Well, it's only freedom if you're a liberal journalist, or in this case a member of JournoList.
It has been contended for quite a long time that the majority of traditional media publications (print and tv) have heavily left-leaning reporters, editors, editorials, and articles. It has now come to light that a group of far-left "journalists" conspired together to shape the news of 2008 in a way that helped and protected Obama while vilifying his opponents and critics. Many of these members of a group called JournoList were editorialists/commentators, but there are several who wrote prominent news pieces for papers and magazines.
Their news-shaping conspiracies included several ways to attack conservatives when certain election-changing events occurred.
It kicked off when they vilified Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos (two people who are not conservatives) for challenging Obama about Jeremiah Wright. They had allowed it to stay around when "right-wingers" were the only ones discussing the issue, but as soon as those two made it mainstream, the story had to be covered up. How did they do that? By picking some of Obama's critics and call them racists. They are racists as a statement of fact without any proof. By calling them racist, it would turn attention away from the Obama-Wright connection as those critics would have to spend all their time defending themselves from the baseless attacks. You can read more about this here.
Another vein of their attacks was the wish of some members to have the government shut down Fox News. Instead of believing in the freedom of the press, some of the individuals from Journolist believed that since Fox News was asking challenging questions in their news segments and having conservative commentators dominate commentator segments, then they didn't deserve to have an FCC license. Some members did question the thought that the government could pick and choose the licenses, but others went so far as to say that with Fox around, censorship was a matter of tactics rather than principles. Please read the article and the actual excerpts. On a related note, one of these Journolist members gets a vote as to whether Fox News deserves the open seat on the front row of the White House briefing room. Fox News is the only TV Media that does not have a front row seat. Article here.
The very day Palin was nominated as McCain's running mate, the members of Journolist strategized how they would respond and attack her. Some considered attacking her lack of experience, but they knew the McCain camp would just counter by flipping the question back on their favored candidate. They knew her refusing to abort a Down's Syndrome child would be an appealing trait, so they attacked how her campaigning would hurt her family values. Some worked to find ways to attack her "maverick" statements while others called her choice as sexist and needing to attack her ideology. These "strategy sessions" were included in Joe Klein's Time article. Main article and Palin's reply.
Finally, when Obama won the election, the "media" members rejoiced about his winning. You can read their completely objective viewpoints here.
Overall, these acts by liberals in the media are completely unethical. They wanted their political views to be expressed in news coverage, so they actively developed any talking points that would attack critics, build up Obama, cover up harmful stories. Then they marched together in distributing these biased viewpoints under the guise of neutrality in order to make sure their candidate won the election. Anybody who reads these stories, whether you're liberal or conservative, should be absolutely ashamed of these dishonest acts.
You can read the summary of the series' editor here.
