Old News

Although the accusations of moral bankruptcy and peddling "tittle tattle" are accurate enough they still remain vulnerable to the old lie: this is what the readers want. But, as I point out with tedious regularity, the function of journalists in the commercial media, both "tabloid" and "quality", is to create content that will attract the kind of readers (the product) preferred by advertisers (the customer), and, usually, the customers' preferred product is one that is insular, self-centred, trivial and ill-informed. To claim your dreck, whether tabloid sleaze, corporate propaganda or bien-pensant bourgeois wankery, is what your readers want is like the corrupt pieman proclaiming "Of course I use rancid horsemeat. That's what the pies want!"