With decades behind me in journalism, my favourite quote on the profession is from American journalist A J Liebling, who famously said: "Freedom of the Press Is Guaranteed Only to Those Who Own One."
The second quote, a funnier favourite, is from Adlai Stevenson: "An editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and then prints the chaff."
As we mark World Press Freedom Day today, these quotes can explain what often goes wrong with journalism and the so-called 'Free Press' whose purpose is sometimes pompously equated with speaking truth to power. Sometimes media barons are the problem. Sometimes the editors they appoint or control are. And politicians, of course, are, through the various arms and ways of the state.
The government and sometimes folks, sinisterly described as "the System" can pressure the media baron or the editor to do or not do something. It often happens in winks, nudges, gestures and through what in India is called a "setting".