...all news media outlets must make editorial decisions about which stories to cover and how to cover them, and those decisions are always going to be biased in some way. These editorial decisions often lead to news being "fake" in the sense that the "stories" don't tell the whole story, and some stories aren't told at all.

So, if someone watches only Newsmax or Fox, for example, then they are not going to get the full picture of what is going on in the world. People who do that are doing themselves a real disservice, IMO. Likewise, people who DON'T watch Fox or Newsmax, preferring to watch only the MSM, are doing themselves a disservice, as well. We see it frequently on this board where lefty posters literally refuse to read news stories linked from non-lefty news sources. It's crazy, but it happens all the time.

One sidenote: The reason why right-wing media consumers (e.g., Fox viewers) are typically shown in surveys to be better informed than others is because Fox and right-wing media so often (perhaps out of necessity) cover whatever it is that the left-wing/establishment MSM is talking about. The latter (in collaboration with the government) is still so dominant in setting the narrative that the former has to comment on it. So, even if covered in a different or more negative light, the Fox News viewer is still generally aware of what the left-wing/establishment media is saying, whereas the NYT reader has no idea what the right-wing media is saying because the NYT just ignores it. As a current example, Donald Trump -- perhaps the leader of the right-wing political movement in the U.S. -- is literally censored in all MSM outlets today. The consumer of news from those outlets has no idea what is actually going on. Imagine if Fox News started censoring everything that Biden or Pelosi said or did -- what would that do to Fox viewers' understanding of the world?

Moving on, "fake news media" is a much better descriptor of the dominant mainstream/corporate media (i.e., about 95% of all media outlets) than Fox/Newsmax et al., for two reasons. First, the MSM often simply fabricates stories -- they are literally fake -- with the Russia Collusion Hoax being a recent and obvious example. Second, because of their parochialism, they have a hive-mind that also happens to be in sync with the government, so they essentially become government propaganda outlets. I don't mean propaganda in the Goebbels sense -- I just mean that news is covered in only one uniform context. The mass censoring of the Hunter Biden story prior to the 2020 election would be an example of this phenomenon. This doesn't mean you can't get some actual news and accurate information from CNN, MSNBC, NYT, WaPo, etc. -- you can -- but it does mean that you need to expand your horizons to get some independent viewpoints if you want full context on what is actually going on.

[Post edited by Los Angeles Hoo at 11/05/2021 2:16PM]