"Why are our media so regularly and so profoundly debasing and beclowning themselves, lying to the public and sullying our national discourse"

At The Federalist Daniel Payne documents the epidemic of fake news.

It is difficult to adequately sum up the breadth of this epidemic, chiefly because it keeps growing: day after day, even hour after hour, the media continue to broadcast, spread, promulgate, publicize, and promote fake news on an industrial scale. It has become a regular part of our news cycle, not distinct from or extraneous to it but a part of it, embedded within the news apparatus as a spoke is embedded in a bicycle wheel.

It is worth cataloging at least a small sampling of the hysteria so far. Only when we fully assess the extent of the media’s collapse into ignominious ineptitude can we truly begin to reckon with it.

Early November: Spike in Transgender Suicide Rates
November 22: The Tri-State Election Hacking Conspiracy Theory
December 1: The 27-Cent Foreclosure
January 20: Nancy Sinatra’s Complaints about the Inaugural Ball
January 20: The Nonexistent Climate Change Website ‘Purge’
January 20: The Great MLK Jr. Bust Controversy
January 20: Betsy DeVos, Grizzly Fighter
January 26: The ‘Resignations’ At the State Department
January 27: The Photoshopped Hands Affair
January 29: The Reuters Account Hoax
January 31: The White House-SCOTUS Twitter Mistake
February 1: POTUS Threatens to Invade Mexico
February 2: Easing the Russian Sanctions
February 2: Renaming Black History Month
February 2: The House of Representatives’ Gun Control Measures

Payne goes into detail to describe each of these fake stories, each of which generated thousands of additional tweets and other viral social media clicks. He concludes,

Why are our media so regularly and so profoundly debasing and beclowning themselves, lying to the public and sullying our national discourse—sometimes on a daily basis? How has it come to this point?

Perhaps the answer is: “We’ve let it.” The media will not stop behaving in so reckless a manner unless and until we demand they stop.

No one single person can fix this problem. It has to be a cultural change, a kind of shifting of priorities industry-wide. Journalists, media types, reporters, you have two choices: you can fix these problems, or you can watch your profession go down in flames.

Most of us are hoping devoutly for the former. But not even a month into the presidency of Donald J. Trump, the outlook is dim.

Read more here.