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Very interesting philosophical discussion. My philosophy is that we ought to oppose leftism on the very fundamental philosophical level:

"philosophy" means "love of" (philo) "wisdom" (sophy).

"sophistry" means wisdom.
The sophist argues from the assumption of his own wisdom, resulting in the trivial argument, "I am wise and you are not. You disagree with me. Therefore you are wrong." The philosopher replies, "I do not claim to be wise, but I love wisdom and am ready to hear your facts and your logic. But not your claims to superior virtue which you cannot prove."
It is my opinion that journalism as we have known it all our lives is not something which always existed, but something which is an artifact of the telegraph and the monopolistic Associated Press. In the founding era papers were often weeklies, or even irregularly published - and therefore did not deliver news any faster than you could get it by word of mouth. With the advent of the high speed printing press the printers had bandwidth they needed to fill, and became aggressive in pursuing news stories to fill up space. The AP filled that need admirably - and gave the news editor sources which the general public did not have access to.
When the editor had that, he was in a position to talk down to the reader, and he used his propaganda power to promote the conceit that journalism is "objective." Note that I did not say that the editor said he was objective and other journalists were not - it is critical to understand that journalism in general had to be set up on a pedestal because they all have the same source and are essentially fronts for the Associated Press. At root, journalism as we know it is a monopolistic enterprise - the establishment in America, if that term has any meaning at all.
There is no proof - no way to prove - that journalism is objective. The lack of bias is an unprovable negative, and the con of the journalist is that the fact that it couldn't be proved if it were true shows that we must assume that in fact it is true. It would be impolite to say otherwise, just as it would be impolite to say that a woman is immoral just because she cannot prove that she did not sleep with twenty different men last year. But the situations are not comparable because

claiming to be objective is logically very similar to claiming to be wise (is there any such thing as "unwise objectivity?"), and that means that the journalist's claim of objectivity puts me at an unfair disadvantage if I disagree with the journalist about something important.

there is evidence that the claim of journalistic objectivity is false.
First, assuming that you are objective is the very essence of subjectivity. Second, journalism claims to be not only objective but important, and yet journalism does not do things but only criticizes those who do. Theodore Roosevelt said that "It is not the critic who counts . . . the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena . . ." But journalism not only criticizes the doer, it praises the fellow critic by applying the positive labels "liberal" and "progressive" to him.
And third, of course, is the historical record of cases where journalism has promoted - often, continues to promote - notions which are provably false. It was patent from the beginning that Michael Nifong was abusing his office when he tried the Crystal Mangum charges in the newspaper. It was patent from the moment that Dan Rather made his "Killian memos" charges that, having only copies and not originals of the putative memos, and no chain of custody for them, CBS could not possibly know that the "memos" were authentic - and it was very quickly demonstrated that it was extremely improbable that the documents had been produced on a machine which even existed at the time the "memo" putatively were written. And on and on; one could go down the list of charges of bias which Ann Coulter lays and documents in Slander.
In sum, leftism is simply criticism and second guessing of the doer by those who take no responsibilty for results. It is supported by the propaganda power of a monopolistic news industry which selectively throws data at us in a confusing cloud to obscure the lack of evidence for the wisdom of its worldview, and is comfortable making baseless ad hominum arguments. Journalism as we know it is inherently leftist - and leftism is sophistry.
Natural Law and Child Abuse American Thinker ^ | November 24, 2007 | Ed Kaitz