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But there's hope for her, in her analysis of journalistic "objectivity."

Very little (hope, that is). Her point is valid, but she ignores the key issue. There are objective facts, and objective journalists could report them regardless of their personal biases. And 'facts' do not mean getting a lying quote correct, nor misleading with pseudo-quantitative qualifiers and characterizations.

The job of a journalist includes using language to communicate as accurately as possible. I once wrote a letter to my local paper about bias in language. They characterized those on one side of a judgment call as "some Republicans", while those on the other side (this was a few years ago) were "Mr. Clinton's defenders."

I wrote back and said that, while it was true that 'some Republicans' felt the way the article described, it was also true that some who were not Republicans felt the same way - myself, for example. So the best characterization would not be with a partisan political label, but with a more generic label such as 'Americans.' And while 'some' is a valid word to use as a pseudo-quantitative qualifier, surely among all the Americans who felt the way I did - millions and millions of them based on opinion surveys - it would be valid and more accurate to say 'many' in place of 'some.' I pointed out that using a non-partisan, non-political, 'inoffensive' label like 'defender' for the other side was also a sign of bias.

To show the bias in the comparison, I pointed out it would be equally 'factual' to say, "Many Americans believe xxx, while some partisan Democrats believe yyy," yet it would leave a very different impression.

They forwarded my letter to their Washington managing editor, who didn't understand why I felt their article was biased.

At which point, I canceled my subscription to that newspaper.