Journalism as it was practiced 50 years ago no longer exists. There are several reasons.
The Fairness Doctrine was repealed. Up until it was gone any reporting that featured one party had to include the other. After it was repealed it became possible to target information to a particular demographic, hence Fox and MSNBC. As if feeding people only info they want to hear wasn't bad enough, the "news" sources degenerated into broadcasting opinion (and later outright lies) rather than right or left leaning factual reporting.
The decline of newspapers has lead to the decline of quality reporting. Failing newspapers lay off staff and begin to run nothing but wire service stories. Newspaper reporters were generally the ones that dug up important stories, many of these helped keep local government officials in check. No reporters means nobody is watching the hen house. TV news was also fairly dependent on the local newspapers as a source of news and that has gone away so TV has even less substance than it did 40 years ago.
The 24 hour news cycle means that editors no longer have a few hours to fact check stories as they have to air/post stories constantly. They run stories too quickly and over hype them for ratings. It's a deadly combination.
Finally, social media really gets in the way of distributing quality news and information. It's superb for innuendo, snark and opinion but tends to roll over facts. It really bulldozes facts.
There's a lot that lead to the decline of journalism. We're all poorer for it.
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