I survived 20 years of pure communist regime, full of propaganda machine. I learned few important things:

That's how now at 50+ years old I can see very quickly when bullshit is coming. And don't think that if you go to vote blue or red it means democracy and freedom... it is not. You are fooled to think you are free and the media is presenting you facts.

Is just the same state propaganda but with Netflix and icecream. Please read the book "Propaganda" by Ed Bernays and you will understand everything I just said.

The incentive structure for the media comes incentivizes them to lie, simple as that.

If they get more eyeballs when they lie, they will continue to lie.

Because of who owns them

I guess it has to do with where you were growing up or living in general.

I spoke Cantonese, Mandarin, and English when I was growing up; the interesting thing is that given the same news, you always find different versions of story telling, so I learned how to verify important things myself.

I think it is mainly poor journalism rather than blatant lying in most cases. Also, it depends on what media.

Nowadays, it is all about eyeballs, so clicks and views are more important than the truth. They will do anything to cater to their userbase. Just look, at Fox News as a perfect example.

I guess, you just have to always doublecheck if something smells fishy.

I’m trying to figure this out for myself. I used to trust the media more and I’m not sure if it’s because I was naive or because something has changed.

AFAICT one major thing has changed: independent media has taken off and average people are on the same information field as The Media. This has either made it clear that The Media lies/is lazy or turned The Media into liars/lazies as a result of their normal business models being disrupted.