The lack of understanding of how journalism works is a serious problem.

1. The vast majority of professional reporters are doing their job to the best of their ability, day in day out. Informing, uncovering, questioning.

2. 20 years in the industry and I can tell you journalists do not routinely make stuff up. They just don’t.

3. There is a vast vast difference between reporters whose bylines you see in the news pages and the commentators/columnists who fill up the opinion pages.

4. Journalism is really important to a healthy democracy. They read the reports and go to the things and ask the questions so the rest of us can go about our lives and still know what’s happening.

Can it do better? Absolutely. Should it be open to criticism? Most definitely. Are some journalists garbage? For sure.

But we don’t want to kill off a vital part of a functioning, open society through ignorance or to prove a point.