I was interested in what you have to say about journalists abrogating their traditional role in favour of merely repeating claims as though they were robots. I pretty much agree with you that many journalists have lost touch with their true purpose, less so (I hope) in Europe than the US, but it is a problem everywhere.
I thought you might like to see this clip, which presents similar ideas. It is by Adam Curtis, the author of the controversial documentary The Power of Nightmares.
Curtis suggests that the fall of the Berlin Wall, coming as it did, as a surprise to most journalists, undermined their confidence in their ability to predict and describe the world.
What do you think would happen if the press corps got some guts and said, "I'm sorry, but you didn't answer the previous question. I'm going to skip the question I had prepared and ask you to give an actual answer to it"?
Heh... This would happen. The good stuff starts about three minutes in.
A classic! We could do with a lot more of that sort of thing and a good deal less soft-soaping by interviewers. Some proper investigative journalism would be nice as well, instead of human interest piffle and empty rolling news.
Mutate and Survive.
"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade