broadcast journalism is by and large a joke. It tends not to attract the same intellects and print. Pretty faces, vapid minds. -- motexvaYour point about the broadcast medium attracting many less intelligent people is unfortunately right.
Part of me would like to be different.....actually be a smart broadcast journalist....which is why I am more interested in broadcast currently than print, despite the ability of print to have longer and more detailed stories. I also am interested in broadcast because of a greater sense of immediacy to the news and being able to tell the stories in a visual manner. But by golly, the broadcast medium is often just pretty faces, with some notable exceptions I have met.
Actually I have a different view of "journalism" than most. As I have used the term in this thread, an "objective journalist" is self-righteous and unable understand not only what conservatives think but even that conservatives think--quite a lot, actually. That sort of person "wants to make a difference"--but somehow projects the idea that only a low-life scum would accuse them of actually trying to do so. And broadcast journalists are IMHO pretty much the extreme case of that.But if you must speak of journalism as being the discussion of "what is going on", journalism itself must be one of the subjects of any analysis of what is going on. And subject selection is the central issue of journalism which must be discussed. What stories are hyped, what are reported, what are "not news?" Always assuming that the journalistic reports are not outright false, the issue is "What is the particular fraction of the truth" that we are being told?
But commit that sort of journalism and guess what? You are in the eyes of the journalistic establishment "not a journalist--not objective." You are instead a conservative talk show host.