I watched that CSPAN show.
The press that they are talking about believes the Iraq war to be a folly and blames itself for not asking the so-called tough questions. They also believe the Islamic threat to be something amorphous and any US reaction to it as "unfair".
Because they learned "truth to power" in college, they have nothing buy disdain for power, legitimate or illegitimate.
They are cynics, not skeptics. They believe in nothing but some kind of unattainable perfection. They live with a smug attitude of self-satisfied angst because they see that the world is so unfair and that they are the enlightened ones fighting against it. In short, apocalyptics.
Unfortunately, they really don't know what to think about the reality that Iran is willing to start lobbing nukes all over the Middle East. They don't believe Saddam would happily have done the same. And they have no regard for the dismantling (hopefully) of the AQ Kahn network.
In effect the intellectual elite is a cult of atheist apocalyptics, locked in a battle with Muslim apocalyptics that they don't believe in, because they don't believe in anything.
My take is that everyone believes in something, and journalists are cynical about everyone except Big Journalism. About Big Journalism, journalists are naive as a babe. And that maps to naivete about socialism as well. There is no difference between the interest and self image of journalism and the interests of socialism.