It is a sad, but unarguable, fact of life that television trivialises the news.

Amid all the hot air generated by the Edinburgh Television Festival about whether TV news was being dumbed-down, whether the BBC should move the news to ten o'clock and the ITN legal challenge regarding the 11pm slot, this uncomfortable reality was ignored.

Of course it was. For the most part, television news folk are an arrogant breed with an unassailable sense of their own importance.

The ephemeral nature of television diminishes the news. So does the fact that editors are reluctant to give more than two to three minutes to any item, often very much less. So does the fact that a really good five-second "soundbite" will guarantee the trashiest of stories a place in a bulletin.

So does the fact that if there are no pictures, a news story does not exist - unless it is news of some appalling disaster coming in.

So many television reporters, not usually newsreaders or presenters, are unable to read a script to cover film sensibly. They slip into the silliest sing-song delivery. They emphasise the wrong words. They put their voices up instead of down at the end of sentences, or down instead of up. They do not understand the different pronunciation of words such as the noun protest and the verb protest.

They come to the screen devoid of any authority.

All this has absolutely nothing to do with regional accents or with reporting ability. Reporters are not actors, but when a reporter takes his talents to television or radio, his or her voice and ability to read a script becomes as important as an actor's. Just being a good reporter is not good enough.

Oddly, when they are talking directly to camera or live to the presenter in the studio, reporters, for the most part, remember they are human beings and not Daleks. So who are the culprits, I hear you cry. Name names!

One of the worst offenders is ITN's consumer affairs correspondent, Chris Choi, whose singsong delivery is dire. And his colleague Sue Saville's determination to drop her voice at the end of every sentence is clumsy and irritating. BBC News' Darren Jordan hasn't a clue which words to emphasise and he is paralysed by the camera. The business correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones, Daniel Boettcher and Jon Brain have all perfected the wretched singsong technique.

There are more here in the South. The BBC's Sarah-Jane Bungay, Beverly Thompson and Pauline Brandt have flat delivery and no authority. Meridian's Jon Whitaker and Gareth Evans deliver words without a thought for their meaning and health correspondent Holly Lewis even manages a silly grin with the most serious subjects.

Damaging trivialisation of television news is also increased by growing numbers of supposedly pretty young women with vacuous smiles who lack any substance at all. But that is another subject for another day!