That is the problem that most journalism has always had. There has never been a time when the most of the media wasn't pushing one narrative over another - usually in the interest of someone powerful.
One excellent example is Watergate. It was an extraordinarily well-reported story, and it remains to this an iconic story that everyone remembers as a major outrage. In the same era, there was the COINTELPRO leak, where a few people broke into an FBI building and found documents detailing extensive, egregious FBI Gestapo-style activities against the Civil rights movement (including trying to blackmail MLK into committing suicide, and working with the guy who assassinated Malcolm X, and many others). This was barely reported by a handful of papers, and even though it sparked actual legislative action, Senate committees, hearings etc, it has been all but forgotten. It never really fit the narratives deemed important by the kinds of people who write the news (who were largely against the Civil rights movement at the time).
This is not to say that extraordinary journalists haven't existed, to whom we owe great debts. It's not even to say that journalism hasn't degraded - there may well be fewer great journalists today than in other periods.
People live and breathe narratives. We are storytelling animals. We need to string those facts into a sort of coherent whole. We crave understanding, and we do it through stories. Facts don't matter, because they can be interpreted, weighted, viewed in such and such light, post hoc rationalized away...
One excellent example is Watergate. It was an extraordinarily well-reported story, and it remains to this an iconic story that everyone remembers as a major outrage. In the same era, there was the COINTELPRO leak, where a few people broke into an FBI building and found documents detailing extensive, egregious FBI Gestapo-style activities against the Civil rights movement (including trying to blackmail MLK into committing suicide, and working with the guy who assassinated Malcolm X, and many others). This was barely reported by a handful of papers, and even though it sparked actual legislative action, Senate committees, hearings etc, it has been all but forgotten. It never really fit the narratives deemed important by the kinds of people who write the news (who were largely against the Civil rights movement at the time).
This is not to say that extraordinary journalists haven't existed, to whom we owe great debts. It's not even to say that journalism hasn't degraded - there may well be fewer great journalists today than in other periods.