This is no longer an academic question, or dinner-party quibble, since public trust in the media is at an all-time low. A simple explanation is “generation gap” — a phrase last heard widely during the great youth revolt in the 1960s. Most senior media professionals find themselves on the wrong side of the age divide. Their concerns about the future are rather less urgent than those of the young men and women facing student debt, poorly paid internships, zero-hour contracts, long-term unemployment, and permanent exclusion from the housing market.

There is also the class gap. Most senior journalists have enjoyed relatively high socioeconomic mobility in recent decades. Their exposure to what for many people are everyday realities — underfunded schools and hospitals, insecure jobs, communities hollowed out by de-industrialization — is limited.

But nothing has dated political vision today more than obsolete ideology — especially among those who claim to be free of it.