Dear members of the press,

We saw the rise of Rebel Media, Post Millennial and the Proud network, the gutting of Canadian journalism, the purchase of our press by American conservative interests and the advent of viral bullshit via social media.

You no longer get our automatic respect and we no longer simply trust that your personal biases don't influence your writing. You've replaced reporters with writers of opinion and you have bred our contempt by your familiarity on social media.

Your insistence that you're all uniformly adhering to the tenets and values of professional journalism and we should thank you for your slanted coverage and personal opinions no matter how untrue or unfaithful is nonsense.

You have one job really, and I'm not liking how you're doing it overall, to be frank. A reporter's job is to give us the facts. Our job is to interpret those facts. You've robbed us of that good habit by having ten opinion writers for every actual reporter.

And they will tell you, every time someone complains they're not telling the truth or they're misleading or they're obfuscating or they're cherry picking facts that they're "columnists" not "reporters". Indignantly. With a "gotcha" subtext.

So you don't get to come back and climb aboard another journalist's whinge about the noble and important function of a profession that is, at best, suffering a decline of integrity and even decency.

If your job is to offer opinions, you don't get to stand on the mount and bray.

If your job is to report, to be the purveyor of facts and information, to offer us the details that let us create an informed narrative, then you won't mind if we appoint ourselves the people who replied to the quis custodiet Ipsos custodes ad.

You're not the last word. You don't get to tell us what how we can hold you to account. Those walls of protection you think you have are to protect you from the government, not the people. Yes, we do get to call you out and complain, because that's OUR function in this circus.

You literally shape our society with your words. Your values weave themselves into ours. You think they're so very important to you?

Try being us.

When you act like your bad behaviour is simply the manifestion of pure journalistic integrity, it's insulting.