most of the first half-hour on the topic. He’s every bit as breathless as Meserve. Of course, this ‘coverage’ also gets the dreaded red BREAKING NEWS banner across the bottom of the screen, ignoring the fact that this is not news at all and that a real journalist would have quickly stuck a pin in this balloon.

5. CNN follows up on the story again and again and again and again over the next day, bringing on security experts and generally beating this dead horse all over the place. Of course, the network always uses the ‘non-credible threat’ phrase as a disclaimer, but this is like doing a report on porn and airing a whole bunch of porn to ‘show how bad it is.’

This ‘story’ is so ridiculous, so stupid, that not even CNN’s red-meat-loving competitors went very far with it. And a journalist with, oh, 12 minutes of training should have been able to knock it down. An editor running a real newsroom would have yelled at — or even demoted or fired — someone for hyping this thin gruel in this indefensible manner. What an awful performance.

Update: It’s 3:45 p.m. and CNN has just announced, via live remote standup from a reporter in Milwaukee, that the whole thing was a hoax. No shit.