CRITICAL, insightful and investigative journalism is difficult to find nowadays. In its place we often appear to have journalists and interviewers who seem to think that their role is to ridicule politicians, trip them up on a fact check or worst of all, humiliate them on the altar of emotionalism.

Of course, a key part of the problem here lies with politicians – their vacuity makes ridicule relatively easy. But asking the same question a dozen times and not getting an answer is hardly an enlightened inquiry.

Fact checking has a place but facts appear to have replaced ideas of substance in this election resulting in endless embarrassing moments as we discover one side or the other has got their facts wrong. Again, hardly enlightening stuff and again largely a problem with politics.

But there is a wider, more insidious development in journalism that degrades public and political life, and that is the cheap use of victims to make a story and to put pressure on politicians.

We saw this with the picture of four-year-old Jack lying on the hospital floor. There was no serious attempt to have a discussion about the nature or problems of the NHS, just a picture shoved in Boris Johnson’s face. “Look, you animal. A child. On a floor. You uncaring b******!” Pretty base stuff.

Using victims and victim voices has become part of the format for presenting stories. Few news stories come to us today without a victim’s voice, preferably a parent, to accompany the tale. Here the hard work of the investigator is replaced by the doe-eyes of the therapeutic-reporter, the insight being replaced by the money-shot of the weeping mother or father. Switch to the sweating politician in the studio: “What do you say to that!”

At a time when showing you care appears to be the ultimate necessity in politics, the “correct” reaction to the crying parent can make or break careers. Theresa May, for example, was savaged for not being caring enough, for not emoting enough in public, after the Grenfell fire. “Cry! What’s wrong with you?” The BBC showed her how it was done by slowly, funeral like, reading out the names of all 72 people who died on their PM radio show.

Tears make for great drama but bad journalism and bad politics. Thought is replaced by emotion. Nuance replaced by a club that batters the politician or expert into submission. Emotionalism becomes a form of oppression and authoritarianism, demanding the public figure dances like a puppet in public or worse still, develops knee jerk policies to the victim’s voice. The journalist, as intelligent, neutral, objective presenter of stories is lost and our public culture is further degraded.