I think J School has been dumbed down, as has happened in other fields of study as well.
And, many who go to J School are liberal to start with, and have been inspired by liberal media members such as Woodward and Bernstein and Cronkite. They have a mindset that they want to save the world with their reporting.
Is it J School, or Editor training, that has suffered? Reporters can write anything they want, but the garbage is supposed to do be edited out. And if the AP editors don’t scrub the garbage, the media outlet can do the scrubbing.
There’s more than one person involved in trying to get a fire going here.