I'm afraid I am firmly a mainstream media reporter. The good news is that "mainstream media" is largely a mirage. Everything from community newspapers to alt-weeklies to CNN to Rolling Stone is "mainstream media," frankly.
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And there's always been problems with the media as a whole, including the fact that, since basically forever, a lot of it has been owned by conservative rich guys who, frequently or infrequently, used it to promote their view of the world via the opinion pages.
But what's happened of late has affected ALL reporting. There's just a lot less journalism being done, and that includes everything from local council meetings in towns of 5,000 people up to war coverage.
The answer to "the mainstream media sucks" is, unfortunately, it has always kind of sucked (and kind of been awesome, at the same time) because reporters are humans and are more-or-less representative of the society that produces them.
The best response to media outlets that suck is to go elsewhere, but the ad duopoly/media meltdown has hit EVERYTHING. New scrappy online outlets, alt-weeklies, magazines, even blogs. It's just hard to make a go of it at all.
The best solution to bad journalism, in other words, is MORE journalism, more diverse journalism, more voices, more viewpoints, more places to publish.
And that's what's been walloped by Google/Facebook.
Yeah, I so wish everyone would see that their data is really valuable to Meta, even if they think it isn't to them, and just leave the bloody thing. That would really help. As for Google, I'm still trying to find a way to extricate myself without being unable to work!
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And that's what's been walloped by Google/Facebook.