A disagreement with "The Findings in Brief"

I started reviewing for the JOUR 420 final over the weekend and have been re-reading the various assigned readings for lecture. One of the websites, "The Findings in Brief," described the results of a survey that polled journalists and the public about different aspects related to the newspaper industry.

When I read this article back in February, I agreed with the public's opinion on all points, including the public's belief that newspapers had too many factual errors and spelling/grammar mistakes in their papers, sensational stories were "over-covered" by the press just to sell newspapers and a newsroom's values and practices conflicted with reporters' values and practices at times.

But, when I re-read this article over the weekend, I realized that a semester of JOUR 420 had definitely changed my opinion about at least one point in the article:

"2 The public perceives that newspapers don't consistently demonstrate respect for, and knowledge of, their readers and communities. Journalists are much less critical of themselves."

Okay, so this statement may be true for reporters – on occasion. However, I don't think this holds true for copy-editors. I know I've repeated it time and time again in my entries, but this class has definitely given me a new-found appreciation for the work copy-editors do. They are the silent, steady behind-the-scene journalists that make the stories in a newspaper – or at least attempt to make them – as factual and grammatically correct as possible. Because of this work that they do, I think that they do, in fact, "demonstrate respect for, and knowledge of, their readers and communities."