Exactly right.
I smile even more, because waaaay back in the day when the web was something rather new and not yet popular, and we were all still chatting on USEnet, I made a remark that I was awaiting the day when newspapers would be killed off by the ‘net and the disinfectant of actual truth, discovered by citizens, distributed by citizens to other citizens, without newspapers, editors or “jouranlistic hacks” interposing their censorship and spin.
Some pompous ass of an editor puffed up on the newsgroup and thought he was giving me a reaming, spouting all manner of unctuous sniveling about how they were the ‘guardians’ of freedom, and so on. I pointed out that more often than not, newspapers were an echo, not a critique, of the government.
Whoops. It was at that point that Mr. Unctuous Editor then went *really* non-linear on me.
In the end, I remarked to those on the newsgroup that this was the supposedly measured voice of an “editor” who was demonstrating why we rabble could not be trusted to “be serious” in what we reported from first-hand observation. After that, he STFU and went off to stew in his swivel-backed chair, I suppose.
During the past year, I smile ever more to myself, thinking about how that stupid SOB is most likely out of a job as editor, and unless he’s retired, he’s probably been reduced to asking “Would you like fries with that?” a few hundred times a day...
And why not?
What, after all, does the study of "journalism" really train one to do?
What useful thing, I mean?