Very good post here, as always, Britton. On a related topic, have you noticed all this focus on "fake news" recently? It came out of where, and all these mainstream news outlets started warning people about "fake news." My school even made the entire student body watch CNN's video "How to Spot Fake News." It's interesting that all these big companies are cracking down on fake news all the sudden. I have two hypotheses as to why this is... 1. It's possible that they're trying to target the smaller, more factually based news outlets, on account of the danger they pose to the big mainstream news outlets. American trust in the mainstream media is at an all-time low, and the big news companies could be just doing damage control. http://www.gallup.com/poll/195542/americans-trust-mass-media-sinks-new-low.aspx 2. It's also possible that they're trying to fight against the clickbait-driven, ad-filled, bright-colored, fake news sites. These websites likely steal a good portion of their business, as they can sometimes be mistaken for the real thing. For example, MSNBC.com.co (which I believe has been taken down, but apparently was once up and running and stealing MSNBC's business. There could be another explanation that I'm not seeing here. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

Oh a thread that seems to be about how the media is trash and journalism is dead. This might be good [i]Blah blah Fox News blah blah republicans are misinformed blah Fox News blah conservatives are morons blah.... oh but the liberal media is biased too[/i] Nevermind just another cancerous political thread on bungie.net. Maybe the next one I see will be different [quote] Donald Trump, the least qualified, [/quote]US born citizen? Check Over the age of 35? Check Looks like he meets the qualifications to be POTUS

I love how you're completely aware that mainstream news is only controlled by a handful of organizations but you focus on fox mews completely ignoring that literally every other mainstream american outlet is overwhelmingly liberal... I guess msn, nbc, abc, cnn and any of the countless liberal publications sliped your mind. I swear it's ridiculous guys like you wonder how we got here like we're in some new Twilight Zone age where facts don't matter but completely ignore how we got here. The Media which yes is predominantly liberal stopped being neutral they stopped being objective, objectivity itself once sought after is now something considered outdated and/or unattainable and therefore not even worth stiving for. If your objection was just that the truth were being suppressed I might actually listen to you but your objection seems to be the truth isn't being suppressed overwhelmingly in your side's favour anymore and that just makes you a hypocrite.

9/10 doctors prefer Camel? Lol did someone really say that?

The narrative pushed by the left is just as widespread and detrimental. It's propaganda. Fox doesn't worry me. Liberal propaganda has been and still is winning. Hollywood, television, and just about every major media source outside of talk radio skews heavily to the left.

BUNGIE IS A CONSERVATIVE ECHO CHAMBER!!! - Leftist and Rightist. Never change you delusional weirdos.

I'm confused about how you're sitting at +11 right now when you're calling out the fake news that won Trump's election.

Oh boy oh boy, you sure are going to get a ton of triggered replies. You posted something that calls republicans ignorant on a mostly republican forum- do you want to be linched?

The funny thing is shows like The Daily Show and Last Week Tonight do better reporting than most of the media.

[quote]Member when news organizations fact checked themselves? Ah yes, the good old days of the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine]Fairness Doctrine,[/url] back before President Reagan, in his infinite wisdom, allowed it to be repealed. Then we've got Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell discussing how big business needs to start targeting and undermining liberals, to make them the enemy. "The memo called for corporate America to become more aggressive in molding society's thinking about business, government, politics and law in the US. " Fast forward to the rise of the modern Republican party (a stark contrast to its older iteration, Eisenhower would be rolling in his grave) and the entire political discussion tracking right thanks to popular talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh. Ronald Reagan steps up and repeals the Fairness Doctrine, meaning that broadcast license holders were no longer required to promote stories relevant to the public interest, and America takes a step back from being informed. Then, in 1996 President Bill Clinton passes the Telecommunications Act, which further deregulated the corporate media and paved the way for media monopolies. Followed by the personal attack rule which required cable/broadcast television and radio to notify any person or group who was personally attacked on air within a week and offer them a chance to respond on air. And the political editorial rule required cable/broadcast television and radio which endorsed certain political candidates to allow unendorsed candidates an opportunity to respond. Those FCC rules were repealed in 2000. Today 90% of America's major media companies are owned by just six corporations. Over the past thirty years we have so deregulated the media landscape that not only are we no longer getting a variety of voices and perspectives, but we've also got a large segment of the population who are painfully uninformed and misinformed. Now Fox news is the most watched cable news network in the United States and Donald Trump, the least qualified, least experienced man to win a major party nomination, is on his way to the White House. Paul Ryan is discussing rolling back Medicare to make way for corporate options, every Republican wants tax cuts for the rich paid for with benefits cuts to the poor, and the truth so ignored that some Republican voters can't even recognize it. Roger Ailes put the GOP on TV, Justice Lewis Powell succeeded in pushing the pro-corporate/anti-liberal agenda, and now folks earning the minimum wage are voting against raising the minimum wage because "job creators, dirty liberals, welfare queens!" Hell, President Obama said it best: "The truth of the matter is that my policies are so mainstream that if I had set the same policies that I had back in the 1980s, I would be considered a moderate Republican,", except ask any Fox news viewer and he'll tell you that Obama is the most liberal, progressive, socialist President America has ever had. It bears mentioning that Fox news viewers and talk radio listeners are consistently the most misinformed people in the country. http://www.businessinsider.com/study-watching-fox-news-makes-you-less-informed-than-watching-no-news-at-all-2012-5 http://www.alternet.org/media/science-fox-news-why-its-viewers-are-most-misinformed https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/09/these-charts-showing-what-republican-voters-believe-about-the-2016-election-are-depressing-and-telling/?utm_term=.6dc4dc7b440d The lies and misinformation haven't just taken a direct toll on the voters though, it's also had the unintended consequence of creating mistrust of facts themselves. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/its-not-the-economy-stupid/511634/ https://youtu.be/lkSGcBtvhnw this is a town hall Bernie Sanders had with Trump supporters. Fox news and talk radio are, plainly and simply, propaganda. They aren't news networks, they're infomercials. "Nine out of ten doctors prefer Camels! One out of ten doctors is a dirty godless liberal who wants to take away your freedom to smoke refreshing, reenergizing Camel cigarettes." Is electing Donald Trump on the good word of Sean Hannity that different from picking up a pack of smokes because nine out of ten doctors like the brand? Now all the triggered people will start crying about the biased liberal media as though it diminishes anything above. You are absolutely correct the MSM is now more clickbait than substance, it's all about getting traffic not giving the truth, but the narrative that's been created by the GOP and pushed on multiple fronts for decades, to the point now where it's all the some generations know, is unparalleled. [/quote] Translation: imma butthurt liberal. Conservatives and their ideas and media outlets are of the devil. Grab your pitchforks liberals! We must not stop until everyone shares the same liberal ideologies as us! This is our jihaad! We must not allow our minds to be open to their perspectives. There is no way we can possibly be wrong in our views. Remember, hold ourselves to double standards. Preach respect, but slander and insult the right. Preach open mindedness, but close our minds from opposing views. Call them liars, but we ourselves are allowed to bend the truth! We must enforce our will until all conform!

God you people are so ignorant Fox became the most popular because Wikileaks exposed how the MSM was bought and paid for by liberals. They also exposed that places like the NYT are run by people who were disgraced from their country for covering up a pedophile ring and child sex trafficking scandal. In the case of NYT, Saville. Your refusal to acknowledge reality and listen when we scream why, why the country screams why, is what lost you the election and will lose you it again And also, on the unqualified bit, read Federalist Paper #68 where our Fathers state that Trump is more qualified than Clinton. The fact that he won the college means he is more qualified than Clinton.

Oh jeez, what are you crying about now? Oh my FOX News is #1! Yeah duh, they have no competition for news reported from a conservative POV, shocker.

I fully agree that biased news is a real problem, but to shove biased liberal news to the side as a footnote is frankly ignoring a just as huge problem as biased republican news. Remember that news outlets like CNN and MSNBC were reporting on whatever they could find to slander Trump leading up to the election, even reporting on a suit claiming Trump was a pedo with no evidence and was immediately dropped after he won. Even now they're desperately painting his cabinet choices in a bad light.

Is 60 Minutes even legit anymore?

If you watch any news on T.V. that isn't local then you get your news from biased, corrupt, brainwashing elitists. Fox news is garbage. CNN is garbage. MSNBC is garbage. The least biased of the news outlets is PBS, but even they have their moments. Fox is clearly the most biased and corrupt of the bunch with CNN very minutely in second. If you want the least biased news I'd recommend BBC and Reuters. You also get news about the rest of the world. Unfortunately we are in an age where our news has an agenda. Think critically and form your own opinions. Don't take Fox news' word for it and don't take CNN's word either. Question what they say and make comparisons to what the other say. That's about as good as it's going to get.

You started off with a good point that the US media has turned to shit.........and then showed yourself to be just another braindead liberal moron who has been brainwashed by the exact media you set out to show was crumbling Maybe Fox News is the most watched news channel because Republicans have ONE single major outlet for conservative news meanwhile Democrats/Liberals have Yahoo, Washington post, Huffington post, MSN, MSNBC, CNN, NBC, MTV, etc etc etc etc so their views are spread out more. Many of these liberal networks even donated to Hillary. If that doesnt show complete bias I dont know what does. Meanwhile Fox News spent most of their time trying to ruin Trump and only started supporting him very late in his campaign

Whatever people will duspute now... breitbart is THE propaganda source of the president-elect. You cannot deny such envolvement in both the campaign and now inner circle of the government.