[JauntyHatAngle]

>The american media were bad before Trump, and they have remained bad as far as I can tell. They completely fail to disentangle the serious from the merely ridiculous.

The issue here is, you paint too broad a brush saying this.

I don't want this to seem like I am aiming this at you necessarily, because I am more just piggy backing a comment to write about rather than aiming this at you so take the rest of the comment with that in mind.. but..

You can follow particular journalists that have a high reputation, and disregard ones that have a bad reputation without disavowing all journalists and the media in general.

Similarly, you can treat bias in journalism the same way you treat a review - you know what journalists see things particular ways and therefore view their slant on things as a bent on an already established world view. Some journalists are so unbiased that you can almost ignore this. Some journalists are so biased you can use them as the canary in the coal mine for how a segment of a population is likely to view the issue etc etc.

There are majority mediocre people in every profession, media is an industry that has picked up a huge proportion of hacks and automated articles in the past 10 years, instead of viewing it as an overall industry - look for the good ones and the interesting ones, not just "all media bad".