Fox News has changed the rules in 2009. Now the press needs to change the way it covers Fox News.

Rupert Murdoch's cable cabal is now, first and foremost, a political entity. Fox News has transformed itself into the Opposition Party of the Obama White House, which, of course, is unprecedented for a media company in modern-day America. That embrace of the political means the news media have to start treating the cable channel for what it is: a partisan animal.

The press needs to drop its long-standing gentleman's agreement not to write about other news outlets as news players. Fox News has exited the journalism community this year. It's a purely political player, and journalists ought to start covering it that way.

The press needs to treat Fox News the same way it treats the Republican National Committee, even though the RNC probably can't match the in-your-face partisanship that Fox News flaunts 24/7. Think about it: Murdoch's "news" channel now outflanks the Republican Party when it comes to ceaseless partisan attacks on the White House.

The Fox News defense that it's a just a few on-air pundits that (relentlessly) attack the White House and that the news team still plays it straight is, at this point, a joke. What kind of "news" team, in the span of five days, airs 22 clips of health reform forums featuring only people who oppose reform? What kind of "news" team tries to pass off a GOP press release as its own research - typo and all? What kind of "news" team promotes a partisan political rally?

As Media Matters has meticulously documented this year, there is no real difference between Fox News' Obama-hating pundits and Fox News' Obama-hating news team. They have become a seamless operation.

A few years ago, the dumbed-down debate surrounding Fox News was whether it truly was fair and balanced. (It wasn't.) Today, it's whether Fox News is truly a news organization. (It's not.) Yet journalists remain way too timid in spelling out the truth. Spooked by right-wing attacks about the so-called liberal media, media insiders, who certainly understand Fox News' brazen political maneuver in 2009, continue to play dumb on a massive scale and cover Fox News as a news organization.

It's important that this trend now stop. The self-evident truth needs to be told, and news consumers need to understand the extraordinary forces that have been unleashed - forces that dramatically altered the media landscape.

Instead of telling the truth, too many journalists have ducked the issue of Fox News. That trend was especially rampant during this summer's health care mini-mobs, which were egged on by Murdoch's team. Indeed, this summer, Fox News was the (literal) elephant in the room. The press kept trying to explain who or what was the behind the health care mini-mobs craze; who or what was whipping people into such an unhinged, anti-Obama frenzy just seven months after the mainstream Democrat was sworn into office. Yet time and again, refusing to acknowledge the cable channel's purely political play, journalists politely declined to point the finger at Fox News.

It's clear that in 2009, Fox News is no longer in the business of journalism. Fox News isn't trying to inform people, it's trying to misinform them. That's not journalism. It's propaganda. But as long as the press continues to hold up the facade of journalism, Fox News will try to hide behind it.

Eric Boehlert, author of the new book "Bloggers on the Bus," is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a progressive research and information center.

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