First and foremost independent media want to generate revenue from social networks by spitting out any non-verified nonsense.
I remember Steve Jobs was trying to cut out deals with mainstream media because he saw the proliferation of blogs and had zero trust in them.
Like a lot of industries, journalism is pretty screwed up.
Revenue from print is gone.
Advertising revenue goes to google, social media and amazon before papers.
So we are stuck with corporate/billionaire owned media, which is most american media and most privately owned canadian media like the national post and star.
The CBC is good but is being changed from within of late, check out the difference in reporting between trudeau and PeePee of late.
Independent journalism is alive and trying to figure out how to survive. The Narwal is doing some of the best canadian journalism, they were the ones that dug up the Greenbelt dirt.
Nobody trusts the same media anymore.
NYT is messed up
Pro Publica is good but limited
CNN nobody takes seriously
Fox is killing the US like Sinclair
Globally there are a few good sources but its a mess.
The fact that nobody can agree on what is fake news and legit is part of why there is so much division, or maybe the division fosters partisan news.