Many of us for too long now have been meek and mild and mediocre. As journalists, we have stopped trusting our own instincts. Rather than do that, we convene a focus group. Rather than make a command decision about what we consider news, we call a consultant. When you start trying to shape news for the people your advertisers want to attract, you've already perverted the process.
Newspapers engage in the same dumbing down.
Tabloid TV as bad as it is, can be a whole lot more honest than other forms of TV journalism, which I condemn much more heartily. They include viewer-sensitive news and civic journalism. They are designed to be public relations tools. Our job is to tell people the things they don't know. Our job is to tell people the things they can't ask for in a survey.