Michael Buerk was in Toronto on Monday to deliver the Atkinson lecture at Ryerson University. Here is Toronto Star media columnist Antonia Zerbisias's take on his speech.

An excerpt:

But today's corporate media are not interested in serious and significant news, said Buerk. Instead, they're churning out "childish" news, dumbed down for numbed out audiences.

"A lot of thought seems to be going into making it thoughtless," he observed. "It seems to be getting both thick and thin."

The "essential paradox," he explained, is that, while readers and viewers are better educated than in the past, the media are lowering the IQ of their output.

"The new, wider definition of news embrace(s) the cult of celebrity with enthusiasm," he said. "The question (is) no longer does it matter but is this what people are talking about?"

In the end, he fears, we will be a woefully ignorant populace, unable to choose and check leaders.

"A flawed media, I suggest, leads to a flawed democracy," he warned. "Ill informed citizens cannot make proper judgments about their leaders' actions, about the actions that take place in their names, about the laws that govern them. The media matter."