The MSM did it to themselves and NOT just the likes of FOX News, CNN and CNBC. Remember Y2K? Yep, I first heard about it in the very early '90s. There was some media mention of it back then and basically the issue was computers using a 2 digit year code. The potential issue dealt with things like Old Age Pensions and other date sensitive stuff. For example, if you born in 1920 the computer system kicking out your cheque would see your year of birth as 20. When the millenium rolled over the question was whether the computer systems would read 00 as 1900 or 2000, and if they did read it as 00 would the system automatically print out your cheques? Fast forward a few years and the story got wilder until we were at the point were entire power grids would fail, airliners would fall out of the sky and perhaps most laughingly, nukes could possibly even self-launch. All spewed out by the various news outlets causing actual f*cking panic over it. The news media knew goddam well what the issue really was, had even reported on it and yet were willing to help spread the fear through lies, or if you prefer, super-hyped up potential scenarios that had no chance of happening.
Now, news media had known before all that, that they could manipulate the public to some degree or another. But Y2K showed them they could not just outright blatantly lie to our faces, but do so on a near global level and a f*ck load of people would buy right into it. That's when they learned that there are a LOT people who will believe whatever they're told by the MSM no matter how outrageous.
Then all one has to do is understand that 80% of the people working in news media are Liberals and farther left. That isn't opinion, it's fact. And what happens is when you have a group of like minded people working at the same news outlet, they have a tendency to show news they're interested in when politics is involved. That's what is referred to as an inherent bias. That doesn't necessarily mean they're using manipulation and spin. The manipulation is when news outlets start completely ignoring anything good that's done by those they politically oppose while also ignoring anything negative about those they support. There's a difference between inherent bias and outright partisanship. Spin doctoring is also part of that manipulation. The idea is to use just enough facts to make it tru-ish enough to sound believable but altering what was really said or done. Like Trump's "muslim travel ban" that inexplicably allowed the citizens of 45 of 50 muslim majority countries to still travel freely to and from the US despite the leftist MSM insisting it was a muslim travel ban. That bit of spin doctoring helped to punctuate the propaganda about Trump being a racist as well.
Long before Y2K the news media learned sensationalism sells papers. With Y2K they learned they can manipulate hundreds of millions of people if not a few billion with sensationalism. With politics, they're now using sensationalism to sell an ideology (along with subscriptions to their news services).
