This question has been discussed to death, maybe, but the election and two postings, one here on Quorum and one by Michael Kinsley in Slate , made me think it might be worth starting a discussion on journalistic objectivity and the political spectrum.
Journalistic objectivity seems to be under attack from several sources.
Conservatives point to the preponderance of liberal folk in the fifth estate, an assessment that Kinsley for one concedes. The left view, the political economy approach, points to the effects of corporate ownership on media content. Of course, the left has always looked askance at journalists' belief in the possibility of objectivity. For this view, the enemy of a democratic public sphere is not the sociology or economics of the media industry but rather the moral untrustworthiness of journalists. I will post some thoughts about news analysis, news frames and objectivity, but I would solicit thoughts on the nature of journalistic objectivity that bypass generalizations about the media and look at the aesthetics, sociology or economics of mass media in addition to their content.