Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

0: https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/

Yes, but not really the issue... thats why there is an editing process. If an org has a proper editing process then a lot of that gets accounted for.

Most of the skewed stories come from organizations that don't employ trained editors, don't have a clear editorial workflow, don't have a corrections policy, and don't have fact-checkers.

I would argue that medium to large orgs like CNN, NYTimes, Washington Post, Bloomberg, WSJ, FT, Guardian, USA Today, Texas Tribune, LA Times, SF Chronicle, New Yorker, Vox, NPR, Houston Chronicle all have these processes in play and are reliable.

(Yes, there are always stories with issues that get though out of thousands and thousands of otherwise solidly reported pieces. No system is perfect.)

Though of course this is the wrong reaction; it has always trickled through. Only that, in the past, it took a few years or decades to be come publicized knowledge that the media lied about every war, about every economic policy, created panics to serve its profit motive and aided the authorities, legitimizing their power; now, we know this in an instant. Thank decentralized distribution protocols.

Every piece of information is produced with interests for audiences; objectivity is a pink unicorn Santa Claus, something you really shouldn't believe exists after you're, like, 8. But many of the structural pressures that sociologists have long identified shape commercial and state sourced news stories just don't apply to independent journalists, who don't have to rely on continued access state contacts, commercial paychecks, don't have to serve ad revenue and corporate PR aims, and who are not organizations whose literal existence depends on state licensing as a corporation. Not to say that there is no structural pressure in the independent realm; ideology still exists, years of socialization in the country of origin with their (often folly) "self-evidence" myths exist, the need to eat and make money somehow still exists. But the pressures are much, MUCH fewer than in the case of corporate and state news.