No, but the media can misinform the public without the public knowing.

The fact that they have a "news" channel that just generates what its viewers want to believe in is the major issue for me.

Also, it angers me no end that in every other news org's fight to be seen as "fair and balanced", they tend to run a speech/interview with a conservative talking head and then a speech/interview with a liberal talking head. If what the conservative is saying is largely a fiction, why are they allowed to present it at all??

Take Trump as the biggest example of this. If interviewers just stopped him the first time he lied and wouldn't let him go on until he had corrected that lie, people wouldn't get nearly the amount of random misinformation out of him that they do now. My feeling is whenever someone is being interviewed, that should be the media policy. Just a flat refusal to let you lie on air. Unfortunately in this extremely commercially driven era, they basically want the controversy and the clickbait, so they happily let all the lies go by so they can throw gasoline on the fire and drag in more views.

No, it's the public education systems job to educate people...

Which is why Republicans want to actively dismantle it and why it's such a big deal elected Democrats don't seem concerned about it.

Education is an investment in our future. I don't want a bunch of dumbasses running around when I'm Biden's age.

I'd argue that news orgs have an obligation to not be misleading and they do so in ways that make it hard for the uneducated to catch.

For example this story from Reuters was recently posted and reported in World News:

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-military-says-troops-raid-gazas-shifa-hospital-2024-03-18/

"Israeli forces kill 20 gunmen in raid at Gaza's Al Shifa hospital, army says"

and the first line of the article:

"JERUSALEM/CAIRO, March 18 (Reuters) - Israeli troops raided the compound of Gaza's Al Shifa Hospital early on Monday, saying they killed over 20 gunmen..."

Your average reader is going to skip over the fact that the "20 gunmen" statistic is being self reported by the military taking the action.

Were they ACTUALLY "gunmen"? ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯
Were there ACTUALLY 20 of them? ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

We don't really know because the reporting is being done by the guys doing the shooting and that's been a problem before.

It really needs to be more clear that the source of the story is biased even if the reporting is technically accurate.

"JERUSALEM/CAIRO, March 18 (Reuters) - Israeli troops say they killed over 20 gunmen during a raid of the compound at Gaza's Al Shifa Hospital early on Monday..."

After all these years of liberal commentators telling us that Fox was radicalizing Memaw and Poppop, when we got a peak into the sausage factory it was the opposite. The viewers were radicalizing Fox.

It's not the media 's job to entertain or pander to their audience. A legitimate news outlet is only there to inform on current events and, optionally, put that into context. What they choose to report on, how they frame it, and whether they choose not to report on something is entirely an editorial decision.

If someone's asking for bullshit even though it's not on the menu, and you choose to serve it to them anyway, you're responsible for their bad breath.

Conservatives don't become deplorables because they're misinformed. Conservatives get misinformed because they're deplorable

Maybe / maybe not (won't argue that point), but when a shady news outlet constantly feeds them that garbage, they're adding fuel to a fire that might otherwise extinguish itself.

Hmm, now where have I heard "personal responsibility" before...?