Replies

Another book could be a Who’s Who of leftists, mini biographies listing all the foul garbage they have done, who their connections are, who funds them, etc. Stripping them of any ability to pretend to be honest or objective.

If you think about it at all, you realize that the only way to attempt to be objective is to declare up front all the reasons why you might not be objective.
And that implies that anyone who claims to be objective - i.e., journalists as we have known them all our lives - is not even trying to be objective.
Are there any reasons why journalists might not be objective? Of course - every business has its own interests. Some of the well-known interests of journalism are:

the need for public credulity, including the need for public credulity of journalism's claims of objectivity,

the need to interest the public. The rules which journalists claim to be objective are actually rules to promote their own business by interesting the public.

If it bleeds, it leads
"'Man Bites Dog' not 'Dog Bites Man."
"There's nothing more worthless than yesterday's newspaper" (i.e., "meet your deadline, tell the story first").

If journalists declared those interests before reporting their stories, they would be more objective. But, superficially, they might seem less so. And journalism - after all, the root "jour" is French for "day" - is about "what's happening now" rather than about perspective and the big picture.
The Associated Press and the rest of the wire services are useful to exploit scarce communication bandwidth. The wire services homogenize journalism, suppressing the individuality which was originally the hallmark of American newspapers. That homogenization does not make newspapers less tendentious - it magnifies the inherent tendency of the journalist to self-hype. Such individuality as is expressed in the editorial/op ed pages merely serves to "position" the rest of the newspaper (chiefly wire service material) as being objective.
The Internet is an expression of the technological fact that bandwidth now is very plentiful. The internet exposes the homogenization of journalism via wire services as the Nineteenth Century anachronism that it is.
The "objective journalism" emperor has no clothes, and no one in journalism can say so. Although I as an individual FReeper cannot drive that fact into the public discourse, via the internet I can publish it in a form which is accessible worldwide. It is up to talk radio and other opinion leaders to pick up the ball and run with it.

Once dispose of the baseless assumption that journalism is objective, and the idea of having journalists moderate televised political debates becomes risible. Dispense with that assumption, and the question becomes whether, and to what extent, politicians align themselves with the tendencies of journalism. And the answer becomes plain as the nose on your face.
Journalists assign positive labels to those who do align themselves with the interests of journalism, and negative labels to those who do not. I have my own Newspeak-English dictionary:

objective :
reliably promoting the interests of Big Journalism. (usage: always applied to journalists in good standing; never applied to anyone but a journalist)

liberal :
see "objective," except that the usage is reversed: (usage: never applied to any working journalist)
progressive :
see "liberal" (usage: same as for "liberal").
moderate:
see "liberal." (usage: same as for "liberal").
centrist :
see "liberal" (usage: same as for "liberal").

conservative :
rejecting the idea that journalism is a higher calling than providing food, shelter, clothing, fuel, and security; adhering to the dictum of Theodore Roosevelt that: "It is not the critic who counts . . . the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena (usage: applies to people who - unlike those labeled liberal/progressive/moderate/centrist, cannot become "objective" by getting a job as a journalist, and probably cannot even get a job as a journalist.)(antonym:"objective")

right-wing :
see, "conservative."

Original FR post

We need IDing of these people. They should be outed for working as political thugs and not reporters.

See, that's just the trouble - so many informed, educated and public spirited people (like you) actually believe that reporters are a separate class from "we the people."
There is nothing in the First Amendment, or anywhere else in the Constitution, which says or implies any such thing.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Just because journalists call themselves "the press" does not put them in a class separate from "the people." What, can I call myself "speech" and become privileged in some way over you? Do you not have the right to buy and operate a printing press? Are your rights lesser than someone else's, just because you haven't bought a printing press yet?
The actual problem is that the wire services have unified and homogenized journalism. Starting with the Associated Press, which began in 1848. Adam Smith famously stated that
"People of the same trade seldom meet together even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public or some contrivance to raise prices." - Adam Smith

The "association" of newspapers via the AP performs the function of bringing journalists together in such a way as to enervate the competition among them. Why is it that no reporter will disagree with the thesis that "all journalists are objective?" Simple - journalists changed the business model of the newspaper business when they joined the AP. The AP gives each newspaper a cornucopia of news stories, but it is expensive and the newspaper must get value for that expense. The only way to do so is to vouch for the reporters on the other end of the wire whom the newspaper does not employ and may not even know. How does the newspaper do that? Simple - by promoting the conceit that "all journalists are objective."
The massive propaganda campaign in which we have all been immersed all our lives, to the effect that "all journalists are objective," is nothing other than " a conspiracy against the public." It is a conspiracy to promote the conceit that journalists are better citizens than you or I, with the implication that the country should actually be run by journalists, with "the people" going to the polls pro forma and simply rubber stamping the decisions of the journalists.
Well, guess what! Journalists are a special interest.
Journalism's interest is in promoting the credulity of the people in accepting the confidence game I just outlined. "If it bleeds it leads," "Man Bites Dog rather than Dog Bites Man," and "There's nothing more worthless than yesterday's newspaper" are defining characteristics of the interest of journalism (which lies in interesting the public) which is an entirely different matter than "the public interest." Many things would interest the public but would be illegal, precisely because they are deemed to not be in the public interest. Reports of bad news generally interest the public - but of course the incidents themselves are not in the public interest.

The wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing . . .
It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough. - Adam Smith
The public interest would be far better served if the public learned to treat journalism with a lot more "incredulity." And with full understanding that journalism, even when true, is not generally all of the truth - and that "Half the truth is often a great lie."

The Right to Know

In Israel the Left exerts almost complete control over the political and social discourse. Unlike the situation in the US - particularly in the era of Fox News - there are no significant communications outlets in Israel that are not controlled by the Left.
The non-leftist elements of "the media" in America are not a bit stronger than we need them to be - and they are under attack. And even talk radio scarcely existed before Reagan was able to end the "Fairness" Doctrine.

Even Yisrael Hayom, the free newspaper owned by Sheldon Adelson that has eroded the market shares of Israel's leading tabloids, is not a rightist newspaper. It senior editors, reporters and commentators are almost all leftists.

The Left's monopoly over the public discourse is not only expressed in the media. In the worlds of culture, academia and entertainment as well, all the leading figures are leftists. They cultivate one another in an elite universe that is affected neither by reality nor by the convictions of most of their countrymen.

This has led to a situation in which a small minority of Israelis behaves as if it were a large majority. They use their control over the public discourse to present the sentiments of the majority of Israelis as if they were the views of a small, fanatical minority.
It is no news that this is almost a perfect description of our situation in the US, and the reasons for that situation here in "the land of the free" were long a source of serious puzzlement to me. But - in the spirit of "this problem, when solved, will be simple" - I now find it amazing that such a simple, obvious phenomenon could ever have eluded my understanding.
There are layers of understanding which need to be peeled back before the problem becomes obvious. First, journalism mostly did not attempt to claim objectivity before the Civil War era. Newspapers were openly associated with political factions. Indeed, "news" papers of the era did not have sources which the general public could not, at least in principle, be privy to independently of the newspapers. Consequently newspapers were usually weeklies rather than dailies - and some even printed on an idiosyncratic timetable determined by the printer on an ad hoc basis. And the long time between printings did nothing to minimize the likelihood that the public would not learn "news" first from the newspaper. Newspapers, IOW, were largely about the opinions of the printers.
The telegraph and the Associated Press changed that situation; members of the AP suddenly had a font of news to which the general public would become privy only by reading it in the newspaper (or by traditional means, only after the passage of a long period of time). However, "the wire" came at a cost. The service was expensive, and the membership had to maximize the value it received from it. And that meant that the member newspaper had to sell the reliability of reports from reporters who didn't work for the local paper, and who may have been unknown to them. That required a leap of faith - into a "religion" in which reporters were priests of "objectivity."
So with the advent of the AP, fiercely independent newspaper printers gradually merged into a Borg. Outside the Borg, you were ignorant of all those reports gushing from "the wire;" inside it you were safe. You didn't really retain your own identity, but you were guaranteed to be "in the know" - and guaranteed that the Borg would not brook questions of your own objectivity so long as you remained a member in good standing and did not question the objectivity of any other Borg member.
But why was the AP "Borg" an engine of leftism? The incentives of the AP are simply to promote the importance of its membership. And the interest of the membership is to entertain and attract attention. It is, quite simply, to interest the public. The rules of journalism: "If it bleeds, it leads," "'Man Bites Dog' is news, 'Dog Bites Man' is not," and "There's nothing more worthless than yesterday's newspaper" are all rules for interesting the public. All rules to maximize the interests of the newspaper. Notice, I did not say that they were rules for promoting "the public interest." The rules to which journalists appeal to deflect criticism of their editorial choices have nothing to do with the public interest, and everything to do with interesting, and titillating, the public. Those rules of journalism are self-interested.
The AP and the rules of journalism inherently exaggerate journalism's importance and minimize the trustworthiness of those who commit to working to a bottom line. The position of journalism is always that things are going to hell in a handbasket - and you had better pay attention to journalists to find out all about it. And if things are that bad, the only conclusion is that the people you rely on to get things done cannot be trusted and do not deserve the credit/payment which they normally receive. That's a pretty good description of leftism, IMHO.
And because that is the propaganda wind that blows from journalism, politicians have the choice of either going along and getting along with journalism, or of standing on principle. Journalists call those who stand on principle everything but a child of God, and journalists call those who go along and get along "Moderate," "Progressive," or "Liberal," - whatever positive label they can think of. With the exception of "objective," which label they reserve to themselves as the only label they accept for themselves.

The catch to journalism's self-proclamation of their own objectivity is that it is impossible to even attempt to be objective without starting out from an examination of the possibility that you actually are biased. A self-proclamation of objectivity excludes the possibility of any approach to actual objectivity. The principle is no different from the etymology of the word "philosopher:sophist 1542, earlier sophister (c.1380), from L. sophista, sophistes, from Gk. sophistes, from sophizesthai "to become wise or learned," from sophos "wise, clever," of unknown origin. Gk. sophistes came to mean "one who gives intellectual instruction for pay," and, contrasted with "philosopher," it became a term of contempt. Ancient sophists were famous for their clever, specious arguments. philosopher O.E. philosophe, from L. philosophus, from Gk. philosophos "philosopher," lit. "lover of wisdom," from philos "loving" + sophos "wise, a sage." "Pythagoras was the first who called himself philosophos, instead of sophos, 'wise man,' since this latter term was suggestive of immodesty." [Klein]Thus, if you claim to be wise or objective, you evade the responsibility to your hearer to support your arguments with facts and logic.

Empowering Israelis to Express Themselves
Townhall.com ^ | December 6, 2010 | Caroline Glick

"Last night Mark Levin suggested he would be initiating law suits against anyone who blamed him for these murders and assaults."

I thought Levin was a smarter lawyer than that. Best of luck on that, Mark. You're making your living by giving your opinions in public, I think that's called a "public figure."

I attempt (as a non-lawyer) to treat this issue in my #32. The point has to be that when Big Journalism is a single, identifiable entity with a single, identifiable (and hostile) POV, there is scant recourse against slander (actually libel) by that entity. And that Big Journalism is such an entity is pitifully easy to show; the membership of Big Journalism unselfconsciously stonewall facts which are inconvenient to its case, and its "case" is always the same - that nobody can be trusted except Big Journalism. Big Journalism, and its acolytes, to whom Big Journalism assigns positive labels such as "progressive," or "liberal," or "moderate."
Who is "Big Journalism," and how would you name it in a lawsuit? Simple - Big Journalism is the Associated Press and its membership. Big Journalism excludes from its membership any who would criticize any of its members in any serious way. Thus, a Dan Rather can promote a fistfull of fraudulent "Texas Air National Guard memos" and, after being busted by proofs that those "memos" were fraudulent, double down and refuse to apologize and withdraw his accusations against President Bush43. He did so secure in the knowledge that he would not be seriously criticized, let alone ostracized, by the rest of Big Journalism.
He was secure in that knowledge for the simple reason that all "MSM" journalists have each other's back, and none of them would dare to break that cabal's code. And he was right. CBS conducted a show "investigation" which found that there was no political motive behind a fraudulent October Surprise hit piece on the Republican presidential candidate. A "surprise" which, to go by the advertising which the Democratic Party had ready to launch in an instantaneous followup to the 60 Minutes hit piece, was no surprise at all to the Democratic Party. And the rest of Big Journalism uttered not a peep about it.
Nor is the "TANG memo" hoax unique, or even unusual. Big Journalism turned the Duke lacrosse team "rape" hoax into fodder for almost a year of heated discussion despite the obvious fact that Nifong was trying the case in the newspapers because he was running for election - and that his witness was unreliable and self-interested. It was just a matter of time before the truth caught up with Nifong - but what an experience for those young men to be arbitrarily subjected to!! Another example is the SBVT effort to oppose the election of John Kerry, and the PR effort that Big Journalism launched against them.
To Set the Record Straight

Until Proven Innocent:
Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case
by Stuart Taylor , KC Johnson
Why does Big Journalism go along with the Democratic Party? The question is miscast. To ask the question, "Why would politicians go along and get along with Big Journalism?" is to answer it. Once accept the obvious fact that Big Journalism exists as an identifiable entity with identifiable "follow the money" interests, and the granting of any special treatment to any member of Big Journalism - see for an egregious example the limits on criticism of candidates by anyone except members of Big Journalism during election campaigns - becomes absurdly unconstitutional.
Enactment of any such law is corrupt - and, lest we forget, there were plenty of Republican congressmen willing to vote for the McCain-Feingold monstrosity. And George W. Bush signed it, and Sandra Day O'Connor put the imprimatur of SCOTUS on it. But O'Connor was replaced by Alito and - Kennedy ruling as he did at the time - McConnell v. FEC would go the other way today. So, general tendency notwithstanding, Republicans are not uniformly principled enough to stand with the people and the Constitution against the flattery and derision of self-aggrandizing Big Journalism.
Talk Radio is a format which depends crucially on appearing to represent the public by fairly taking on callers as they come. That stands in direct contrast to journalism, which is inherently a "we're objective and the public isn't," proposition because of its format. And it turns out that, although the soap opera actor says that acting is easy once you've learned to fake sincerity, the public which listens to talk radio can readily tell if the talk show host screens out challenging calls and only answers softball questions. The reality is that claims of "objectivity" - or "moderation" or any other virtue - become unsupportable when subjected to truthful attacks based on facts and logic which must be answered by the talk show host in real time. The consequence has been that people with a "liberal" mindset hear their views reflected adequately by Big Journalism, and people who recognize the limitations of Big Journalism's "objectivity" constitute the audience of Talk Radio.
To return to my starting point, when Big Journalism is a single, identifiable entity with a single, identifiable (and hostile) POV, there is very limited recourse against libel by that entity. Thoughtful people tend to see through the tendentiousness of Big Journalism, but the relative sizes of the audiences for Big Journalism and for Talk Radio certainly give pause to a belief in the adequacy of purely rational argumentation as a basis for PR. The one place where you are supposed to win or lose purely on the facts and logic of your case is the courtroom. That is why I favor a maximum effort to bring the Associated Press and its membership to book in court. And given the slender-reed nature of any hope of support from the Attorney General even in a Republican administration, that leaves only the idea of a civil suit. As far as suing the AP is concerned, it shouldn't hurt your chances to be able to point out that the AP was found by SCOTUS to be in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act back in 1945. And whereas the AP had such an obvious benefit in conserving scarce bandwidth in the days of the telegraph, and seemed to be "too big to fail" in 1945, in the 21st Century the bandwidth required for journalism is practically free. So today a remedy which threatened the existence of the AP would not obviously be counter to the public interest.
Having identified the defendant, however, I am unsure of exactly who the plaintiff should be. Certainly Mark Levin and talk radio hosts generally have an interest in defeating any legal restrictions/prohibitions which the present imbroglio and the present administration threaten. But just as certainly the audience of talk radio has its rights threatened by those same forces. And I would rather the audience be the plaintiff, if that is actually possible.
Journalism and Objectivity
The Right to Know
Why the Associated Press is Pernicious to the Public Interest
The Market for Conservative-Based News
Why Broadcast Journalism is Unnecessary and Illegitimate
4 Advances that Set News Back
Liberals and the Violence Card

I am coming to the belief that the media’s real role is not objectivity and informing us about corruption and bad government, but more about dividing us as a nation. That gets them eyeballs and listeners and most of all billions of dollars in election campaign ads.

I have discontinued the use of the term "the media," for the reason that although movies and fiction propagated by other media such as TV and print definitely are "liberal," you would have to outlaw fiction entertainment in order to make a serious dent in that problem. And that, I think, would put you squarely in the "kook" realm. The issue must be with "nonfiction," which pretends to truthfulness and therefore has a standard by which it may be judged. And that, in political terms, boils down to journalism.
The interesting thing is that although you and I have never seen that day, in the founding era and up 'til the Civil War newspapers were highly opinionated in every possible direction; you picked your newspaper according to what political slant you enjoyed reading. But after the Civil War era, journalism suddenly (in historical terms) became "objective," so that no one now living remembers to the contrary. I'm embarrassed to say how long I puzzled over what created that transformation. The answer is the telegraph. The telegraph, and the Associated Press.
The wire services homogenize journalism, which can be spoken of as a single entity because it is one. It's not just that all newspapers have the same sources, it is that all journalism has to promote those sources as being objective - because otherwise how to vouch for reports from people you haven't even met? Hence the propaganda campaign to the effect that "all journalists are objective."
Why is journalism leftist in orientation? Because journalism is the cheap talk industry. Unified by the wire services, journalism is freed from internal competition and gives cheap talk free rein. And all leftism is is cheap talk, which takes the work of the real economy for granted, and blathers incessantly over real or imagined slights at the margins, making mountains out of molehills. The facile negativity of journalism towards the work of everyone not in journalism or government (not excluding the military) is the natural expression of journalism's self-regard. The planted axiom of what journalists say, and what they do not say, is that you really can't rely on anyone except a journalist or someone who mouths the same things journalists do - i.e., leftists.
The best way to critique journalism is to compare its coverage of events with the historical facts, after the passage of ten or twenty years so that the smoke has time to clear away. Compare, for example, what journalism was saying about the Reagan Administration with what we can see in retrospect the effect of the Reagan Administration actually was.
House Republicans unveil new bill to ban resurrection of Fairness Doctrine
TheHill ^ | 02/11/11 | Sara Jerome

Could we have a loyal opposition? The rats have been appalling from Vietnam to Iraq.

Well that is a very good question. Given the taint that has become SOP at this point, I just do not know. The house cleaning (exorcism?) that must happen will not be quick or painless. But I do see the legitimate value of such an opposing set of members.
If this is not present then we descend quickly into dictatorship/fascism/one-party rule. None of which are the system set forth in the U.S. Constitution - which must be our political and governmental foundation.

To analyze that question, IMHO, you need a clear understanding of "liberalism" and its relationship to "the media."
My analysis is that wire service journalism - the AP, in the first instance - homogenized journalism with the cornucopia of stories available over "the wire." Without "the wire," journalists openly expressed their own opinions as such - "objectivity" was not expected of journalists. "The wire," OTOH, was very expensive - and highly valuable if and only if the public could be made to be credulous about the authenticity of the stories coming over that wire. The upshot of that situation is that candor about any possible conflicts between the interests of journalist and the public interest quickly became taboo.
The penalty for breaking that taboo is expulsion from the "objective journalist" fraternity, with prejudice. Since I'm not a member of that fraternity, and do not aspire to become one, that taboo does not affect me. So I will point out the obvious: Journalists' incentives are to promote their own reputations and influence. So journalists hype their own importance and the significance of their reports - and journalists pick on anyone who seeks importance by actually doing important things like providing water, food, clothing, shelter, and so forth.
Likewise, journalists scratch the back of anyone who scratches their back, and criticizes anyone who defends those whom journalism attacks.
The conclusion is obvious; journalism will always be leftist so long as it is unified. It's not that journalists are in the pocket of "liberals," it's that "liberals" go along and get along with journalism. Journalists have no incentive to seperate themselves from openly "liberal" politicians - other than by the rhetorical device of reserving the adjective "objective" to themselves only, and using any other positive label that comes up to describe the sycophantic Democrat politician. The term "conservative will never fit that bill as long as marketers lust after ways to justify describing the products they are selling as "NEW!"
Can the homogenization of journalism ever be undone? That unity is a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act; the AP was held to be in violation of it back in 1945. No sweeping remedy was sought or given in that case, however. But with the advent of the Internet, the fundamental mission of the AP - conservation of scarce bandwidth for transmission of news - is an anachronism, and in principle the AP is no longer necessarily "too big to fail."
Is Liberalism Dead?
American Spectator ^ | February 2011 | James Piereson

If there is anything that has disgusted me over the past few years, it has been the way the media is merely an extension of the Democrat Party. It’s like living in the USSR.

Indeed; understanding that phenomenon has been my major interest for quite a long time.
My conclusions are:

Nobody can safely take their own, or anyone else's, objectivity for granted. Indeed, taking one's own objectivity for granted is precisely what subjectivity is, and that's the opposite of objectivity.
The only way to attempt objectivity is to eschew any claim of objectivity and to explicitly disclose any interest one may have in any case they discuss. This journalists never do; they are far too busy promoting themselves to ever do that.
Yet journalists do have identifiable interests apart from the public interest:
- promoting themselves,
- raising alarums over the results of everyone else's decisions/actions - everyone who does not flatter journalists, that is, and
- reciprocating the flattery of those who flatter journalists. This explains the relationship between journalists and those whom journalism labels "moderate" or "liberal" or "progressive".
It follows that journalists, all protestations of dispassion notwithstanding, are not even trying to be objective.
Journalism as a profession was not ideologically homogeneous in the founding era but it is ideologically homogeneous today - and has been for well over a century. The reason for the change is hiding in plain sight - News service journalism. The Associated Press (founded in 1848 as The New York Associated Press) is monopolistic, and it functions as a Borg which gives the journalist what he wants - an endless stream of news which the public hasn't heard yet, and the suppression of any competition over objectivity. All at the cost, not only of money, but the surrender of the independence to be able to question the objectivity of any other journalist.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2696817/posts?page=2

This proves that smarta$$ is not a journalist but a liberal propagandist, which means he is simply a very subtle, useful tool of left-wing propagandists, an "advance party" if you will.

I like your post.
But I have a quibble about language. You say, "smarta$$ is not a journalist," but then you say, "[he is] a liberal propagandist, which means he is simply a very subtle, useful tool of left-wing propagandists, an "advance party" if you will. "

My point is simply that the wire services in general and the Associated Press in particular united journalism around the self-interest of journalism itself. Journalism is just talk, and

the self interest of journalism is that its talk is taken to be more important than the action taken by others to provide food, clothing, shelter, security, energy, and so forth.
This explains why journalism is able to maintain the fatuous conceit of its own objectivity, despite the obvious realtity that journalism is at most part of the truth, and "Half the truth is often a great lie." You can print "both sides of the story" without necessarily getting at the truth of the matter, and that happens all the time. Because the perspective of the journalist defines what he thinks the two sides of the story are. Which may be irrelevant to what is actually going on. And the very fact that the journalist claims to be objective (or, what is the same thing, suffers others to claim it for him) proves that the journalist is not even trying to be objective.
Ironically, it is possible to attempt to be objective only by being open about any reasons why you might not be objective. And claiming to be objective is the very opposite of scrupulously examining your own motives and being open about how they (inevitably) influence your perspective. Therefore,

no "objective journalist" is even trying to actually be objective.
It would be wonderful if we could count on objective information for the mere price of a newspaper. Alas, it is impossible. There can be no substitute for exercising your own judgement. "Anyone who tells you anything else is selling something."
The wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing . . .
It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough. - Adam Smith

Because the wire services unified journalism, journalism speaks with a single voice (I discount the editorial pages as being a peripheral issue, which function primarily to "position" the rest of the newspaper as being objective). Since journalism speaks with a single voice, there are natural propaganda advantages to agreeing with that unified journalistic voice. So if you don't have any principles other than your own self interest, the path of least resistance is to become a politician who promotes whatever the journalistic voice finds convenient. You can then count on that journalistic voice to give you favorable labels and give your opposition consistently unfavorable PR.

So when you say someone is a propagandist rather than a journalist, you give undue credit to journalism as a profession. Journalism is propaganda.
Journalism and Objectivity
Is Cain Able? (refreshingly honest about not knowing but..)
HeyMiller ^ | Monday June 6, 2011 | John Miller

The GOP is the victim (willing or unwilling) of collobrative efforts by the dems and the media far too often.

~~The GOP~~ America is the victim of the propaganda campaign, ongoing since memory of living man runneth not to the contrary, to the effect that journalism is objective. Journalism has never been objective and, ironically, is least able to approach objectivity when it is most able to project the image of objectivity.
Note, when I say "journalism" there is a planted axiom in the construct - the idea that journalism is monolithic. That is, journalism has many facades but a single voice. The unity of journalism is the membership of the wire services, especially the Associated Press. The Associated Press was held by SCOTUS to be in violation of the Sherman AntiTrust Act back in 1945. And no wonder; the wire services homogenize journalism by claiming that journalists are objective in order to maximize the value of the wire service feed to its membership - and if all journalists are objective, they must share the perspective which journalism as a whole projects.
The rules of journalism - "Man Bites Dog, not Dog Bites Man," "If it bleeds, it leads," and "There's nothing more worthless than yesterday's newspaper, (i.e., make your deadline)" are all rules, not of objectivity but of entertainment value. They are rules for making your newspaper profitable. IOW, the rules of journalism promote the self-interest of journalism. And the very last word which would actually describe someone who confuses their own selfish interest with objectivity is, well, "objective."
So we have a highly tendentious and self-interested journalism, falsely but effectively projecting an image of objectivity and public spiritedness. What would you expect politicians to do in that environment? You would certainly expect that a lot of politicians would go along to get along with that prevailing propaganda wind. And you would expect that journalism would award positive labels to such politicians - and would apply negative labels to their opponents:

Moderation being a classical virtue, you might not be surprised to learn, for example, that journalism-favored politicians might be called "moderate" or "centrist" - and disfavored politicians might be called "out of the mainstream," "right wing," "extreme," or even "right wing extremist."

"Liberty" being the watchword of the American founding generation, you might expect that journalist-favored politicians might be called "liberal" - and disfavored politicians would not be so designated.

The possibility of progress being a defining characteristic of the Enlightenment (and the Constitution being a quintessential Enlightenment project), you might expect journalism-favored politicians to be called "progressive" - and disfavored politicians to be called "conservative."
. . . and you would be entirely correct.
The problem is not journalists selling out to socialists - the problem is that, in the wire service milieu, self-selected journalists are socialists.
The Associated Press was instituted in the middle of the Nineteenth Century, early in the era of electronic communication, and its natural function was to economize on telegraphy bandwidth by sharing the same feed over many newspapers. In the Internet era, that mission is obsolete. I should not wonder if Free Republic alone had more bandwidth capability now than the AP did in 1945. So what was "too big to fail" in 1945 should be vulnerable to serious antitrust challenge in 2011.

The behavior of journalism is explained by Adam Smith - partly in Wealth of Nations, and partly in Theory of Moral Sentiments. The applicable quote from the latter is
The natural disposition is always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough. The wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing.
The man whom we believe is necessarily, in the things concerning which we believe him, our leader and director, and we look up to him with a certain degree of esteem and respect.
That is the default assumption and perspective of the journalist, about the public at large. The public, journalists believe in their gut, is a bunch of boobs to be impressed and led by their betters. Namely, them:
But as from admiring other people we come to wish to be admired ourselves; so from being led and directed by other people we learn to wish to become ourselves leaders and directors. - Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments
Journalists employ rank sophistry to position themselves as our betters; they engage in Monday morning quarterbacking on a grand scale to insinuate that anyone other than the specialists in a field could do a better job than the specialists in that field, if only they were as well-intentioned as the journalist is. Nobody would trust their own liver to the ministrations of a journalist in the operating room, but the journalist seeks to promote his own reputation above that of the surgeon by claiming that doctors do unnecessary operations to pad their own wallets. And if that sounds like something a “liberal” politician such as Obama might say - well, in Karl Marx’s formulation, that is no accident, comrades.
Journalists use claims of their own (or, what is the same thing, each others’) objectivity to precisely the same purpose and intent that the ancient Sophists used their claims of superior wisdom. If the Sophist is wise, or if the journalist is objective, the person who is not a Sophist or a journalist would seem to have no standing to question them. And appearances are what journalists are all about. In reality it is unwise for anyone to assume his own wisdom, and it is not objective of anyone to assume her own objectivity.
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (Book I, Ch 10)
It is said that “This problem, when solved, will be simple.” And so it is with the question as to why modern journalists never engage in ideological competition, as journalists of earlier times notoriously did. The answer is the telegraph - the telegraph and the wire services, notably the AP. For the AP is nothing other than a virtual meeting of all the major journalism outlets in America.
Adam Smith is correct - a meeting of “competitive” journalists which has been in continuous operation since before the Civil War, and which is not about “merriment or diversion” but precisely about business, could not have failed to produce “a conspiracy against the public.” A conspiracy which is not content merely to systematically omit mention of certain salient facts, but which will actually lie in furtherance of its own interest and against the public interest.