Does America Have Any Journalistic Credibility?

The Timing Is Irrelevant In Foley Story - Public Eye

Much has been made about America's pro-Bush televisual media, or anti-Bush dead-tree press (a phrase I have garnered from influential blogger Guido Fawkes). An entire documentary has been devoted to Fox News' right wing bias. The leading U.S. newspapers, such as The New York Times, and The Washington Post have to stave off accusations of liberal bias.

Is this the state of Journalism in the most powerful nation in the 'free world'? A childish name-calling squabble?

The biggest news story of the run up to the mid-term elections was the news that a Republican, Mark Foley, had been sending dirty MSN messages to a 16 year old assisstant.
After he resigned, the focus shifted to how long senior Republicans new about this, with many denying knowledge, or shifting blame. Daniel Hastert, the top Republican in the House, and therefore the man who should have known about this for months (some speculate this has been going on for over 18 months) and taken appropriate action. His defence has always been that this story was a conspiracy by the Democrats to derail the Republicans re-election campaign (rather than provide explanation as to why he didn't act).
However, this post, by the CBS News blog team (a blog devoted to the behind-the-scenes working of CBS News) refutes this claim, because they can quote a journalist who was presented with the story in May (it broke in September). The journalist in question, Ken Silverstein goes into signifcant detail about how he was given the story, and practically brags about turning it away, and then cites a further three news sources who did the same.
Surely the journalistic credibility of America has been truly stripped away when they feel that a story about a man in public office, who has been involved in such inappropriate activity, does not need to be disclosed to the American people?
It's a long way down from Woodward and Bernstein