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The American Media in Wartime - Brit HumeTed [Koppel] was an embedded reporter in Iraq, and after he came home he . . . spoke with real generosity about the American officers and enlisted men that he dealt with, and how able they were and how good they were and how effective they were. But he went out of his way to make a point of distinguishing between them and the policy makers in Washington. About the latter he said, “I’m very cynical, and I remain very cynical, about the reasons for getting into this war.”

Cynical? We journalists pride ourselves, and properly so, on being skeptical. That’s our job. But I have always thought a cynic is a bad thing to be. A cynic, as I understand the term, means someone who interprets others’ actions as coming from the worst motives. It’s a knee-jerk way of thinking. A cynic, it is said, understands the price of everything and the value of nothing. So I don’t understand why Ted Koppel would say with such pride and ferocity – he said it more than once – that he is a cynic. But I think he speaks for many in the media, and I think it’s a very deep problem.

Yes. But cynicism is just superficial negativity. And as Hume points out elsewhere in the piece,

One of the problems we in the news business face, of course, is that sometimes there’s not much news. And there’s an old saying in newsrooms: “No news is bad news, good news is dull news, and bad news makes marvelous copy.” And that’s essentially true. Some good news, like Jessica Lynch’s rescue, is spectacular stuff. But generally speaking, news is what’s exceptional, and bad stuff tends to be exceptional in our world. Reporters have a natural instinct, therefore, to look for the negative.

A superfical focus on the negative cannot be far removed from cynicism. Hume is right, that's a problem--but the problem inheres in journalism.
Fox News is just as superficial as the rest of journalism--it's just not as negative. Consequently Fox News reports will stand the test of time much better than journalism which is overwhelmingly negative towards institutions upon which we have to depend--and which are actually quite good.

when it comes to the exercise of American power in the world by a Republican, particularly military power, there seems to be a suspicion among those in the media – indeed, a suspicion bordering on a presumption – of illegitimacy, incompetence and ineffectiveness.

Contrast this with Kosovo and Haiti during the Clinton years. And compare with the reality of "incompetence and ineffectiveness" reflected in Clinton's Mogadishu, Carter's Iranian hostage rescue attempt, Kennedy/Johnson's Vietnam and Kennedy's Bay of Pigs fiasco and even--yes, in this context it has to be said--Truman's narrow escape from complete failure in Korea on the heels of his choice not to include Korea in a speech in which he listed countries the US was willing to defend.
In none of which cases did the Democratic president face a hostile majority in even one branch of Congress. Eisenhower has no such blemish, Nixon's "blemish" is an inability to turn around Vietnam in the teeth of a bitterly hostile Congressional majority, Ford's blemish is the Mayaguez, Reagan's blemish is the suicide bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon. Neither Bush has, as of this writing, a military blot on his estucheon--leaving aside the issue of a certain incaution with respect to ben Laden which certainly was not opposed by any Democrat of note before 9/11.
It has to be said that since the Soviet Union ~~fell~~ was successfully pushed by Reagan, military failure has been inexcusable. But as witness Mogadishu, still possible--given a Democratic Secretary of Defense . . .

The American Media in Wartime - Brit Hume

If you go back and look at American military operations beginning with the Grenada invasion and including Panama, the Gulf War, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, and you study what U.S. military spokesmen said about how those conflicts were going at each stage, you’ll see that they were right, and that they told the truth, by and large. No doubt they made some mistakes, but there was nothing like the large deceptions and misrepresentations that made so many journalistic careers in Vietnam. The military learned its lesson in Vietnam, and it has not behaved that way since. You’d think journalists would have noticed. They haven’t, but it’s not too late: When retired General Jay Garner or his successor says that things will work out in post-war Iraq, it might be wise for Western journalists to wait more than a month to declare him wrong.

The American Media in Wartime - Brit Hume

Quite.
But on the record as Hume cites it, "objective" journalists define themselves by the premise that there must be something seriously wrong with America's fundamental premises, and hence with conservative Americans.
Since that is indistinguishable from the premise of the typical liberal politician, it is unsurprising that there is a revolving door (poster boy George Stephanopolis) between "objective" journalist and liberal, but emphatically not conservative, political operative.
Hence "objective journalist" unambiguously belongs in scare quotes, and an explicitly conservative perspective is a clearer view of history than the so-called "objective" perspective.
. . . and why I treat "objective journalism" as a commercial for a product I wouldn't buy . . .+

media reaction to my book was spontaneous collective silence. I was invited to one good TV show and one radio show, there were a few lines in two or three newspapers, but that’s about all. For a book that was very aggressive with the five leading French newspapers and the way they covered a very important event, there was no reaction. They didn’t defend themselves, they didn’t criticize my book, they said nothing.

This nicely illustrates the problem inherent in attempting to regulate "campaign finance." You end up trying to regulate political speech--but how do you regulate silence? "Half the truth," said Winston Churchill, "can be a very big lie." Obviously, it not the half of the truth which is said, but the half which is not said, which is the lie.

The entire article is interesting and illuminating as to the issue of "bias in the media" or, as I prefer to put it, perspective in journalism.

French Lies About Iraq
FrontPage Magazine ^ | February 19, 2004 | Nidra Poller

(This is, appropriately, posted as a reply to my reference to "The American Media in Wartime" -by Brit Hume)