Imagine having an absolute monopoly as a news service for U.S. daily newspapers and still have newspapers from coast to coast dropping your service even though there is nowhere else to turn.

Such is the plight of the world's largest news-gathering organization, the Associated Press.

Each new issue of the newspaper industry's trade journal, Editor & Publisher, brings new reports of major newspapers doing something that was once unthinkable – giving notice to the AP, their major source of national and international news. Despite the fact that there is no other serious alternative, and despite the fact that AP is actually a nonprofit cooperative of the member newspapers, the trend is toward dropping the service and its increasingly exorbitant costs.

Yet, I suspect there is another reason so many cost-conscious newspapers are giving AP the ax. That is because, in recent years, AP has begun to reveal a shameless unprofessional political and cultural bias to even the most non-discerning reader.

Lately, AP has taken to directing its wrath toward Internet news alternatives like WND – that are directly or indirectly responsible for contributing to the collapse of the U.S. newspaper industry and so threatening to the likes of AP.

In the latter stages of the election campaign, for instance, the AP took to describing WND staff writer and No. 1 New York Times best-selling author Jerome Corsi as "discredited Obama critic." This highly opinionated and indefensible label actually became an AP prefix to Corsi's name – "discredited Obama critic Jerome Corsi."

You will notice AP never mentioned Corsi's books in the last two election cycles were No. 1 best-sellers.

You will notice AP never mentioned Corsi has authored 16 books in his life.

You will notice AP never mentioned Corsi holds a Ph.D in political science from Harvard University.

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And you will notice AP never mentioned Corsi was designated in 1981 with a top-secret clearance by the Reagan administration to provide government officials with anti-terrorism and hostage-survival training.

All the AP wants you to know about Corsi is that he is a supposed "discredited" Obama critic.

Now, I've been in the news business for 30 years. I bet I have more experience than the top editorial executives at AP. I've run daily newspapers. I've taught journalism at prestigious U.S. universities. And I've always believed that if you make a declaration like "discredited" in a news story that you have to back it up. Inflammatory labels are dangerous enough even when the reporter does provide some justification.

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But there is no explanation in this story about why Jerome Corsi is discredited. Can you guess why? Because he is certainly not discredited – with anyone except the biased, myopic, pathetic excuses for journalists at the AP. (Yes, that means you, Philip Elliott, whoever you might be.)

Let me give you another example of the way the operatives at the discredited AP perform their own unique brand of journalism.

If you're short on time, just skip to the bottom of this report by the illustrious AP staffer Martha Mendoza, headlined "Facts don't get in the way of Web political rumors."

Here a substantial 18-part series of columns by Jack Cashill on who wrote the autobiography of the leading presidential candidate, and the eventual winner of the race, dismissed as rumor-mongering. (You can catch up with the latest column on the subject here.)

"The Rumor: 1960s radical William Ayers wrote Obama's autobiography 'Dreams From My Father."

You will notice AP doesn't proclaim Cashill's work untrue. Instead, it proclaims it "unsubstantiated." It then contributes this debate: "Obama says he didn't meet Ayers until 1995. The book was published in 1995, which means most of it would have been written in 1994. Blogger Jack Cashill has been floating this rumor at the WorldNetDaily website – and it has moved on to many more – hinting that the book's 'fierce, succinct and tightly coiled social analysis' was closer to Ayers' style than Obama's. 'Utter hogwash,' said Obama organizers."

What I found most annoying about this dismissive report was the descriptive for Cashill. "Blogger?" Is that who Jack Cashill is?

Let me tell you who Jack Cashill is.

He's a popular WND columnist to be sure – not a blogger. He is also executive editor of Ingram's Magazine, Kansas City's premier business publication. He has written for Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Weekly Standard. He is the author of five non-fiction books, a collection of essays and one novel. Like Corsi, he, too, has earned a Ph.D., his being from Purdue University in American studies.

Do you think Martha Mendoza has credentials like that?

I don't think so.

But now you know why AP is losing credibility – and newspaper clients.

Order Farah's book "Stop the Presses: The Inside Story of the New Media Revolution"