Two. Think.

Three. Avoid others' shortcomings.

CBS News President Andrew Heyward believes that network news is committing "Seven Daily Sins". I share this assessment and confirm that identical trends (and some worse ones) are alive and well in France & Italy:

* The First Daily Sin is imitation. How can the network evening news programs be so similar? We're in a commercial, highly competitive struggle for viewers, and yet our solution for standing out in the marketplace is--do just what the competition is doing. CBS research shows that half the viewers of any given evening news broadcast--on CBS, NBC, or ABC--only watch that particular program one night a week. The implication is obvious: To these viewers, it doesn't make much of a difference which one they watch--or whether they watch at all.

* The Second Daily Sin is predictability. How often are you surprised by something you see on the news?

* The Third Daily Sin is artificiality. If you stop and really listen to how a typical television reporter tells a story, you'll hear how artificial it sounds. Even words--'pontiff' comes quickly to mind--that you never hear in real life. Nobody talks that way--except for us.

* The Fourth Daily Sin is laziness. The people I work with put in long hours and are very devoted to their jobs. They're certainly not lazy in the conventional sense. But I think we've all become lazy in our thinking, in our reluctance to dig out original stories and come up with new ways to tell them.

* The Fifth Daily Sin is oversimplification. Our audience is smarter and more thoughtful than a lot of us think. The people out there in America know that life is not as simple as what they see on the news: a world of heroes and villains, winners and losers, exploiters and victims. Yet that's what we show them, night after night."

* The Sixth Daily Sin is hype. Can you remember the last 'story you'll never forget?' How about the one before that? I can't. Over the years we've exaggerated so much that we've eroded our own ability to convey what's truly significant."

* The Seventh Daily Sin is cynicism. I think we're cynical about the audience and cynical about our ability to make a difference in peoples' lives. Journalists today are held in low esteem, but that doesn't have to be. Our viewers and listeners are also hungry for honest information, for help in coping with a bewildering world. We have an enormous opportunity to win our good name back--and insure our own survival in the bargain."