The media takes a hard look at themselves:

You dislike us. You really dislike us. Or maybe the harsher truth is, we've begun to dislike ourselves.

Let's admit it: We in the mainstream media deserve some of this rancor and resentment after the year we've had. Jayson Blair's serial falsehoods, the New York Times management crackup, the Washington Post's gung-ho reporting (and later re-reporting) of the Pfc. Jessica Lynch rescue, media mogul Conrad Black's financial faux pas, CBS' leveraging of a Michael Jackson interview and entertainment special — the list of snafus in 2003 goes on and on.

No wonder so many people have been taking us to task: pundits, bloggers, journalism school professors and politicians right up to and including the president of the United States, who told Brit Hume of Fox News that he rarely reads newspapers because "a lot of times there's opinions mixed in with news." Instead, Bush revealed, he relies on "people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world." Not only are mainstream media untrustworthy, Bush implied, but also largely irrelevant.

The leader of the free world isn't alone in his meager estimation of the fourth estate. It's no secret that the public's faith in the mass media has been slipping for years, that journalists today are regarded by many Americans as predatory, biased, out of touch with readers, motivated by personal agendas, complacent and complicit with the corporate and governmental powers that be.

I wouldn't go as far as saying the media is irrelevant, but they are approaching that abyss. With alternative means of getting information, the American public will eventually stop reading the daily paper. Sensationalism may work in Britain, but not in the US.

This is telling however:

Mark Danner, a writer and professor at UC Berkeley's graduate school of journalism, believes "the press has much to answer for" for "its surprising reluctance to question some of the major decisions" that were made in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, particularly the rationale for war with Iraq. However, he says, "I'm reluctant to lay all of this at the foot of the press. It's very hard when Congress lies down, as it did, for the press to stand there alone and raise questions."

The guy is wearing his liberalism on his sleeve, maybe the problem with the media can be summed up in one paragraph by one journalism professor. He can't even keep his personal views out of an article about the media's responsibilities.

Update: Here's more:

Hitchens said that simply by viewing its op-ed, letters, features and book-review pages, “you couldn’t convince me that The New York Times is objective. But they insist that they’re objective. This is tedious and bad for democracy.”

Former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee famously refused even to vote when he was running the paper, lest it color his perceptions and undermine his objectivity. Did he avoid bias? Not according to conservatives who called his Post “Pravda on the Potomac.”

“What annoys a lot of conservatives is the pretense” of objectivity by the established media, said Tim Graham, director of media analysis at the Media Research Center, the press’s watchdog from the right. He said U.S. newspapers still seek to camouflage their biases with a coat of objectivity.

But, he said, consumers want their news — particularly on TV — to buttress their political views. During the Republican National Convention in 2000, he noted, Fox broke its viewership records. Yet during the Democratic Convention one month later, Fox’s ratings trailed CNN’s.

The war has amplified that difference, he contended. “Fox has made a conscious decision that they will root for America,” said Graham. “This puts them to the right of the other networks. Left-wingers do not want to hear ‘we’” in their war coverage.

An equal-opportunity critic, Hitchens said: “‘We report, you decide’ is fatuous. Why bother with the pretense? When I’m in the Fox studio, I know what’s going on politically.”