To add to this, lies with easily proven evidence if they wanted to investigate. Eg. Check report on something from a hearing or court document, checked the hearing or the court document itself and it's completely opposite to what the media is reporting.
Not everyone knows how to check public records. I just signed up for PACER this year, and I'm still trying to work out how to access State and local court system's records since they're so distributed.
Like it or not, we haven't exactly done a great job at exposing primary sources to everyone. Until that can happen, media outlets who pay for boots on the ground will still have a degree of intutively granted credibility. Once everyone knows how to access it at will (and can be bothered to) we may see some better measurement on the reliabilitt of information sources.
Sadly I tend to believe that a very small minority of people will ever bother to access the documents, the rest will just believe whatever the media will tell them.
I just got to the point this year where I finally got fed up with the level of editorial discretion taken with so many hot news takes. Makes me a real stick in the mud because I'm just not comfortable not seeing the primary doc anymore. I want to know what actually happened, not what someone thinks I should know about what happened.
Agreed. Anyone who studied any subject deeply should recognize the concept of Gell-Mann Amnesia; I think anyone who tried to verify anything outside of their domain will quickly confirm that this phenomenon is, in fact, very true.