Last but not least: The journalist and the cigarette

 Smokers among media professionals smoke an average of 16.5 cigarettes a day. This was revealed by a survey of over 1,000 journalists in Switzerland conducted in November. 231 of them stated that they smoked at least one cigarette a day. 269 described themselves as ex-smokers. 43 percent of journalists who smoke consume eleven to 20 cigarettes a day. On average, they have been smoking for almost 22 years, and the misjudgement of their own willpower that is common among smokers does not seem to stop at media professionals: After all, 33 percent of smokers are convinced that they could give up their vice if they only wanted to. Strangely enough, however, almost two out of three smokers surveyed have already tried to quit without success. 11 percent have even tried more than five times.
Nevertheless, compared to the rest of the Swiss population, the journalists are not really addicted to nicotine - according to the Federal Office of Public Health, around 29% of the population of smoking age smoked in 2006. Among journalists, the figure is significantly lower at 23 percent. So it seems that the cliché of the journalist who smokes all the time needs to be reconsidered.