Noble-sounding sentiment. However.What exactly do you hold our leaders' feet to the fire about? The dirty little secret of journalism is "story selection." You can hold the leaders' feet to the fire about the Abu Grahib scandal, and make it sound like W should fire Rumsfeld and then not run for reelection himself, out of shame. That is what the BS networks have done for a couple of weeks.
Or you can find some other stories - e.g., Gorelick's many scandals - and go with those stories. Or Kerry's flip flops. The dirty little secret of journalism is that the criteria for story selection follow from your politics - or else lead to your politics, chicken-or-egg style.
Journalism is politics; journalism is not objectivity and it cannot be otherwise. The problem with objectyivity is that it is about like wisdom. In fact, is it possible to be simultaneously unwise and objective? I think not. But the term for someone who boasts of wisdom is, "he is wise in his own conceit" - and it does not imply that the person in question actually is wise. So the minute you claim to be objective you betray your lack of objectivity.
The only way to attempt objectivity is to explicitly declare your perspective - to be self-critical enough to openly admit that your perspective has a name. I am conservative, which means that I think that the big picture is that the preamble to the Constitution defines the ends of good government, and that govenment should stay withing the boundaries defined by the body of the Constitution and the laws enacted under it (especially the Amendments clause) because a government limited to those means stands a good chance of being "good enough" - and a government which is not limited is very dangerous.
And I think that the "always meet your deadline" "if it bleeds it leads" and "Man Bites Dog" rather than "Dog Bites Man" guidelines for story selection lead to superficial, negative, and unrepresentative stories. Which is another way of saying that the rules for profitable journalism are the rules which motivate "liberal bias" in "the media." And that implies that the biggest rule of journalism, "thou shalt not attribute bias to any fellow journalist" is itself the biggest bias of all.
I recommend that you perruse this when cogitating on the venture you describe.
Yes, we will state our viewpoints up front from the beginning.
One way we will have a core audience of knowledgeable folks from the get-go is that every week we will attack top names with hard facts -- both political and journalistic "leaders." They'll have to follow what we say either as a matter of amusement, or self-defense. Take your pick; either one works.
John / Billybob