If you're an advocate for the truth, you're an advocate for the American people (as a whole), and vice versa. So you both are essentially saying the same thing. It is possible that our nation will stray so far from reality that the truth will harm the bulk of the general population. In that case, the distinction will be valid, and all decent journalists will have to become pariahs in order to expose the majority to the blinding light they don't wish to see.