I have been lucky. In three years working at The Economist I have been free, by and large, from constraints of space and the need for gee-whizzardry which often besieges those working for less earnest publications. The magazine has given me time for careful research and allowed me to pursue my passion for the nitty-gritty of incremental scientific discovery. Rather, in that moment of truth, I suddenly knew that I was simply a medium, a channel of communication to the material world from a world of higher beings - scientists. To a large extent, all journalists serve as intermediaries between a public which does not have the time or the means to find out what is going on in a given area, and various figures, be they soldiers, politicians or scientists who are engaged in something worthy of comment.
Journalism is inherently voyeuristic.
This is not to say that it is not powerful. But writing about science seems to me to be more analogous to forecasting the weather. You can say what you like, sometimes you will be right and sometimes not, what you say may encourage people to carry an umbrella - but however much you sing and dance you won't make any difference to the weather itself. Likewise, in writing about science, you may change the public perception of science and scientists, you may even have some effect on government policy, but you won't have any impact on scientists. Science journalists behave as praise singers for science, channels of information from higher beings to ignorant mortals.