The distinctions between opinions and reports - the line in the sand that differentiates hosts like Rachel Maddow from anchors like Thomas Roberts at MSNBC, or Shepard Smith from Bill'O'Reilly at Fox News - need to be a lot more clearly defined. If there's anything to be learned from Rupert Murdoch's epic meltdown, it's that gossip, propaganda and cheap "exclusives" yielded from the violation of privacy need to be distinguished from news and reporting.



As long as hard-working, courageous, idealistic and responsible journalists and reporters remain willfully ignorant of the corporatization of news, allowing and accepting equal billing with loud-mouthed shills, spitting deliberate provocations in an increasingly divisive substitution of content for discontent, the remaining shreds of nobility in the profession of journalism will be irreparably damaged and news will forever be defined by shallow attempts to generate ratings and revenue, and to push agendas rather than explain th http://amplify.com/u/a18qf7