I think the reflexive mistrust in all "establishment" papers, magazines, journals, etc is mostly due to the chatter about them on social media. People have fawn

I think the reflexive mistrust in all "establishment" papers, magazines, journals, etc is mostly due to the chatter about them on social media. People have fawning praise or ruthless scorn for an article, usually based on some combination of the headline and what everyone else is posting about it. Sometimes this bleeds into the traditional journalism itself, leading to media chasing meme/clickbait topics, but I think "we the people" are not as innocent as we like to feel we are.