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I am enamored of my latest point of attack on Big Journalism, which is to skip over "anecdotal" evidence of journalistic bias (you could show bias in every article in every newspaper in the country, and Big Journalism would still call your evidence "anecdotal"), and even elide the impossibility of proving that journalism is objective. And go straight to the heart of the matter, which is IMHO that the government simply lacks the authority to decide whether journalism is objective or biased.
Of course the First Amendment supports that position, in that it only talks about freedom, and not at all about responsibility other than the responsibility of the government to butt out. So if freedom is the only issue, the government's opinion about the tendentiousness of journalism must be irrelevant. But further, it seems to me that the stronger case is to refer to the Article I Section 9 edict that
No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States
And simply note that the Associated Press is a private organization which is entitled to call itself and it members and their employees anything it likes. It calls its members "the press?" Fine. It calls their employees "objective journalists?" Fine. There are all sorts of fraternal organizations which give their officials all sorts of grandiose names, and that is fine, too. But in court, those terms are merely labels having no more meaning than x and y do when used as algebraic symbols.
Considering that "freedom" includes the possibility of doing things differently and better, and doing different things - and that the Constitution plainly contemplates progress as a general possibility to be promoted
Article 1 Section 8
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries
there is no warrant to read "the press" narrowly to mean only printing. A literal press means nothing if it is not fed ink and paper and if no writer, no editor, and no composer can be paid to create the text and graphics to give meaning to it. Freedom of the press is the right of Pinch Sulzberger, or anyone else, to spend money on the technological means to promote his opinions. It is a right of the people, not of the membership of the Associated Press (as it styles itself).
Ownership of something is, patently, full control of that thing. If you own something you can burnish it and put it on display, or you can neglect it. You can use it, or you can dispose of it in any way you wish. Government ownership of a press is the very antithesis of freedom of that press. Thus we can readily see that "public" (meaning nothing other than "government") ownership of broadcasting stations - never mind "the airwaves" in general - is unconstitutional. Just as freedom of the press must entail freedom to buy paper on a nondiscriminatory basis to print on, freedom of the technological press must entail the freedom to buy spectrum on a nondiscriminatory basis.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2138441/posts