You've come a long way, baby!

Ken Auletta (January 19, 2004):

For the first time, the White House has come to see reporters as special pleaders, as if the press were just another irrelevant interest group.

The State of the News Media 2004:

After spending time at the White House, the New Yorker writer Ken Auletta concluded that senior staff members there saw the news media as just another special interest group whose agenda was making money, not serving the public - and surveys suggest increasingly that the public agrees.

Emailed to Instapundit (July 03, 2007):

We media are an interest group not much different from the automakers, the unions, and the farmers.

And the public's confidence in the press? Not so good, or ... about as well as President Bush, but worse.