But in answer to your question about collusion in journalism, the answer is that of course journalsits are in cahoots. They got that way when they started paying big bucks for membership in the Associated Press, and access to the AP newswire. The newspapers were fractiously independent before then - but the need to get value from the newswire homogenized them.
Journalism as we know it was defined by the AP - and the members of the AP compete with each other in precisely the same sense as the members of Major League Baseball compete with each other. That is, they compete at executing their job - but they cooperate in promoting the fatuous conceit that AP journalism is inherently significant.
The newswire in particular and the print/broadcast infrastructure generally is a "hammer" whose only utility is to spread the alarm about any danger to the people. Consequently, to journalism, the routine variation in the sequence of events known as "news" is, in and of itself, inherently a "nail" which the public should be alarmed about.
IMHO that, in and of itself, explains the leftist tendency of journalism.
http://www.johnmorrish.com/journolist/
Not a conspiracy when it’s right out in the open...
We need a mole...