First of all I sense the rah rah pro-real estate bias in the media as well.
I don’t really think it’s a big corporate conspiracy though. The most bullish media outlets in San Diego are the San Diego Daily Transcript and the San Diego Metropolitan. Who owns them? They appear to be fairly small businesses.
The Union Trib has been publishing realistic articles on the housing market.
I do think that to some degree the media is just a reflection on the current mass think anyway so I wouldn’t look for any breakthroughs from the media on any topic.
My final thought here is that sit back and think of the times that you saw a news event first hand or happen to be an expert in the field that a journalist is reporting on. Almost without exception in these cases the media account is very much flawed. This makes me think that most news is either biased or more like hapless.
I do have friends that are journalists and frankly they need to crank out work just like the rest of us do, there isn’t any time to become an expert in the field.
