“The republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they intrust the management of their affairs;
but it does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion or to every transient impulse
which the people may receive from the arts of menthe MSM and the Democrat Party,
who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests.” ― Alexander Hamilton
The wire services are continuous virtual meetings of all major US journalism. They began before the civil war, and by now Adam Smith’s dictum that " People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices” must imply that it is utterly naive to assume that journalism is not functionally a cartel.
So much so, that their "conspiracy against the public” is so ingrained in their behavior that everyone (almost) takes that conspiratorial behavior for granted as normal. The cartel - all its members - claim that journalism is objective, and take for granted that “so-and-so is not objective, not a journalist” is a disqualification for anyone claiming to be a journalist. But objectivity is actually really hard, and going along and getting along with the cartel politically is duck-soup easy. So journalism’s “objectivity” defaults to herd mentality.
Journalism is about bad news primarily, and therefore journalism is negative. Claiming negativity to be objectivity is cynicism. Journalism is cynical about society, and (concomitantly) naive about government. The cartel demands that journalists be called “objective” - and that people who equally go along with the cartel politically be called “liberal” or “moderate” or “progressive.” Or some other political virtue. Likewise people who decline to go along politically are smeared - make no mistake, it is intended as a smear - “conservative.”
The journalism cartel and the Democrat Party are joined at the political hip.