Media is just as dishonest as they've been for decades or longer. The problem is not traditional media, and it's two fold. In the US at least, there's a dramat

Media is just as dishonest as they've been for decades or longer. The problem is not traditional media, and it's two fold. In the US at least, there's a dramatic rise in "captive media", essentially party propaganda packaged as news. I won't name names, but the number one sign is when you see a rotating cast of elites from one party showing up all the time for "interviews" and "exclusives". These media channels are funded and staffed by the same people running said political party. They're essentially one in the same. Plenty of people are fine living inside their party bubble despite more diverse opinions than ever being freely available on the internet. They are convinced that this news source is just as good as any other, and probably even better because they're always saying things that match their opinions. The same thing happens on social media, ML sorts people into their bubbles and hardly anyone leaves. This leads to the second problem (in the US at least). There's a large contingent of the population that feels like they've been left behind. Their culture is dying out, even being replaced. They look at the other side and those people look different, have different religions, different jobs, live in different places, have different cultural beliefs. It's easy to convince these frightened and angry people that the other side is so different they're not even Americans. And party propaganda latches onto all these differences and rips them as wide as possible, which is part of the reason the two sides became so different in the first place. It's easy to sell fear to these people and get them to the polls very effectively. Once you've convinced these people the other side isn't Americans, you can sell them as traitors, enemies, fascists, really whatever you want to placate the scared and left behind masses. Dishonesty of the media only matters if you listen to lying party propaganda outlets. Usually you can tell which outlets are truthful by looking for ones that aren't constantly stoking fear and demonizing people or obviously pandering to one party. Outrage sells to simpletons and manufacturing it is more profitable than finding it in the wild. America is undergoing the same cycle as many western countries. There was a huge population boom post WWII and this group is aging. Their children are a similarly large generation and you're watching an epic cultural power struggle between the old generation that's generally been in power for 40+ years and the first younger generation large enough to outvote them. That's a general simplification but a majority or party positions and voters are sorted along this axis