Describing his new rules of news, Dan Gillmore provides 22 rules that he would insist upon if he ran a news/media outlet (and, in turn, describes what many would believe to be the ideal news organisation).
This particularly caught my eye:
We would replace PR-speak and certain Orwellian words and expressions with more neutral, precise language. If someone we interview misused language, we would paraphrase instead of using direct quotations. (Examples, among many others: The activity that takes place in casinos is gambling, not gaming. There is no death tax, there can be inheritance or estate tax. Piracy does not describe what people do when they post digital music on file-sharing networks.)
I also second the comment on ensuring journalists have at least a “basic grasp of mathematics and statistics”. A later comment frames this as, “all articles concerning science should involve input and final review by at least one journalist qualified in a relevant scientific field”.