""Americans no longer trust the legacy national media to report the news fairly or accurately,""
More accurately, many Americans have replaced imperfect professional journalism with memes, influencers, partisan websites, and internet echo chambers.
The sensible response to media bias is not to declare that every news organization is equally untrustworthy. It is to learn how to evaluate sources: Does it distinguish reporting from opinion? Does it correct errors? Does it cite evidence? Does its work follow established journalistic standards, such as the SPJ Code of Ethics?
Convincing people that all mainstream media is equally corrupt may be one of the Republican Party’s most successful achievements. Once people accept that premise, factual reporting can be dismissed as partisan whenever it becomes inconvenient. Attacking fact-checkers is part of the same strategy: discredit anyone capable of demonstrating that a claim is false.
Every news organization has some degree of bias. That does not mean every organization is equally biased, equally accurate, or equally ethical. Saying “all media is biased” and concluding that Fox News and CNN are simply mirror images of one another is like saying every vehicle has blind spots, so a bicycle and an eighteen-wheeler are equally dangerous.
Media bias exists on a spectrum. Accuracy, sourcing, transparency, and adherence to journalistic standards matter at least as much as whether an outlet leans left or right.
This media-bias chart is a useful starting point:
https://library.skagit.edu/med...
I wish we cold get popular influencers who teach how tor rate media. Which is ironic, becasue people like their bias and often refuse to evaluate it, they won't watch or educate them selves on how to spot there own bias and media bias, and if people where like that,, we wouldn't need popular influencers to teach how to rate media.
I personally prefer a numerical scale, with 50 representing the political center, but perhaps that reflects the system I originally learned.
Here is a good chart for this. Skews and center is 'fine' I prefer a 1-100 scale, were 50 is center, but I'm sure that's my bias because I learned it with the method.
https://library.skagit.edu/med...