So what can be done to return some integrity to journalism?
We do it ourselves.
Not to brag, but I spend several nights every month attending local school board, county commission, and city council meetings in the area and then reporting upon them on my newsblog.
http://lincolnparishnewsonline.wordpress.com/
Much of what I put into practical use, I learned here at FRee Republic. Just about any poster here is capable of reporting in their local areas.
I have two suggestions: first, to attempt to embarrass journalism by pointing out the illogic of accepting anyone’s word as to their own objectivity, and second, to sue the AP into oblivion. It’s my understanding from the Internet that SCOTUS has, in 1945 or thereabouts, found the AP to be in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. But back then the AP’s mission of disseminating news using minimum transmission bandwidth was so important that it made the AP “too big to fail.” Almost Seventy years later, the requisite long-distance information transmission bandwidth is veritably “too cheap to meter.” So a lawsuit alleging the collusion and the systematic slander which is the mainstay of AP journalism could potentially obliterate the AP. Whether it is possible to break journalism’s headlock on the body politic is a different question, and would be uncharted territory.