I've always heard that the media is the "permanent government" in Washington. Politicians come and go, but the bigwigs are here forever. For example, in 1989 Ben Bradlee, the executive editor of the Washington Post, dismissed John Sununu, the first President Bush's chief of staff, as "a jack-leg governor from a horse's ass state; how could he play with us in the big leagues?" This combination of power, permanence, and arrogance — not liberal bias — is often the real secret behind many of the elite media's problems. Because conventional wisdom flows from the top down, many rank-and-file journalists are...