Dean Trails in Race for Positive Press

I read a report of a study some years ago about the so-called liberal media and how they cover candidates. They found that the perceived #2 and lower are treated much more badly than the perceived frontrunner. Seems to be the case again now. Noam Chomsky once wrote about how newspapers, being a business after all, only print what their reading public will accept. Anything outside that and they lose readers. How can you have any true objectivity under those circumstances?