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When it comes to partisan or ideological media (which may be a redundant as well as an unnecessarily general phrase), the New York Times has no peer (I omit MSNBC which is not a news organization with propagandist tendencies, but a propaganda organization with news tendencies).

Wire service journalism as an institution infects journalists with the hubris that they are “the Fourth Estate,” a.k.a. “the press.” And that they are objective, and that their interests are “the public interest."
Before the advent of the wire service (the roots of the AP trace back to 1848), newspaper printers lacked a cornucopia of stories to which the local general public had no access. Newspapers were mostly weeklies rather than daily publications, increasing the likelihood that whatever news the printer had had also percolated through the community at large from the same sources which informed the printer himself. Consequently, newspapers were about the opinions and perspectives of their printers as much as they were about the news.
The Associated Press was a monopolistic, aggressively cutting exclusive deals with telegraph operators to suppress any attempts at competitive wire services. But that is not the central fact about wire service journalism. The central fact of wire service journalism is the hubris “the wire” engenders in the journalist. The idea that any particular newspaper was objective would have been laughable to competitors before the wire service transformed the industry. But to be effective, the wire service required that the public be induced to trust reports from reporters whom the local newspaper editor didn’t even know, much less employ. Thus, the AP produced its style guides to moderate the personal idiosyncrasies of reporters, homogenizing the tone of reporting. And the AP proclaimed - at the very time that it was homogenizing journalism - that since it was a group of newspapers which famously didn’t agree on much of anything, the AP itself was objective.
But the central fact of wire service journalism is that the claim that “all journalists are objective” actually makes journalists less objective, rather than more so. Whether you are a journalist or not, the only way to attempt to be objective is to analyze, and be open about, your own interests as they relate to the topic you are discussing. But you cannot be open about your own interests at one and the same time that you are claiming to actually be objective. And the journalist does have interests which diverge from the interest of the general public.
The interests of journalism are to interest the public and to promote its own influence. Without interesting the public, you have no circulation and no advertising revenue - and no influence. But things which interest the public are not necessarily "in the public interest.” The normal course of expected events is the public interest. People obeying the law, people doing useful work honestly and successfully, people paying what they owe and people being generous and inventive and productive is the normal course of events, and that is boring. Things get interesting when storms damage property, when fires cause damage, when people we trust and depend on let us down. When laws are broken, when wars ravage peoples, the news becomes gripping.
The consequence is that journalists prefer “Man Bites Dog” to “Dog Bites Man” stories, and that journalists say, “If it bleeds, it leads.” And the consequence also is that you cannot document modern history, and you certainly cannot create an encyclopedia, by the mere expedient of accumulating newspapers and ignoring the advertisements. Although the advertisements are famous for putting an optimistic face on the characteristics of the things they promote, advertisements also have been famously called “the only thing that may be relied upon in a newspaper.” But even if you include the advertisements, the newspaper essentially consists of things which are putatively awful and things which are putatively wonderful. Everything but what is typical.
The central fact of wire service journalism is that it produces hubris in journalists, and journalists with hubris call themselves “the press” or “the Fourth Estate.” In so doing journalists set themselves up as being the embodiment of the public interest - whereas as we have just seen, the interests of journalism run directly counter to the public interest. Inasmuch as titles of nobility are excluded by the Constitution, and established churches are excluded by the First Amendment, the idea of a “First Estate,” a "Second Estate,” a “Third Estate,” and also a "Fourth Estate” is also excluded by the Constitution.

The restriction on government,
Congress shall make no law . . . 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.
is a right of the people. Freedom of speech and of assembly and petition is the right of the people to speak publicly, and to publicly listen. And “the freedom of . . . the press” is the right of the people to use their own money to buy, sell, and use devices for the purpose of promoting their own opinions. There is no case for limiting the right to the technology of the founding era, because the unamended Constitution contemplates “the progress of Science and the useful Arts” as a positive good - and because

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Journalism consists of commentary and especially of criticism, and has nothing to do with producing goods or services. And yet journalism is determined to be important, and it flatters anyone who promotes the outlook that criticism is above performance - and derides anyone who questions it. Not only is wire service journalism not objective, a definite political tendency inheres in journalism’s interest. Journalism flatters with positive labels and derides by applying negative labels. Americans believe in progress, liberty, and moderation. Journalism calls one political party “progressive,” “liberal,” and “moderate,” and applies contrary labels to the other one.

The MSM is not the propaganda wing of the Democrat Party.

The Democrat Party is the political wing of the MSM.

If you’ve been saying that for 5 years, it seems like we would have crossed paths before now. Very surprising that I don’t recognize your handle.
My daughter, as a young adult, was amazed to learn that I had listened to an “all news” radio station for years, because for all of her life she knew me to be treating news broadcasts as if they were advertisements for something I wouldn’t buy on a bet. Which is precisely what they are - and, knowing that, I quickly became bored with people breathlessly pointing out one more example illustrating the same twice-told tale.

So I began to analyze why journalism was so anti-conservative. My conclusion is that journalism is anti-conservative because journalists don’t do things, they only talk - and yet they want to be influential. So they promote the conceit that they are the only people you can trust, and they attack the reputation of anyone who provides food, clothing shelter, or security. And they give positive labels - any positive label except “objective,” which they reserve to themselves - to Democrats. And they give negative labels to Republicans, in proportion as Republicans defend the producers against the attacks of journalists and Democrats.
Rather than inveighing against “the media,” I prefer to focus exclusively on journalism because fiction, in whatever medium, would have to be censored in a most odious way to effect any change at all. Which is entirely unacceptable, so I prefer to let fiction pass without notice. Journalism, OTOH, is nonfiction, in fact presumes to be objective as well as true. It therefore is a far juicer target, and - were it brought to heel - would temper the leftist tendency of so much fictional entertainment.
But focusing on journalism, it seemed necessary to me to figure out why journalism has been so monochromatic over my lifetime, whereas I took it that journalism was far more variegated and idiosyncratic before the Civil War. When I saw the title of a book in the library, I was stunned at how obvious the reason actually was. In fact, it’s so easy to say it, that people don’t take my point seriously if I just blurt it out. The title of the book was, “Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails, and the reason I sought was the telegraph. The telegraph, and the wire service - chiefly the Associated Press.
Why should the AP give journalism a single, leftist slant? Adam Smith explains:
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. - Wealth of nations, Book I, Ch 10
And the member newspapers of the AP have been in a continuous virtual “meeting” - not for “merriment or diversion, but specifically about business - ever since the middle of the Nineteenth Century. In consequence of which, journalism has been a conspiracy against the public since the memory of living man runneth not to the contrary. The sordid story of the development of the Associated Press is discussed in the following book:

News Over the Wires:
The Telegraph and the Flow of Public Information in America, 1844-1897
by Menahem Blondheim
Within the chalk lines of their respective stadiums (sp), the Yankees and the Red Sox are fierce competitors. But they are also fellow members of Major League Baseball, and they cooperate in hiring umpires and in much else. Just so, all journalism outlets compete, and yet there are boundaries to their competition. Most notable is the taboo against questioning the objectivity of a fellow journalist. Which means that a Dan Rather can go on a jihad against a GW Bush, airing fraudulent “Texas Air National Guard Memos,” secure in the expectation that the rest of journalism would abstain from questioning his objectivity no matter how damning the evidence might be.
Presumptive objectivity, whether of journalists or anyone else, is oxymoronic in nature. It is possible and admirable for a person to attempt objectivity by scrutinizing his own motives and interests as they may relate, however tangentially, to the subject about which he is writing. But it is inherently impossible for that same person to know that he has achieved objectivity. That being the case, it is the height of arrogance for any person to join an organization which claims objectivity for all its members. While you are claiming objectivity (or suffering others to claim it for you) you are not subjecting your own possible biases to scrutiny, for you have prejudged the result of that “scrutiny.” And if you aren’t doing that, you aren’t actually trying to be objective, whatever window dressing you may employ to obscure that fact. You can give “both sides of the story” - but without examining how your own incentives relate to your understanding of the topic you cannot actually give a full account of whatever side you disagree with - because in your heart of hearts, you don’t actually believe that there actually are two sides to the story.

I’ll see your five years, and raise you six:
Why Broadcast Journalism is
Unnecessary and Illegitimate
Journalism and Objectivity
The Real Enemy
American Thinker ^ | October 1, 2012 | Bruce Walker

It’s hard to blame politicians. They can’t help themselves; they can’t let a good crisis go to waste. But we ought to be able to expect a little more from our media – something a little closer to real life than the political agenda of far-left members of Congress.

The voice of the low information voter. I’m serious. Here is this guy, he knows the score, but he cannot connect the dots. For those of you keeping score, the dots are as follows:

The First Amendment does not require journalists to be objective. The words “objective” or “fair” appear nowhere in the Constitution.

To the contrary, the First Amendment limits the ability of the government to regulate journalists (it does not completely eliminate that ability, unless you think that enforcing laws against libel is unconstitutional).

It is impossible to require that the news be balanced; nobody would have the time or patience for truly comprehensive journalism. Anyway, if you emphasize everything, you actually do not emphasize anything.

It follows that the First Amendment protects a journalist who commits politics. Nobody should be surprised when that actually happens. But there is no reason to expect that a journalist who commits politics will always, or even ever, explicitly admit that that is what s/he is doing. In the present instance, journalism has been committing politics by saying nothing about a case which, were slight details changed, would be an enormous dustup.

There is such a thing as “national” journalism because there are wire services. But “national” journalism based on wire services is homogenous journalism. The primary wire service in America is the Associated Press. Note well the term, “Associated.” The members of the AP are not independent.

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)

The AP newswire is a virtual meeting of all major American journalism institutions. Therefore AP journalism is, after a century and a half of continual “meeting,” little else but " a conspiracy against the public.”

AP journalism promotes AP journalism, labeling itself “objective” and libeling anyone who threatens journalism’s self-image by earning a good public opinion by actually doing things which the public needs. Journalism is criticism and second guessing. Journalism assigns positive labels to those who join in their criticism of those who accomplish things, and negative labels to those who defend them.

Even my husband is shocked when in his Sunday School class, so many Christian men are equally fooled. He counters their misconceptions with facts, and they appear shocked and in disbelief.

I just wonder what we (and DJT) can do about it, more than what is being done now.

That’s why, to me, there is only one issue - delegitimating “the media.” Without “the media” and its ability to propagandize ~~the masses~~ ^{we the people}, the Democrats would be dead in the water. I’ve been on that case since Carter was a president, and I have some conclusions/recommendations:

the issue is not the “media,” it is the specific format of "information” which the media are used to propagandize with. Namely, the “topical nonfiction” format known as “the news.” Journalism. If you are whining about “the media” and not laying a glove on journalists in particular, you are a loser. Granted that fiction can be effectively used against us, nobody is going to support censorship of nonfiction, so it is utterly useless to whine about it. But (as a mater of facts and logic, and hence of law) journalism has its vulnerabilities.

Journalism as we know it is wire service journalism, and all wire services - and most spectacularly, the Associated Press - have a powerful homogenizing tendency. That is, wire service journalism generates "a conspiracy against the public,” as Adam Smith predicted of any meeting of “people of the same trade.” (And the AP “wire” is a virtual meeting of all major journalism outlets in the US, ongoing since before the Civil War, which by Smith’s logic makes a conspiracy against the public inevitable).

Journalism is known (by journalists themselves, and anyone who cares to look) to be negative. And yet journalists claim that journalism is objective.

A claim that journalism - known to be negative - is objective is effectively a claim that “negativity is objectivity.” But that is a statement of pure cynicism.

The cynicism - the extreme skepticism - of journalism is directed at society rather than government. In fact, cynicism towards society cries out for unlimited government to save society from itself.

The combination of cynicism toward society and naive faith in government promoted by journalism is precisely what socialist propaganda wants to sell.

The promotion of socialist propaganda is the “conspiracy against the public” which a reading of Smith requires us to expect from wire service, and especially AP, journalism.

The upshot is that the AP and its membership should be sued under Anti-Trust legislation, and the AP itself destroyed. Because the mission of the AP - the conservation of scarce, expensive bandwidth in the propagation of news - is anachronism in the era of plentiful, inexpensive data transmission bandwidth.

Campaign Finance regulation either has to directly regulate journalism, or it has to carve out exceptions for the membership of the AP to putatively avoid violation of 1A. But freedom of the press must mean that the government cannot regulate journalism and it cannot prevent anyone from being a journalist. The FEC is unconstitutional, root and branch. And the justification of the FCC is very sketchy.

If you whine about “the media” but cannot call out journalism, you can never make progress. The issue is not that journalism is not objective - of course it isn’t, and cannot be - but that the people are indoctrinated with the propaganda that journalism (somehow) is objective. And that the bias inherent in journalism is toward pro-socialist, anti-freedom, propaganda.

Not surprised that 99% negative US media coverage is not seeping into world coverage and views. It is problem here as well. - Reno89519

Exactly. My theory on that is that:

for commercial (not philosophically justified) reasons, journalism is about bad news - particularly, bad news about American society. Journalism is negative about society, knowingly.

Yet journalism claims to be objective, which logically could only be true if negativity is objectivity.

The conceit that “negativity is objectivity” is cynicism. Ergo, journalism is cynical about American society.

Cynicism towards “A” is naiveté towards “not A.” Thus, cynicism is not simply “extreme” skepticism, it is unbalanced skepticism.

As the first page of Paine’s Common Sense makes clear, the term “society” has been distorted into a synonym for “government” but that makes no more sense than, in Lincoln’s terms, calling a tail a leg and then claiming that a dog has 5 legs. In fact, they are near opposites - society being a blessing, and government being (at best) a necessary evil.

American mainstream journalism is cynical about American society and naive about government.

And so is any Democrat, or any other socialist.

America has "a free press” but - because in part of the Associated Press in particular and wire services generally - American presses are not independent. They admit they are “associated.” It is a massive violation of the Sherman AntiTrust Act. And also, arguably, RICO.