Replies

VDH is certainly correct about perspective. It is heartening to consider the difference in treatment between modern historians and the contemporary press hysteria (a very good deal of which is still perfectly accessible) during the U.S. Civil War. One difficulty these days is precisely the same as then - far too many reporters have attempted to craft a narrative on the spot instead of simply stating observed facts. This gives them a vested interest that hinders successive facts that do not fit the narrative. For all the derision that modern journalism tends to direct at "objective" journalism, the latter does at least free the reporter from looking like a complete fool after the shooting stops (and the Pulitzers have been awarded).

Thinking yourself to be objective is arguably the best possible definition of the word "subjectivity." And the Associated Press, and all of those "independent-thinking" papers which make up the AP, are selling something. They are all selling the same thing - news, before you could get it from any other source. So the AP and every one of its members has the identical incentive to sell the idea that journalism - all journalism - is objective. How else to vouch for the news which is the pervasive, dominant theme of your newspaper, quite dwarfing the editorial opinions which give the various newspapers reputations for independence from each other? - That news did not originate with your newspaper's own reporters but with those of a nominal competitor in a distant city. So with the AP, newspapers have the opportunity to claim objectivity without fear of powerful ridicule as long as they do not compete with any other AP newspaper on the basis of objectivity claims. And the more opportunity they have had to make that claim, the less compunction they have felt was necessary about taking care to vindicate the claim by actually being objective.
So what is the actual effect of the claim by all of journalism that all of journalism is objective? The actual effect of the claim of objectivity, running as it has for a century and a half, is to establish in custom the idea that journalists are a breed apart from we-the-people. An enormous propaganda campaign has convinced the general public that journalists are more virtuous, more knowledgeable, and more civic-minded - and thus entitled not only to be listened to with respect by people who pay for the privilege. And that journalists are entitled to special privileges such as "shield" laws granting reporters the right to withhold the names of sources from courts of law which any citizen would be under legal compunction to yield up. And that journalists are entitled to special rights to speak out about candidates for public office - rights to be denied, under McCain-Feingold, to we-the-people.
But in principle, if that assumption be accepted, there is no real virtue in having our government officers selected by vote of the whole people on a date certain - it would be far more manageable to simply read in the newspapers what the newspapers say is in the public interest. Or, for that matter, what the newspapers say the public thinks, based on "public opinion polls." From the POV of the journalist - or anyone who thinks that journalists are more objective and hence wiser and more virtuous than the public at large - public votes are unnecessary and irrelevant. What could be more patent than that the conceit of journalistic objectivity is profoundly subversive of democratic principle?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2022886/posts?page=24#24

the inversion of the meaning of the word [liberal] patently was intended to cause confusion

Conservatives have somewhat solved the confusion by using the term “Classical” liberal.

True, but that cannot be the total solution. In fact, there cannot be a total solution, as long as the socialists are in a position to continuously jerk us around with new meanings and new, deceptive words like "swiftboating."
Which is why I have been so interested in the question of how to delegitimate the subversive conceit that journalism is objective . . . and why I was so excited when I recognized what should have been the obvious fact that journalism was transformed - nay, almost invented - by the Associated Press. The claim of journalistic objectivity apparently only traces to the advent of the AP, because prior to that time newspapers didn't systematically trade news reports, and didn't really have news sources that the rest of the public could not in principle have access to. So it was only the advent of the Associated Press that put the "news" in "newspaper."
The AP is a mechanism which effectively homogenized the newspapers by transforming all of them from opinion journals which also carried news into newspapers which also carry opinion. And the nonlocal news which they carry, their primary stock in trade, comes from a single source - and all newspapers have a financial stake in the idea that those reports are reliable. So, not in the interest of the public nor in the interest of truth but in the interest of the newspapers and of the AP, all journalists made the questioning the objectivity of any journalist a taboo subject. The public violation of which taboo is punished by expulsion from the fraternity of "objective journalists."
The business of the AP and all of its constituent newspapers is to seduce the public into thinking that the latest report, available only from the AP, is of crucial importance. On rare occasion - such as on 9/11/01 - that actually was arguably true. But in general, it is a gross exaggeration of the value of such reports. And it has the deleterious effect of distracting the public from things which are true and important to reports which are of lesser reliability and generally of lesser significance. And the "liberal" politician aligns himself with the propaganda wind which that bias of journalism creates.
Ruth Off The Radio #31

Maybe require them to read all of Michael Yon’s dispatches?

Hmmm ... not a bad idea at all. I wonder if he'll consider a book in place of a video.

If this matters to you, buy the book and give it to him. When you restrict yourself to a video, you are betting on the other fellow's game - because you know how easy it is for leftists to produce with high production values and how hard it is to find conservative people in Hollywood. Production values and eye candy are superficial compared to facts and logic - and since "liberalism" is superficial, you are in hostile territory right there.
I had the experience of being found out as a conservative in a setting where I hadn't thought it necessary to debate politics, and the guy challenged me, "You probably think that journalists are objective." My reaction was to laugh, because I had already studied that issue a great deal - but ultimately I got tied up trying to argue on the wrong (albeit valid) ground and came out very frustrated.
My analysis of "liberalism" is that it is critically dependent on the support of Big Journalism, to the point that it would do at least ten points worse in any given election if journalism weren't putting a thumb on the scale with its propaganda. And that Big Journalism didn't exist at all in the founding era; the various newspapers were all openly committed to the viewpoints of their publishers, and made no claims of being objective - for the simple reason that newspapers didn't cooperate with each other in promoting the con that all journalism is objective.
Not only did Big Journalism not exist, the very idea of journalism, as we know it, itself barely existed. The reason for that was that newspaper printers didn't have access to information which, at least in principle, any given man on the street might not also know, from the same source as the printer got it. Consequently the early "newspapers" were not typically daily publications; they were often weeklies, and some had no fixed deadline and just printed whenever the printer decided he was ready. Making it even more likely that you might hear something on the street on Tuesday, and not see it in the paper until Friday.
The Big Bang of journalism, and of "liberalism," was the advent of the telegraph and the Associated Press in the middle of the Nineteenth Century. The Associated Press was and is a monopoly, and it aggressively elbowed competition out with anticompetitive practices (and indeed was held by SCOTUS to be in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in 1945). In the 1800s the AP defended itself against accurate charges that it was a powerful and unaccountable influence on the public by asserting that the AP was a group of newspapers which were famous for not agreeing about much of anything to do with public policy - so the AP was "objective." It was a successful argument, as we know too well - but it is a logical fallacy.
First because "believing in one's own objectivity" is my preferred definition of "subjectivity." And second, the existence of the AP basically mooted the famous fractiousness of its membership. Without the AP newswire, what we now call "the editorial position" of any given newspaper was its dominant feature. With the AP wire, a newspaper's primary content was actually news, in principle and in practice. While a twenty-year-old Wall Street Journal wouldn't tell you much that you would likely care about now in its news section, its editorial commentaries would still be likely to have resonance for the issues of today. So the more the content of a newspaper is dominated by newswire stories, the less attention is attracted by its editorial page - and the less that "fractious independence" actually matters. Worse, the importance of the newswire motivates the journalist to herd together with other journalists since the justification for trusting the story on the wire is not that the newspaper printing that story knew the story from its own reporters, but because of trust being placed in other, remote, reporters.
So the "objectivity" of journalists is simply a propaganda fiction needed by AP newspapers in order to sell their perishable AP newswire stories to the public. And that explains why a Dan Rather could be so confident that the rest of journalism would circle the wagons around himself and CBS even after we had him dead to rights on his "Killian Memo" fiction. All those "fractiously independent" newspapers are actually part of an overarching organization, the AP - and what journalists call "objectivity" is simply a matter of going along and getting along with the rest of that organization.
So we can see how Big Journalism coheres, giving it the opportunity to align itself with a political slant such as "liberalism" or conservatism while calling itself "objective." But what is its motive for aligning itself with "liberalism?" I actually think that question should be turned around. It is perfectly clear that if Big Journalism has any natural political tendency, the resulting propaganda wind of that tendency would provide ample motive for politicians to align themselves with it. And I consider that the natural political tendency of journalism was defined in 1911 by Theodore Roosevelt:
There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes to second achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life's realities - all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affection of contempt for the achievements of others, to hide from others and from themselves in their own weakness. The rôle is easy; there is none easier, save only the rôle of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds . . .
The natural constituency of the Republican Party as we now know it consists of people who are, or who profoundly respect people who are, "in the arena" - people who have responsibility to work to a bottom line:

Small businessmen? Check.
Policemen? Check.
Military? Check.
Men more so than women? Check.
Whites more so than blacks? Check.
Journalists find it convenient to the purpose of making themselves seem important precisely by criticizing and second guessing "the man in the arena." And they cheerfully, if not quite openly, make common cause with any politician who does the same.
Iraq Documentary (Vanity?)
Posted on June 12, 2008 4:06:38 PM EDT by al_c

Without Big Journalism behind them, "liberals" would lose a good ten points in any election, IMHO. The question which has always plagued conservatives has been how to blunt the (unadmitted) support of journalists for their opponents, without opposing free speech and freedom of the press.
The actual problem is the tendency of Big Journalism to claim - and for the public to be unable to reject the fallacy of - Big Journalism's defining of the public interest. Certainly the attitude that journalism defines the public interest is embedded in the McCain-Feingold law, and the fact that John McCain actually accepts that premise is what defines him as a RINO. But the reality is that the rules of journalism - such as "'If it Bleeds, it leads," "Man Bites Dog' is a good headline but 'Dog Bites Man' isn't news" and "There's nothing more worthless than yesterday's newspaper" - are entertainment rules. They are rules for making the paper interesting to the public - and that is a different matter entirely that being "in the public interest."
An evenly matched struggle between a cop and a robber - still more so the victory of a robber over a cop - is interesting (if in a morbid way), but the certain victory of the cop over the robber is what is in the public interest. The signal success of the "surge" in Iraq is in the public interest, but the chaos that preceded the surge was what made "good copy." The effective functioning of the capitalist free market system has produced gradual miracles in the US over the generations - so much so that an American secretary of today might be ill-served to trade her circumstances for those which Queen Victoria enjoyed in her (1819-1901) day. Yet claims of "market failure" and "greedy capitalists" and "overpaid CEOs" make much better copy. Corruption and failure on the part of people and institutions upon whom/which the public must depend are highly interesting to the public - and dramatically adverse to the public interest. The story line which, for commercial reasons, appeals to Big Journalism - which Big Journalism wants to believe and to propagate - defines what interests the public, and is essentially the very opposite of what is in the public interest.
For those reasons Big journalism inherently tends to oppose the public interest. Big Journalism is selling something, and that thing is not what the public should buy, but what is promoted by a century and a half of unremitting propaganda as being good for it. And that is why we have so much difficulty disposing of the impostures of the socialist delusion - which is actually nothing more than the idea that Theodore Roosevelt was wrong in saying that it is not the critic but "the man who is actually in the arena" who counts. Socialism is all about censoring the credit which properly accrues to those who accomplish things like providing our fuel, medicine, food, and other goods. Socialism is about suppressing that credit in favor of the second guesser and the critic, and the imposture of those who, precisely on the basis that they have no experience in confronting the actual constraints of business, affect to be able to do those jobs better than those who actually take responsibility for doing so.
Return of the Dupes and the Anti-Anti-Communists
American Thinker ^ | June 13, 2008 | Paul Kengor

The NYT has inadvertently let slip the concerns that we in the public have when Big media hires Democrat operatives--Mr. Russert, Stephanopoulous, et el--to work as "journalists."

In reality "journalism" as we know it scarcely existed in the founding era. They had "newspapers" back then, of course. But the printers thereof didn't have the Associated Press newswire back then. And without "the wire," printers obtained information the old fashioned way - by talking to people and reading things. So that in principle, any given private citizen in the printer's local area might know any given fact that the printer might print in his paper before that edition of the paper came out. Consequently "newspapers" had a different character in the founding era than that which the AP newswire began to enable and produce in the middle of the Nineteenth Century. That is, they were more like modern political commentary publications than like today's journalism. Commonly they were not daily publications, and they all wore their editors' perspectives on their sleeves. Famously, two of them were sponsored by Hamilton and Jefferson, who used them as tools in their political battles with each other.
The advent and spread of the AP, started as the New York Associated Press in 1848, raised the issue of a monopoly of public influence. The AP countered those charges by assuring everyone that since its member newspapers had wildly contradictory editorial policies, the AP was objective. Conceivably the AP might even have believed it - but it is, was, and always will be false. First because being convinced of your own objectivity is the best definition I can think of for subjectivity. And second, because of the aforementioned transformation of the newspaper business which the AP itself caused. The Associated Press, and every AP member newspaper individually, was in the business of selling highly perishable news. The only difference between the information on the newswire and information about the same events carried by physical rather than electrical means was - time. Time was the enemy of the journalist, because people would eventually learn from other sources whatever the journalist knew - and the journalist wanted to attract your attention and impress you by being the one who told you things first.
In short, the ineluctable characteristic of journalism is superficiality. At any given time the journalist is promoting a new story that you haven't heard yet, just as if every day's happenings were - at least on that day - as significant as the bombing of Pearl Harbor. If yesterday the news of the day was as important as Pearl Harbor, and today the news of today is sold as more important than the "yesterday's news," the existence of a perpetually accelerating crisis is the planted axiom of "the news."
If there is an accelerating crisis afoot, you had better do two things. First, you had better keep up with the news. And second, you had better see that the government agrees that there is a crisis as the first step toward responding to the crisis. How are you to know which politicians agree that there is a crisis? Well of course objective journalism cannot be partisan, but just between you and me (wink) journalists label politicians who agree with journalists positively, and those who do not, negatively. Everyone is in favor of liberty, so journalists label politicians who agree with journalists "liberals." And if there is a crisis, "desperate ills are by desperate measures cured. Or not at all." So if there is a crisis, the very last person that you want running things is someone who is most concerned about taking unnecessary and possibly dangerous action - a "conservative."
And that is why the only difference between an "objective journalist" and a "liberal" is in his job title. Any "liberal" can get a job as a journalist and instantly be accepted by all other journalists as "objective." But no conservative can do so.
Recalling Russert as Political Operative in New York
The New York Times ^ | 06/15/08 | Adam Nagourney

Predictably, much of the media only focused on the negative, used the story as a club to beat on the despised Bush Administration, and in the process, adversely affected the morale of highly competent and dedicated military doctors and nurses. Almost all of the positives that resulted from this story ended up on the cutting room floor.

Back in the founding era, nobody would have expected a newspaper to be objective - Hamilton and Jefferson sponsored newspapers in which to wage their partisan battles with each other, for example - and that is only the best-know example of the open tendentiousness of the papers of the day.
The difference between that open, free-fire-zone political milieu and our own frustration with the "bias" in "the media" is not that news ever was apolitical in some golden age but that - with the advent of the Associated Press - the news became far more political than it had been. Without the telegraph and the AP, "newspapers" weren't actually in the "news" business as we have known it all our lives. "Newspapers" were typically weeklies, not dailies, because they didn't have the AP newswire to provide coverage of distant affairs which was any more timely than you might have gotten by hanging out in town talking to travelers.
The consequence of the AP has been to unify the newspapers (and now broadcast news as well) around the idea that we should trust reporters from all over the country and even the world because journalists are objective. The idea that today's news is crucial but yesterday's news is "yesterday's news" is embedded in the business model of journalism as we, and our parents and grandparents, have always known it. And yet if it actually were true that the news was becoming more crucial every day that would imply that we were in an accelerating crisis which would inevitably overwhelm our institutions in short order. The very fact that they are unified around the idea of the trustworthiness and significance of "the news" is, in and of itself, the defining bias of journalism. It is a bias against conservatism - a radical bias. And the claim that expression of that bias is "objectivity" is the strongest bias of all. It is a, if not the, Big Lie.
The Associated Press is a monopoly, ruled by the Supreme Court in 1945 to be in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. In 1945 it was undoubtedly difficult to visualize a world without the Associated Press - and thus without any system of timely reporting from all points of the nation and the world. With the Internet of today, that question could look quite different if SCOTUS were presented with a case which outlined the scope of the impact of the AP monopoly on the country. Because the bias of the AP is worth ten points to radicals in any election. With its quick reporting of victories in states for Gore and its slow reporting of victories in states for Bush - including the notorious wrong call of Florida for Gore before all Florida polls were even closed - AP journalism very nearly turned the 2000 election for Gore. I would argue that no Democratic president since Johnson could have won without the aid of the tendentious monopoly known as the Associated Press. And that is not to mention the effect on Congress and the Senate and - through the Senate, on the Supreme Court.
The Associated Press has lately threatened lawsuits against bloggers who quote the AP too much. And yet that monopoly assays to define the public discourse. Given that it is an established fact that the AP is a monopoly, there just has to be a way to sue their socks off.
Honor, Don't Exploit, Our Military Wounded
Townhall.com ^ | July 2, 2008 | Douglas MacKinnon

This depends on citizens being informed. For that, we depend on newspapers. Even relatively bad newspapers give us far more of the information we need to participate in a democracy than other news media. Television news or talk programs, talk radio, blogs, or any other news media are, at best, supplemental vitamins.
Television or radio news are not even "supplemental vitamins." But then, compared to founding era newspapers or to talk radio and blogs, the modern (Post Associated Press) newspaper is merely a "supplemental vitamin" itself.
Online newspapers will replace print newspapers just as talkies replaced silent movies early last century. As newspapers transform themselves, they must find a way to be profitable, but they also must convince readers that it is in the best interests of readers to support newspapers. This requires that newspapers act not like any other business, but that they act as guardians of the public trust.

The problem is that Associated Press newspapers are fronts for the AP news monopoly, not truly independent actors in their own right. The newspapers have been coopted by the post-AP news model. The newspaper business is nominally to tell the public "what is going on" - but the actual business model is to promote and sell the perishable AP news. And continuously hyping the newest story at the expense of any real sense of perspective turns out to be a distraction from the serious business of discussing what is actually going on.
AP newspapers have always preened themselves as "act[ing] as guardians of the public trust" - even as they have distracted the public from the public interest.
LAMB: Democracy and the newspapers (Dinosaur Media DeathWatch™)
The Washington Times ^ | July 4, 2008 | Chris Lamb

“I mean that we should know better than to take things at face value. My cynicism about journalism and the Democratic Party is essentially total.”

I'm going to take that as a “why bother” then. How do you feel about the Republican party?

I'll give you a hint on how I feel: No better or worse than the Dems (as a party). Some individuals in both parties are what I want in a congress critter, but not very freaking many. That would be why I want them to get the idea that we are watching them. Like hawks!

What good does it do to watch them do exactly what you already know, and they already know that you know, that they are gonna do?
That sounds like a counsel of utter cynicism and disengagement in politics - exactly what the pols want. But that is not my meaning. My point is that journalism has succeeded in wildly overhyping its own importance. Journalism styles itself "the press" - of which it is I admit a component, tho not the only component - but that omits some important points:

Journalism self-defines itself as being objective and - see for example "The National Press Club" - self-defines itself as constituting "the press" of the First Amendment. But the First Amendment plainly restricts the government from requiring "the press" to be objective - and if the government certifies that journalism is objective, and constitutes "the press," the government is thereby violating the First Amendment.

Journalism as we and our grandparents have always known it - tracing back a century and a half, to the middle of the Nineteenth Century - is a creature of the telegraph and the Associated Press. It was only with the advent of the AP that "newspapers" actually began to rely on publishing news which the general public could not know until the newspaper printed it. We take such a steady stream news from distant locales as being the central, defining characteristic of the newspaper, the very heart of its business model - but news in that sense scarcely even existed at the time of the ratification of the First Amendment. The printer didn't have sources to which the general public could not be privy, and consequently there was no point to operating on a short deadline to try to put out the word to the public before they learned the news from other sources. Most newspapers were not dailies but weeklies - and some had no deadline at all, and just went to press when the printer thought he was good and ready.

The business model of pre-Associated Press newspapers was not that of the AP newspapers but was much more like that of The Nation or National Review - they depended for their audience not on their news gathering/dissemination but on their interpretation of events - the perspective of the printer. They made no pretense to objectivity; they couldn't do so with a straight face, and their competitors were not about to accept any such imposture without engaging in the heaviest ridicule of which they were capable. They were not independent of the political parties; indeed I would argue that the paper which Jefferson sponsored to attack the politics of Alexander Hamilton - and to respond to the attacks by the paper Hamilton himself sponsored for reciprocal purposes - was possibly the embryo of the Democratic Party.

The rules which journalism proposes as constituting their objectivity do not reflect the public interest but rather what interests the public - and that is quite a different matter. "There's nothing more worthless than yesterday's newspaper" is a counsel of superficiality, "'Man Bites Dog,' not 'Dog Bites Man'" is a counsel of unrepresentativeness, and "If it bleeds, it leads" is a counsel of negativity. IOW, there is always news, and the news is always bad, and the news is always important even if it doesn't really signify anything enduringly true . In that sense, what defines newspapers is not the public interest, it is actually radicalism. Consequently there is no reason for so-called "objective journalism" to be independent of the Democratic Party, nor vice versa. In fact there is a powerful symbiosis between the two, which explains why there is a revolving door between journalism and Democratic, but not Republican, political operatives.

In this article, Thomas Sowell is merely arguing that one of the defining characteristics of journalism - its rush to judgement - is not in the public interest. No matter how useful journalists find it for the purpose of interesting the public.
Bad "News" (Thomas Sowell) Townhall.com ^ | August 5, 2008 | Thomas Sowell

If you read the criticism of the Jerome Corsi book that is picking up speed in the liberal media, you will find much similarity and overlap. . . .
It is not surprising that the media have chosen sides, but it remains frustrating.

Extremely frustrating, Mark. If the liberal media had done their job, Obama would've lost the nomination. The entire liberal establishment is in the tank for Obama.

Part of the frustration can be alleviated, though - especially if Mark reads this and considers it. So much of the frustration is due to the way we-the-people, and not just Democratic and "moderate" sheeple, continue to buy one of the biggest con jobs since Eve took the serpent's word about the apple. Namely, that there is some reason that journalism as such could be, should be, and is, "objective." That actually is easily refuted.
The claim of journalistic objectivity didn't exist in the founding era when the First Amendment was proposed and ratified. For the very good reason that journalism itself scarcely existed back then. Yes, there were newspapers - but, lacking the AP newswire (the first telegraph (between Washington and Baltimore) wasn't opened for business until May 24, 1844), your local "news"paper printer did not systematically have access to news that the man in the street couldn't learn as fast as the printer learned it. In recognition of that fact, "newspapers" of that time were usually weeklies, not dailies - and some "newspapers" had no deadline at all and just went to press when the printer was good and ready.
Famously, Hamilton and Jefferson each sponsored a newspaper - and each used his newspaper to promote his political vision and to criticize that of the other. Obviously, neither of those newspapers was about to concede that its rival was "objective." And that was typical of newspapers of the day - their central mission wasn't dissemination of news but, like the National Review or The Nation of today, to promote their printers' political agendas. So much for the idea that the First Amendment "freedom of the press" clause was established only to protect the transmission of objective reports of the news. The framers had no reason to expect any such thing - no more than, in actual fact, you or I do today.
But where did we - you and I, scarcely less than the typical "sheeple" - ever get the idea that journalism could be, should be - even is - "objective?" Simple. We were told that by an illegal monopoly known as The Associated Press. The Associated Press was founded in 1848 as the New York Associated Press, and it was from its founding an aggressive monopoly institution. The AP systematically cut exclusive deals with all telegraph lines to transmit its "newswire" to its member newspapers and not to do the same for any other news service which tried to compete with the AP. More to the point, membership in the AP became the sine qua non for daily newspapers. If you weren't a member of the AP, you simply couldn't compete with any paper which was a member of the AP in the new business of disseminating news from all over the country.
That was too obviously an unprecedented concentration of public influence to escape notice and challenge. But the AP had an answer to the objection to their monopoly - it pointed out that the members of the AP were, as suggested a paragraph ago, famously fractious and independent of each other. So, the AP argued, the AP was not a monolith with a single opinion - and therefore the AP was "objective."
But of course we have seen that in fact, today, journalism does act as a monolith and not as a babel of competing voices of various political stripes. Even when the editorial page of a paper such as The Wall Street Journal unquestionably has an conservative outlook, the "straight news" - the body of the newspaper - has a "liberal" cast to it. The question of interest is not whether journalism is "liberal," but why (and, while we are on the topic, why "liberal" belongs in quotes). In the context of the above discussion, we need not look far. Essentially, the AP transformed the business model of the newspapers from the particular editor to the general "journalism" as an institution. From what we would now call "opinion," to so-called "hard news." But since news is only a subset of what is known at any given time, the political cast of journalism is simply the criteria by which that subset is gleaned from the totality of what the editor knows, or believes.
The essence of the business model of the AP newspaper is attracting the attention of an audience, now. The rules which journalism proposes as constituting their "objectivity" reflect what interests the public - and that is quite a different matter from what is "in the public interest." "There's nothing more worthless than yesterday's newspaper" is a counsel of superficiality, "'Man Bites Dog,' not 'Dog Bites Man'" is a counsel of unrepresentativeness, and "If it bleeds, it leads" is a counsel of negativity. IOW, there is always news, and the news is always bad, and the news is always important even if it doesn't really signify anything enduringly true. In that sense, what defines newspapers is not the public interest, it is actually radicalism.
Consequently there is no reason for so-called "objective journalism" to be independent of the Democratic Party, nor vice versa. In fact there is a powerful symbiosis between the two, which explains why there is a revolving door between journalism and Democratic, but not Republican, political operatives. According to Safire's New Political Dictionary, the meaning of the term "liberal" underwent a transformation "Liberalism" previously meant essentially the opposite of socialism; by 1930 it mean, in America alone, essentially the opposite of that. Such a complete transformation could not have happened that rapidly without the participation of Associated Press journalism.
At the beginning of this post I styled the AP an illegal monopoly, and that was not mere rhetoric. It was found to be so by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1945. The McCain-Feingold act presumes to give Associated Press Journalism rights of free expression which it would deny to those who are not members of the AP. That is patently unconstitutional, and it is an irony of this campaign that patriots to whom McCain-Feingold is anathema find themselves with no option other than to vote for Senator McCain.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2062596/posts?page=6

Mr. Obama is doomed to defeat.

This is the most powerful statement I've seen about the possibility that McCain will win the election.

The article does not speak of the "possibility" that McCain will win the election. It flatly states that McCain will win the election.
Right now it feels like there is a possibility - nay, a probability, based on the polls and on the betting odds - that Obama will win. On November 5 (presumably - there's always the example of FL 2000) that probability will collapse to zero or will explode to 100%. One or the other.
If you know that Obama will not win, you have already bet the farm against people who think that he will win. If you haven't done that, you don't know that Obama will lose.
And if in fact Obama does win, you not only will lose your bet, America will lose big time, and you with it. The fact that we would lose so much if Obama won may have motivated some people to hedge against that possibility by betting that Obama will in fact win. Thereby increasing the betting odds that Obama will win.
In reality a bet against Obama is a bet against the ability of Big Journalism to con the American people into voting for him. The fact that Big Journalism is a monopoly (due to the Associated Press, found by SCOTUS to be a monopoly in 1945) allows Big Journalism to promote its own interests in the guise of "objectively" promoting the public interest. And the interest of Big Journalism is in public regard for Big Journalism. Since the "capitalist system" and not Big Journalism provides us with our necessities, the interest of Big Journalism is to criticize, condemn, and complain about the capitalist system. The positive labels ("progressive," "liberal) assigned to socialists in America by Big Journalism are simply the symptom of the fact that socialists promote the same things that Big Journalism promotes.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2071693/posts?page=25#25