It's not that much of an exaggeration to say that the default role of newspapers is to provoke political, ethnic, and religious pogroms and to advance various h

It's not that much of an exaggeration to say that the default role of newspapers is to provoke political, ethnic, and religious pogroms and to advance various hackneyed agendas. The brief time in the US that coincided with a relatively trusted news establishment coincided with a lot of painstaking efforts at professionalization and projecting an aura of critical neutrality. Customers stopped wanting that, and the professionals were too expensive anyway. Now, we're back to pogrom-of-the-month club journalism, sometimes mostly digital but sometimes also in reality.