If journalists are so fearful of contamination by advertiser pressure, they can build internal walls between news and business functions, similar to those American newspapers erected earlier in this century. The problem in many new democracies is that journalists who once had to toe the single-party line equate independence with opposition. Because they speak out against the government, they say they are independent. There is little room for unvarnished truth in a partisan press. His readers were used to being told not only what to think about, but what to think.
Democracy requires the public to make choices and decisions.
This editor wanted to prepare citizens for that responsibility with articles that inform but do not pass judgment. His circulation increased. But all of them, ALL of them, undermine self-governance. There is nothing in the American constitution that says the press must be responsible and accountable. Those requirements were reserved for government.