Australia is fortunate to have media that are generally competent and occasionally very good indeed. But the print and broadcast material we consume every day can also be perverse, shallow, illogical, infuriatingly opportunistic, crassly commercial, insufferably pretentious and rarely witty. We hold journalists in particular contempt and believe they deal in prefabricated versions of reality - false assumptions of habitual values rather than open-minded observation. It's a unique form of media-manufactured mediocrity. The public distrusts their media but continue to use them. They have little choice. We get The Media We Deserve.