Exactly. Even when a major TV channels was busting fake news in my country, people just switched to other govt-sponsored (bribed?) channel to hear what they wanted to hear. It became a common meme to say that major TV channel has an agenda (and either silence or whataboustism ensues once people are questioned about the actual fake news).
People will always switch to the brand of media that shows the truth that validates their existing beliefs. Today, there are a handful of "belief buckets" to choose from. In the USA, you have conservative news channels and mainstream news channels. You can pick your favorite source of truth, but they come as a package deal. If you strongly believe X is factual, you'll tune in to the channel that presents X as factual. That channel will also present Y and Z as factual, so you may slowly start believing Y and Z, too.
The obvious end state of this all will be news channels customized per-person. It's already starting with the custom-tailored Facebook/Twitter feeds. If you personally believe A, Y, and C, but not X, B, or Z, your news reports will be customized to show A, Y, and C as factual and ridicule X, B, and Z. Someone else will get presented an entirely different set of facts. Once the algorithm knows your beliefs, AI can produce an unlimited number of articles confirming those beliefs, complete with photos, videos, sources, fact checks, official reports and references.
I kind of knew that. But I didn’t realize how bad it was until the last few years.
The WSJ, Forbes and the National Review were what I considered reliably conservative sites that I use to be able to quote to conservative friends. Once they turned against Trump, they became part of the untrusted “mainstream media”.
Then when FoxNews called the 2020 election fairly, then they became sellouts and people started flocking to NewsMax. Whatever I thought of FoxNews over the years, I always thought their election night coverage was straight down the line.
RedState kicked out all of their neverTrumpers because they were losing readers.
Then conservatives started criticizing NewsMax when they would slightly push back against the “election was stolen” claims.
