A related comment is that the "press" borrows heavily from formula fiction which the ancient Greeks discovered was a sure-fire way to get and keep the attention

A related comment is that the "press" borrows heavily from formula fiction which the ancient Greeks discovered was a sure-fire way to get and keep the attention of an audience. But, formula fiction, novels, short stories, plays, poems, operas, ballets, the press, etc. rarely include a disclaimer that the content is not necessarily factually true. Maybe now with the Internet with many more sources and the ability easily to look up details that have some credibility, for serious decision making people will raise their standards, ask for solid, well supported, information, keep fiction, fantasy, etc. as light entertainment or maybe some conjectures about reality, and otherwise set fiction aside in favor of solid information. E.g., fantasy about computing, robots, etc. is not taken at all seriously here at HN but was taken seriously by much of the US population in the famous radio broadcast of the H. G. Wells story, IIRC War of the Worlds, about an invasion of robots from Mars. Net, now, with the Internet, we have much more information. E.g., for me, since I have no dead fish heads to wrap, my kitty cat has plenty of cat litter, and I don't get the NYT or WaPo printed on paper, I have no use for the mainstream media (MSM) and flatly just ignore it. I can still enjoy fantasy, indeed, last night on YouTube watched the Kirov performance of The Nutcracker, also at YouTube recently watched several performances of "Wotan's Farewell" (it did well communicating the emotions I felt when I was 15 and had a misunderstanding with my girlfriend of 13 I was genuinely in love with), etc. But, for facts, etc. about politics, I can get directly from Trump, Paul Ryan, Chuck Schumer, etc. exactly what they said in full, word for word, and form my own opinions. I can keep copies and links and often do. So, nearly always, to heck with what the clearly unreliable MSM says about what the politicians said. Or, the MSM has just had a big collision with the Internet and better sources of facts and the truth. Good. Progress. Hopefully the Internet is letting us move ahead of what Jefferson saw 200+ years ago. The 200+ year old rot and nonsense of the MSM would not be the first or last weeds killed off in the struggling garden of civilization.