ABSTRACT
Critics have a luxury that those who must make decisions do not. Decision-making in the news media is not clear-cut. Only the biggest decisions are made from the top. Journalists and their bosses, more than in most occupations, must make hundreds of decisions a day affecting other people's lives. Journalism's best defense against restraint from outside is more selfrestraint. Journalists are incessantly asked who they think will be the nominees or the next president. Posturing aside, journalists neither choose their occupation nor engage in it as a career to do public good. Journalists go astray, at the expense of their work and the public interest, when they vest themselves with a special aura of superiority, as truth seekers in the service of the republic, custodians of the public morals. For daily journalists, in print and television, the built-in hazards of speed and the ticking clock of deadlines will always lead to error.
