Apparently, honestly is no longer the best policy

So it's come to this: A media analyst is criticizing former New York Giants running back Tiki Barber for not being glib and superficial at a press conference introducing him as "Today's" new correspondent.

"Barber looked inelegant when he criticized his former football coach at NBC's welcoming press conference," groused MarketWatch's Jon Friedman. "Barber should've stuck to the platitudes that Matt Lauer was a role model and that he always wanted to be on the "Today" show and left it at that."

So essentially, what Friedman is saying is that Barber - who's aspiring to raise the bar on the typical ex-jock's career by doing something more substantive than offer color commentary on his previous job's current employees - shouldn't be honest when it comes to addressing questions posed by the media. That, if Barber wants to establish credibility as a journalist, he should lie or obfuscate, right out of the box.

When a media analyst like Friedman automatically expects someone in the spotlight to be shallow and unforthcoming and even chides them when they're not, you know we've stepped through the looking glass in the infotainment world. Perhaps those kind of expectations are what accounts for the generally watery nature of TV news in the first place.