Ever since the nativity of the Fourth Estate, the press has believed itself to be the Incarnation. There is a good Oscar Wilde quotation on this, which I found at wikipedia:
In old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press. That is an improvement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralizing. Somebody — was it Burke? — called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time no doubt. But at the present moment it is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by Journalism.
Lovely nod to Oscar Wilde who was also torn to shreds by the winds of the prevailing zeitgeist.