The Lowest Common Denominator...

...and how tabloids are perpetuating the existence of same.

I think people live up to expectations, so journalists and newspapers should expect more of them. Tabloids think their readers are dumb, so their readers expect the newspapers to be dumbed down. I'm not even talking about which celebrity is screwing around with which sheep. I'm talking about the crappy stories, the terrible headlines, the completely heinous crimes against grammar and punctuation, and, even worse, the ad hoc slanging about which brings two languages into disrepute.

The media has an obligation to audiences everywhere to be erudite and intelligent. When we start dumbing things down in a misguided attempt to access the "people", we are selling the "people" incredibly short. If people don't read newspapers because they're disinterested that's fine. I don't understand it, but let's just add that to the long list of things I don't understand. But aiming lower to up circulation is not the answer.

Of course, PATTOTE continues to acknowledge that people do idiotic things. But they should at least be well informed idiots.