Well yes, it's complicated. That's part of what I meant by the "media environment." In the post-war period, broadcast media was mostly dominant, but it was bo

Well yes, it's complicated. That's part of what I meant by the "media environment." In the post-war period, broadcast media was mostly dominant, but it was both regulated and subject to the fairness doctrine, but also limited. There were only a few channels per metro area. News was only on an hour or two per day, and it wasn't that popular, so it lost money, but it was required by law as public interest programming in order to retain the FCC broadcast license. The lower production costs, higher reach, and nonexistent regulation of wide bandwidth cable TV created the space for Fox, and then also to a lesser extent, MSNBC. In my opinion, the distorted information propagated by these outlets had a synergistic effect with the changes in the emphasis of the educational system in the late 80s-early 90s to deemphasize honesty as a core American value.