It seems to me that you are letting your bias cloud your vision. How many reporters/journalists have been fired in the past year or two for simply making up stories and having them printed in major papers and passed off as true?
What just happened to ol'Danny?
Those are just two examples of reasons why people don't trust the media as much now as they used too.
While you are right that there are other professions with people that mess, but keep in mind the media is watched by millions of people and any mess up is going to be broadcasted. A doctor might mess up and not be trusted in his own town, but a major network reporter messes up-and they lose the trust of hundreds of thousands.
A long time ago Walter Conkrit(sp?) was probably the most trusted man in the US. You don't have anyone like that anymore because all the reports go for is shock value and to dig as deep as possible to get some breaking news before another corp. In doing that they ignore facts or make facts up.
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Uhh -- when was this golden age of trustworthy media? Oh wait, I'm pretty sure it didn't exist.
The reason that the media seems so untrustworthy now as opposed to before is because there ARE checks on it. With so many different sources (thousands of newspapers, magazines, television, the internet), discrepancies will be noticed much faster than they were in, say, the 1800s when most people were reliant on fewer sources for their news.
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So then why are you arguing? Whether it was in truth more trustworthy or not, it was perceived that way and perception is reality to most people.