> It's that it has no interest in ... the truth

Of the major US news media outlets, which do you think care about truth? It is rare for any to publish corrections, and in fact a NYT public editor recently resigned over the paper's unwillingness to be honest about its mistakes.

> We've literally just come off 8 years of Fox challenging the U.S. administration at every turn.

The two-party back-and-forth is importantly not at all threatening to the status quo, because the two parties share power. The role of Fox and MSNBC are to keep the public focused on silly, partisan issues like the validity of Obama's birth certificate.

What endangers the status quo is that the public might actually realize that there are much more important things to worry about and much different things the government should be spending money on.

Hence, third party candidates are not invited to the debates, and issues for the public to become outraged about are offered as entertainment: Big storms, white girls being kidnapped, female teachers having sex with students, the personal lives of celebrities, and generally bad things about living in other countries.

> The Pentagon Papers is a rather historical example, but stands. I'd be interested in what you'd consider a refutation of your claim.

The press has had varying degrees of quality and independence since the days when the NYT was indistinguishable from the local gossip rag. The pentagon papers is one of the high points of American journalism, but we should not assume that American journalism is still the same.

When Edward Snowden wanted to leak information about massive dishonesty and conspiracy by the NSA in domestic surveillance, he did not go to the NY Times. That tells us all we need to know. As it was, he went to journalists who ended up breaking the story in The Guardian, but who were fairly quickly made to know that the Guardian would not support the continued adversarial stance with the US Government needed to follow through with the analysis and selective publication of the bulk of the documents.

The journalists were reluctant to return to the US after reporters had been threatened and jailed.

Among the most notable examples is the way that the NYT distanced itself from Julian Assange after the allegations of rape from Sweden were publicized. It turns out that in Sweden if someone has consensual sex and then days later decides that he or she revokes consent, that falls under the definition of rape. Oddly in all of the coverage of Assange amid these allegations, the NYT did not think it relevant to mention this very important difference in the legal meaning of the word rape in Sweden vs the US.

I have no idea whether Assange acted improperly with those women, but we did not get a clear and accurate accounting of the nature of the alleged act from the NYT, as leaving that information out was helpful in the character assassination campaign the paper had undertaken against him, after determining that the Iraq War Logs, diplomatic cables, and Afghanistan War Logs contained virtually no relevant information and that the officials involved did not deserve any accountability for the revelations that the NYT's thorough coverage might have led to.