At any rate, the mainstream press corps’ alignment with conservative
sources began coming apart in July 2003, as the failure to find
so-called WMD in Iraq began to move center stage. In the wake of that
embarrassment, the mainstream press began moving away from Bold Leader
Bush and his Strong Silent Leadership Style.
For the previous dozen years, they had strongly tended to align with the
right, from whom they took their dictation. (Example: In the
twenty-month coverage of Campaign 2000, it’s very hard to distinguish
mainstream treatment of Candidate Gore from that which emerged on the
right.)
Starting in July 2003, this alignment began to dissolve. And so it came
to pass: By the spring of 2012, when the national press began to report
the killing of Martin, the major organs were willing to take their
dictation from “the left.”
In the process, we got yet another hapless product -- another
tabloid-inflected, standardized tale. But this time, the fake facts,
cloying language and disappeared information all came from voices on
“the left.”
This time, the “press corps” farmed out its responsibilities to forces
on the left! Handed this responsibility by a deeply irresponsible press
corps, we lefties churned the typical reams of bullshit, though we’re
still assuring the world that we created “an honest dialogue” about
Martin’s death -- that we’ve been “fighting tabloid news with truth-telling
investigation and commentary.”
What a manifest pile of crap!
-- Bob Somerby, "DUBLINERS TOO: Skolnik's 'mythical garment!'" (The Daily Howler).