The media is out to get Joe Biden no doubt about it. The Joe Biden's Failure meme.

[Caliman73]

30. They are not on the GOP or KGB payroll. They are on the Capitalism payroll.

To reduce the current media's activities to "being bought" by some shady entity or foreign influence is reductive and give as false and misleading a scenario as when right wingers call it, "the liberal media".

Journalists (the actual reporters) the ones who gather the news and initially report it, are by and large operate within the bounds of journalistic integrity and likely from a liberal framework, which simply means they gather information and report it, with changes, with details, etc. and allow that information to be interpreted. Unfortunately, that is not where the media ends. We have newsrooms, boards, owners, shareholders, etc... all of whom have influence on the final media product. What dives the media system as a whole? Well, a lot of things, but mainly it is MONEY. Profit, revenue, that drives how media is presented. Presenting Biden's policies in their complexity with sober analysis of their positive and negative impacts is frankly boring and people would turn away from the news which needs to sell 24 hours of ad space a day. Conflict sells, calamity sells, people yelling at each other and calling each other names-Sells. Yes, there is evidence that Russian trolls are feeding misinformation. Yes, it filters into the news. Yes, the GOP runs with the misinformation and stokes fear and anger. All of that advantages their goals. That is not to say they are "in control". The media wants fire and the Russians and GOP give them fire because they do not have any actual substance and they know that "fire" sells.

We have NEVER had a "fair and objective" media. We should not expect a fair and objective media. What we should expect is the media to report accurate information AND to tell us what their bias it.

Rachel Maddow for instance, with all her personal quirks and style, is someone I trust for a few reasons. 1. She always tries to be accurate, and when she is not, she corrects herself, publicly and in as loud a voice as which she used to report. 2. She tells us what her bias is. She is a liberal. She says it. That is her known perspective. She does not claim to be unbiased and "just reporting the facts". She reports facts but interprets them from her liberal perspective.

The difference between her and any other person at Fox is that they lie. They lie to everyone's face. They say "I am just reporting the facts". They give their slanted perspective but expect people to believe they are telling the "truth". "We report, you decide". No, that isn't how it works, especially when you only report what is favorable to your perspective, which you haven't even told the audience what it is. You know and you are leading your audience there. The reason why Shepard Smith left. The reason why Chris Wallace gets flack. They tried to be more objective and even keeled and did not follow the script. Or, they gave away the unsaid secret about the coordinated bias of the network.

To expect the media to be "fair and objective" is folly. What we should expect from them is honesty about what their bias is. What do they want us to see and WHY? What is driving them? Like you said, "Who is funding the payroll?"

The KGB no longer exists. We know that the FSB and Russian state sponsored trolls exist and they actively try to influence things here. Let's not fall into conspiracy theories. The reality is far worse than any "bad guy in black coat and hat" thriller.