Historically speaking, when journalism has been free and independent, it has been one of the greatest checks against corruption and abuse from those in power. Journalism has been the "people's weapon" that keeps the politicians, the rulers, the rich, those in power, in check, and exposes any corruption and attempt at abuse of power.
During the entire history of journalism there has been, of course, so-called "yellow journalism", sensationalistic journalism that would in modern terminology engage in "clickbaiting", flashy and catchy front page headlines that are nevertheless misleading, sensationalism, distortions and outright fabricated stories, even defamatory stories. However, the more serious journalism has always had a principle of integrity. After all, there does exist the notion of "journalism ethics and standards" which tries to ensure that serious journalism adheres to honesty, objectivity, fairness, diligence and accountability.
Serious journalists would usually go to the source of the information to find out what actually happened, to hear the testimony of the people involved, to investigate as accurately as possible how the events unfolded and what really happened behind the scenes, and report on it in an unbiased and objective manner. Claims and allegations would be fact-checked as profoundly as possible, and lies would be exposed. Under no circumstance should a serious journalist ever fabricate allegations and lie about what has been said or what has happened. This would be a very serious breach of journalistic ethics. When a prominent journalist repeatedly fabricates stories this used to be a huge scandal (such as the case of Stephen Glass.)
Of course mistakes have always been made, and misinformation has always been spread unintentionally or because of slight recklessness when stories of current events have been needed to be reported on as quickly as possible. When something sudden of extraordinary importance, such as a very high-profile violent crime, or a catastrophic accident, newspapers have always rushed to report on it as quickly as possible, because the public wants to know what's happening. And when things are reported so quickly, when the official investigation often has not even started yet or is at its very initial stages, a lot of misinformation can be spread even if unintentionally, because things may appear to be something they are not.
However, historically, even when newspapers have rushed to publish articles about current events, they have had at a very minimum a few hours to find out what has happened. Often the story would be delayed to the next day, to the morning issue (often written during the previous day and late night, and printed during the night). Usually reporters would have at a very minimum a few hours to try to find out what has happened before having to write the articles about it.
In less urgent events reporters could well spend days and even weeks investigating the issue before writing a well-researched fact-checked article about it. Reporters could feel a sense of pride for such a story, especially if it exposes facts that weren't previous known.
The age of the Internet, however, has changed all that.
Now, instead of hours, journalists have mere minutes to rush a report out. They want their readers, potentially millions of them, to know right now what's happening. They want to be on the forefront of reporting, as soon as possible, before any other news outlet. They can't afford wasting hours investigating the issue before reporting on it, because all of their competitors will have reported on it already, hours prior, and they would be extremely late to the party.
Rather obviously, there is no investigation that can be done in mere minutes. They can't go and investigate what happened, they can't interview witnesses or officials, they can't fact-check. They need to write the report right now, not two hours from now. They have no time to actually investigate anything. This has led to the very widespread phenomenon of "copy-paste journalism", where publications will just almost literally copy stories from other sources, with zero original content and zero fact-checking. One can only imagine how much misinformation this produces.
The other problem with the Internet is that it inevitably drags even serious news outlets into yellow journalism.
How so? Because of how different the online medium is to printed media.
When a person buys a physical newspaper or magazine from the kiosk, that person has already paid for the entire issue. The only thing that the newspaper needs to do to entice people to buy an issue is to put one or two flashy headlines on the front page. The rest of the content can be serious and proper, and most people will at a very minimum skim through all of it, a significant portion actually read a good majority of it. After all, when a person has purchased a newspaper, that person is likely to read most of it (or feel his money to be wasted).
This means that if eg. a magazine has a couple dozen ads inside it, most people who read it will see most if not all of those ads.
Not so in the era of the Internet and online news articles. Most commonly people will read just one article and then go somewhere else. This is not good for retaining readers, nor for advertisement.
Most news outlets, when they moved online, quite quickly realized that they need to do something to retain readers for longer, so that they will read more articles and see more ads.
The solution? Clickbait.
Now rather than just have one or two flashy headlines inducing people to buy the entire newspaper or magazine, almost all articles need clickbaity titles in order to keep visitors interested. Articles will have links to other articles on the side, with interesting-looking titles, in order to induce visitors to read more and more of them.
Thus, even serious journalism becomes yellow journalism. Add to this the fact that these articles are often rushed and with almost zero investigation and fact-checking into them, and suddenly a once-reputable news source has become a gossip magazine that's yellower than urine.
No wonder the moniker "urinalist" has become commonplace to describe these next-gen journalists.
Now add to this the fact that the vast, vast majority of journalists come from universities, and that universities have become indoctrination centers and political activism training camps for a political movement that's extremely slanted towards one side of the political spectrum, a political ideology so extreme that it has zero qualms about lying and distorting in order to further its agenda, and you have just destroyed almost all of serious journalism. Suddenly journalism has stopped being about unbiased reporting, and has become a tool for political propaganda and activism.
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