L.A. Times editor John Carroll delivered a scathing critique of news media, which he says "has been infested by the rise of pseudo-journalists who go against journalism's long tradition to serve the public with accurate information."

All over the country there are offices that look like newsrooms and there are people in those offices that look for all the world just like journalists, but they are not practicing journalism," he said. "They regard the audience with a cold cynicism. They are practicing something I call a pseudo-journalism, and they view their audience as something to be manipulated.

Carroll singled out Fox News and Bill O'Reilly far from fair and balanced, but as those who "misled their audience while claiming to inform them." Carroll spoke to a study that shows Americans had big misunderstandings about why the US invaded Iraq (WMD, links to al Qaeda, international support for the war). Carroll claimed that those who regularly watch Fox News are much more likely to be misinformed, according to the study.

According to Carroll, the three most common misconceptions about the Iraq war are "That weapons of mass destruction had been found, a connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq had been demonstrated, and that the world approved of U.S intervention in Iraq." Carroll said that "80 percent of people who primarily got their news from Fox believed at least one of the misconceptions. He said the figure was more than 57 percentage points higher than people who get their news from public news broadcasting."

Carroll had a few words of advise for student journalists; he told them to pick their boss carefully.

"Don't be lured by the money or the big name of the employer," he said, adding that journalists should not allow their integrity to be compromised by unscrupulous employers.

"Don't be a piano player in a whorehouse," he said.

(For counter arguments to Carroll's speech, see The Pseudo-Journalism of the L.A. Times.)