I believe the established news media have many problems, but that for the most part, you and 90% of Redditors don't have a sophisticated understanding of how they work, and that as such, you miss what's really happening and tend to evaluate the news media at face value. I don't blame you for it; it's the obvious thing to do, but I do say that you are wrong.

What's really happening is much more subtle and has to do with the following:

1.) Virtually all TV news is crap. If you get your news from the boob-tube, you are, indeed, a boob. While there are a few notable exceptions, they are so exceptional that they are almost not worth mentioning.

2.) Increasingly centralized ownership of major news organizations. Obviously, if all major news outlets are owned by the same few corporations, at a core level, they're all going to operate for similar financial ends .

3.) The fact of corporate ownership of news media outlets. Corporate ownership means that at base, profit, rather than accountability, is the bottom line. Corporate personhood is structured such that corporations are obliged to operate as money-making concerns, rather than as responsible citizens.

4.) The people. One of the main things to understand about all non-government-funded or for-profit media is that its primary product is audience, not news, audience. Let me say that again; news operations sell audience, not news. Who do they sell their audience to? Advertisers. That's how they make their money. That said, there's a huge problem with the audience for news in this country. It is a spoiled audience, an audience that is far more interested in Britney Spears and ****ing Paris ****ing Hilton than it is in what actually matters. How do we change that? By reorienting the dominant cultural paradigm away from that which idolizes materialism and towards that which instead values substance. In other words, long story short, the news media are not to be blamed for what's wrong in this country, but rather, are simply another symptom of what's really rotten; American culture in general.

5.) Finally, it is worth noting that the overwhelmingly vast majority of journalists in this country are not bad people, have not signed up for membership in a totalitarian fascist government, and are out there honestly trying to do the best that they can in a nation that respects their profession almost as much as it does axe-murderers and lawyers. In fact, the vast majority of people who go into journalism do so because they are idealists and believe that they can do something to benefit their fellow citizens. (This is why conservatives are correct that the overwhelming majority of journalists really do self-identify as liberals. It's true. If the corporate media has a bias towards corporate interests, it isn't because of the people who actually write the news. I know this from personal experience.) There is no secret cabal or governing organization which publishes guidelines to which all journalists are expected to adhere (unless you're talking about the AP Style-Guide, but that's a different story). Nobody ever told me that I couldn't write stories that could be interpreted as critical of Israel. (In fact, when I did get in trouble with the Israel lobby for a purely factual story I wrote, my editors and publishers stood by me through the storm. --Other people got mad at me for not being harsh enough towards the Israelis, which kind of told me that I'd gotten it right; if both sides hate you, you must be telling the truth.) And in another fact, what put the final nail in the coffin of any ambitions I had in terms of becoming a career newspaperman, was not corporate censorship, but was rather, political correctness, or the need to not say what's ****ing obvious and that everyone knows is true, because it might offend someone. (In the case in question it had to do with Native Americans and ironically, when I bounced my grievances off of the many Indians --their term-- that I personally know, they universally supported my position as being closer to the uncomfortable truth of the matter.)