It is the 'fake item' that leads you to other fake items. You find the patterns and see the uncharitable takes. You see the mockingbird style reporting. It is the gateway moment I was pointing out. You start with something small and it grows. You can not un-see it. A gateway moment for them was a typo. Mine was a repeated story over and over as I traveled between cities and timezones but presented as if that particular news org had wrote it all up by themselves. When it was just mad-lib style fill in the blank.

I bring up twitter and did not claim it was 'authoritative' but to show that behind the scenes our political machine is shaping the narrative. Spiking stories and promoting others. The people who run those orgs are doing it gladly. To pretend the same thing that happened at twitter is not happening at NBC/CNN/FOX/NYT/etc would be a bold claim. Like you point out twitter is not that valuable but they made a point of it to do it. Proper suppression of people and censorship and narrative shaping. The very same people who used to say 'the internet see censorship as damage and routes around it' are the very ones building a censorship news controlling apparatus. Then gaslighting us with 'how dare you question them they are doing it for our safety!'

News is very unreliable in most forms. You can push particular opinions very easily. It is not that hard to do. Our news is basically gossip and talk shows. With news as the thin premise that they are doing.