When Americans criticize the British press, Fleet Streeters often angrily view it as some kind of special American "prejudice." But last week the British press was keelhauled by one of its own members: the Manchester Guardian's U.S correspondent, Alistair Cooke. Delivering a Joseph Medill Patterson journalism lecture at Fordham University, Cooke pointed out that the British press has deteriorated a great deal since the late 19th century, when newspapers tried to be "a guide to the good life.
"The deterioration of the popular press in England is a shocking phenomenon of modern journalism...