I mean, I think there would be a gap between being uninterested and unable to break those stories. If they were simply uninterested, someone with an axe to grind would be throwing out all sorts of facts.
I think if the media has earned such distrust, it's because of a complex web of reasons because I think in some ways the media has changed less than people thing. It's had holes and blindspots for a long, long time (I've been reading a book about how a tyrant in NY was mostly unchecked because of an adoring media). But I think some of the distrust stems from the fact that these days we have an attitude that it's easier (and more enjoyable) to be highly cynical about something than have faith in something. And it's very hard to have a middle ground approach, like "I think some things are true, but have to be guarded and need to take a breath at every spicy headline or blood boiling thing I read because there's just so much out there in the world."
As for a mediot, I don't know if I have, and I suppose I'd need more specificity in the question. Is it an opinion babbler? What's the nature of the repeated incorrect thing? And how much do they talk? Like if they get two high-profile things wrong, I'll be skeptical of high-profile things. But if they're a news reader and they say "the governor said X tonight" and then I get video of the governor saying X, I'll probably believe that.
Was the tyrant someone like Boss Tweed or another similar nabob in the Tammany Hall organization? Or someone more recent, like Jimmy Walker?
It's hard for me to believe that Harvey Weinstein escaped media scrutiny for so long because nobody was able to break the story. Seems now like every woman in Hollywood knew about his activities. I think it was more likely the case that nobody wanted, or dared, to break the story.
It's a good point that it can be easier to adopt a cynical attitude rather than to try to separate fact from fiction in every "news" story. But the journalism community's continuous self-congratulation--along the lines of, "If we're not allowed to tell the truth, who will?"--makes it even easier than it should be.
On my point about mediots, I'm not referring to disbelieving newsreader A when he/she says that the governor said X even after I've seen video (not deceptively edited, which does happen at times) of the governor saying X. I was thinking more of an opinion-giver who plays fast and loose with the facts, and with the interpretation of those facts.
But there are also a lot of straight-news people who are just incompetent at their jobs, who just don't get the story right. I've mentioned this before, but I seldom see TV coverage of the military, or print coverage of the military outside of military journals, that doesn't contain significant errors of facts or of comprehension of the significance of those facts.
I am also quite sure that there is a widespread bias in the news media which perhaps wouldn't be so bad except that it's nearly all in one direction. Except for talk radio, which is biased nearly all in the other direction, making all of it tiresome and more or less easy to disbelieve.
I know that among professional journalists there is something approaching reverence for the "golden age" of TV journalism--the 1960s. But I was there for that, and I don't think it was golden. Gilded, perhaps. It was three commercial network news organizations (plus to an extent PBS news) reporting on the same stories from the same point of view. The bias wasn't as extreme as I think the bias is now, but it was even more one-sided than today's bias is.
