This comes from a speech Enberg made and this part was published in the online website NewsBlues:

 

“I hate photo opportunities. They’re largely phony and non-substantive and have nothing to do with the way we govern a nation,” said the late CBS correspondent Eric Engbergmore than thirty years ago when he spoke to a meeting of TV news directors. His words ring true now today more than ever.

Engberg believed journalists were letting political candidates manipulate them.

“See if you see yourself in any of this,” he said. “You go to the event. You know the event is silly. You write a story in which you convey to your listeners a sense that the event was silly and contrived. You put the story on the air accompanied by pictures of the candidate riding a horse, eating a blintz, visiting a farm or whatever.”

“If the event has been well-staged by his campaign staff, it doesn’t matter what you said in your copy. The candidate looks pretty good in your story and the next day people come up to you and say, ‘I saw you covered Senator Schmaltz’s event yesterday. Boy he looked good!'”

“You conclude, ‘They didn’t listen to a thing I said. I led the story, ‘Dopey Senator Schmaltz, in another blatant bid for re-election votes, staged another hony-baloney visit to a pig farm yesterday…'”

That is the power of pictures on television.

“I fear we have ceded too much authority to some of the politicians we cover. We ought to try to do something about that,” said Engberg, who worked for CBS News from 1976 to 2003 and died earlier this year. “Where does it start? It starts in the newsroom where editors have to be tougher. They’ve got to be willing to give up those good pictures and give up some of those color stories by saying, ‘This event has no substance to it; it’s a dog and pony show. Let’s write it out.’ It begins with the individual reporter and his or her willingness to stand for what he or she believes.”

“We have to fight these battles the way an infantry platoon fights them—one hill at a time. But it’s only when we are fighting these battles, not when we’re giving in, not when we’re letting the technological tail wag the editorial dog—it’s then that we have the right to call ourselves by what I think is the most honorable title I know: reporters.”