Most journalists didn’t go to journalism school to learn to report the truth. They studied journalism so that someday they could effect “change”.
I'm impressed. Somebody else on FR not only can spell "effect" correctly, but knows how to use it as a verb.
>>>>> They studied journalism so that someday they could effect “change”. <<<<<<<
This is absolutely correct and I have heard some whacky opinions from practicing journos about their own alleged powers of “objectivity” coupled with their bizarre (and conflicting) conviction that they know which “change” is best for everyone else.
H.L. Mencken properly understood his own role as both a journo and aesthete, and never took himself (or anyone else) very seriously.
He’d guffaw and snicker at today’s solipsistic “graduate students of journalism.”