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The public’s loathing and distrust of the media is richly deserved and indicative of one of Western society’s greatest failings: the free press has failed. Only the fact that there is no alternative keeps it going.

. . . Standards of information and education have withered. The American people, and most other advanced nationalities, are less well-educated and less well-informed than they were 50 years ago. The teaching and academic professions and the journalists have failed. They have not failed completely, of course, and there are many individual exceptions, but they do not get a passing grade. Government can do something about the schools but can’t really touch academia or the free press without threatening the foundation of free society. There is no obvious solution.

People of the same trade [e.g., journalists] seldom meet together [e.g., virtually over the AP “wire”], 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
It is patent that the Associated Press - indeed, that every wire service - constitutes a virtual meeting of journalists, and should be discouraged if not essential. And the mission of the wire service - economizing on the use of scarce, expensive telegraph bandwidth in the dissemination of the news - is obsolete when every Tom, Dick, and Jane can afford enough Internet bandwidth as to have been, in living memory, competitive with the capacity used by the AP.
Antitrust action is indicated. Not only so, but the FCC should be debarred from granting broadcast licenses to stations which broadcast programming which purports to to virtuous - either wise or objective. It is admirable to try to be objective. It is even acceptable to claim to try to be objective. But the claim of actually being objective is arrogant and self-negating.
sophist 1542, earlier sophister (c.1380), from L. sophista, sophistes, from Gk. sophistes, from sophizesthai "to become wise or learned," from sophos "wise, clever," of unknown origin. Gk. sophistes came to mean "one who gives intellectual instruction for pay," and, contrasted with "philosopher," it became a term of contempt. Ancient sophists were famous for their clever, specious arguments. philosopher O.E. philosophe, from L. philosophus, from Gk. philosophos "philosopher," lit. "lover of wisdom," from philos "loving" + sophos "wise, a sage." "Pythagoras was the first who called himself philosophos, instead of sophos, 'wise man,' since this latter term was suggestive of immodesty." [Klein]