‘There are three kinds of people,’ a fellow once said to your editorialist. ‘The crooks, the cops and the people. I’m a cop. Which one are you?’
Maybe journalists need their own category. They’re the ones, to quote the late Ted Byfield (who was probably quoting someone else) ‘who ride down out of the hills after the battle to shoot the wounded.’
What does that mean? Anyway, they certainly hang around sticking their noses into everybody else’s business, asking sometimes annoying questions. And get paid to do it. Sometimes it results in good and useful things. Sometimes it’s just annoying. Some journalists and publications don’t even pretend to be neutral, but the best of them do.