And as someone who worked got ten years as a journalist and has a son who is a reporter, you'll understand why I think that saying "a majority of journalists are scum" is just crap.

It's no different from saying a majority of Americans are scum, for example. Or Jews or Catholics or bald-headed men. And in all those cases it'd be perfectly easy to find lots of examples to prove the point. Except they wouldn't prove the point.

It's true enough, the way the newspaper industry is structured - ownership and control, production schedules, staffing levels, all knds of stuff like that - get in the way of journalists doing the kind of good work the majority would like to do, and that shows up in mistakes and in shoddy editing and sensational hackwork. But none of that is essentially different from what we get in the rest of this society generally.

I suppose you could say "the majority of human beings are scum", which would be equally valid - but I'd disagree with that too.