I think what you've said here, while well reasoned, is pretty much the kind of magical thinking about the power of the media and its influences that I think is

I think what you've said here, while well reasoned, is pretty much the kind of magical thinking about the power of the media and its influences that I think is a part of the paralysis around the subject. Media, in your words, is simultaneously purely driven by capital and Machiavellian self-interest, "not working for the public" and _also_ is an entity that should be concerned about the ethics of putting "such partisan and deceptive voices front and center". In this world, there exists a cabal of people, all moving in concert to suppress the truth (which truths? don't know) and release propaganda, all of which, of course, everyone in society cleanly falls for. The problem, of course, is that you're taking the actions of a loosely defined group of hundreds or thousands (or more) of publications, and importantly, _individuals_ working at those publications in the U.S. and around the world and pushing them together into a grand narrative. I don't really think I'm being naive. We've all gotten to see the rise of independent media and the new gigantic wave of disinformation networks that came along with it. The democratization of content creation was a shift of power from "elites" to the common people. And yet, independent media tends to reproduce the same kinds of narratives of traditional media (and often even more nefarious ones), just with a different face. It's precisely because of the relationship between people and the media that there are no easy answers.