True, it is a closed community, but the purpose of that community is to take the public pulse, and when that role goes from recording to affecting to manipulating to dictating, that ability is lost. Hence, perhaps, the surprise.
I don't see a cure in sight. If they win, it will be a self-validating victory mandating more of the same. If they lose, they get to slide back into an adversarial role that they've fooled themselves into believing is a sign of a healthy press, which can be, but it can also be the sign of an utterly compromised, partisan, and controlling press. The lack of introspection on the part of supposedly intelligent people will keep them from understanding the difference.
They just might be surprised we are fighting back?
check my tag line ...
I began to realize how unlikely an epiphany is for any of them about twenty - twenty! - years ago:
A smug local (so-called) journalist published a condescending editorial in a semi-major newspaper admitting the overwhelming (about 90%) “liberal” bias in the press. He justified it by saying that those were simply the positions any “right-thinking” person would take.
About that same time, that same newspaper published a diatribe by a local woman denouncing that same paper for its “right-wing” bias! This came mere weeks after that paper published its editorial endorsements for candidates in that Fall’s election: 100% Democrat.
These two events illustrate the dual narrative that is their mantra:
1) Journalists are more objective and reasonable than the average, ill-informed, citizen.
2) Journalists are so unbiased that they get criticism from “liberals” just as they do from conservatives.
The contradiction of the two is irrelevant to them. You can bet that paper proudly published the editorial (See: we know better than you, so shut up and listen), and eagerly published the letter (See: we are so fair minded, we get hate mail from both sides).