> When America was founded, the fourth pillar of government was the free press, i.e. the gatekeepers of information. The free press wasn't a pillar of governme

> When America was founded, the fourth pillar of government was the free press, i.e. the gatekeepers of information. The free press wasn't a pillar of government. When America was founded, the "free press" was pretty much propaganda outlets owned by and used by the wealthy to attack each other. One of our oldest newspapers ( NY Post ) was founded by Alexander Hamilton purely to attack Thomas Jefferson. https://www.politico.com/story/2010/10/alexander-hamilton-attacks-thomas-jefferson-under-a-pseudonym-oct-20-1796-043776 https://www.politico.com/story/2010/10/alexander-hamilton-at... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Post https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Post https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_American_newspapers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_American_newspapers And following that, we had decades of yellow journalism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism The press was never gatekeepers of information. The free press was "fake news" straight from the get-go. Even before the founding of the US, during the colonial period, they were political propaganda tools. If you are interested, go read about what Benjamin Franklin's colonial printing history.