General Discussion

and it's nothing new - the biggest difference now is how few media outlets there are. Even in the Good Old Days when even small towns had at least one newspaper, those papers had editorial biases and slanted the news. It usually wasn't as blatant, and the news empires weren't as big. Another problem IMHO has been the continuous shift to the Right since the 1970s - the Republican Party (which under Eisenhower was radical by today's standards) becomes a bit more conservative, the Democrats move a little to the right to meet them in the middle, on and on.

If the people responsible for reporting did their jobs, and if the people voting did theirs (i.e., become even the least bit acquainted with candidates and issues), we'd never have elected as unqualified person as the current president. Maybe - the US has always had its share of incompetent demagogues and clowns who somehow get elected time and again.