The only instance off the top of my head that I can think of is the one I mentioned, about the white high school student and the elderly Native American man at a protest in Washington. I’d be hard pressed to come up with other examples. And yes, in that particular instance the initial reporting was unfavorable to the conservative side.
Off the top of my head, here’s a recent article from Matt Taibbi about various sensational Trump-Russia claims which fizzled out in the end. (One qualifier: he’s more focused on bogus claims by government officials. But there’s a lot there from the media as well.)
There used to be Radio Left and Radio Right. I’m assuming that’s now XM Progress and XM Patriot. In the process, I found Hannity’s face on the front page of three different stations
I read the article. From what I can gather, the main conclusion of all those stories seem to be that it was the government sources who, in the end, turned out to be incorrect or lack proof of what they were alleging. This wasn’t the media making up falsehoods, but rather reporting on information from their sources that turned out to be incorrect or unsubstantiated. My caveat is that on this type of issue, meaning espionage, spying, and international intrigue in general, the underlying documents are probably not going to be available for inspection by the general public like they would be with something like a research paper on global warming or COVID-19. None the less, I acknowledge that on the issue of Russian interference in the election and on Russian coordination with the Trump campaign, that reporting from the mainstream news outlet did tend to favor the Democratic position.
But the MSM does walk these things back, retract them and issue corrections. Whereas RWM continues to deny they’re wrong and often as not doubles down.
The MSM very rarely makes up falsehoods. But they tend to be much more credulous when it’s negative reporting about conservative politicians and issues than when it’s the opposite.
That’s the nature of bias. Even if you’re trying to do the right thing, what exactly constitutes “the right thing” is influenced. If you hate Trump, then you’re going to find evidence that he colluded with Russia much more compelling than if you don’t. It’s impossible to avoid this.
Even where the media deceptively edits to take things out of context (e.g. the George Zimmerman 911 call, to pick an example which springs to mind) it’s the same subtle bias at work. You already think Zimmerman was motivated by racism, so editing the call to make it look like he raised the issue of Martin being black is not a big deal. If you had a more open mind about the underlying question, then you would be more cautious about it.
That linked article was news to me as well. But what’s even more disappointing is that none of those news media outlets bothered to do any updates on their reporting or correct the record. I assume if this information was available to Matt Taibbi, it was also available to their investigative reporters. I would expect someone reputable like Anderson Cooper would at least want to make the effort. Perhaps he has and I am simply not aware.
I’m not aware of it one way or the other as well. It’s a difficult topic to make definitive conclusions on because of lack of access to primary sources for anyone interested in getting to the basic facts. On that type of issue, whether it’s Russia and election interference or anything else related to international secrets / spying / espionage, we have to rely on what people in the intelligence community tell reporters and then use our best judgement on whether or not our BS meter should ping.
I this this is a major factor that can’t be understated. Whether it be left or right, the click-driven and 24-7 nature of news causes there to be both a glut and a massive rush to market. Everything seems to come off as hysterical, and it all seems equally hysterical. This means that important news items get easily lost in the chatter.
Back in the “good old days”, when news was given once or twice a day, there was more time to actually get things right, and more of a focus on filtering out the irrelevant garbage. (Unless it was a slow news day and there were pages/minutes to fill.) The further we’ve gotten away from that, the more trashy it all seems.
Not that this is meant to counter or dismiss the fact that the right wing has been deliberately embracing lies for decades now. That’s a different issue that’s a real problem. But the trashification of the modern news cycle due to it being continuous and desperate for attention certainly hasn’t helped either - and there’s no way to fix it.
Your typo of “accepted” when I bet you meant “excepted” reverses a lot of your intended point. 
The Fairness doctrine was only for broadcast media. Maybe it made sense in a 3 channel tv world, but it wouldn’t today.
Pete Buttigieg’s book Trust hits on exactly what you’re saying: we as a country simply don’t trust anyone.
What would be useful for me would be an effort to draw a sharp line between News and Commentary. We are in an unfortunate world where major 24/7 networks who have the word “News” in their names are too heavily tilted toward commentary. To me, this mis-branding is insidious. Viewers watch the “News” channel and are fed opinion instead. Certainly, each of the networks does present some period of more traditional journalism, but for a viewer there is no difference. By blurring these lines, then everything becomes suspect.
If I were Emperor of the Universe I would make laws that if you are going to call your network “News”, then that is what you present.
I think the problem here is in assuming that the problem is with the mainstream media for causing this.
It’s not. What’s happened is that the Republican party propaganda machine and the far-right wingnuts have steadily fed their people a diet of distrust of pretty much every mainstream media outlet as having “liberal bias”, or being “liberal” or whatever, even when they’re not particularly liberal, or even political.
What that means is that those sources aren’t parroting the party line, a-la Newsmax, Fox or OANN. They’ve essentially created their own news ecosystem that reports on news based on their own set of principles, and have effectively repudiated the idea that there’s an objective truth- “fake news” isn’t just some dumb-ass thing that Trump belched out, it’s how they classify anything that’s not from within that ecosystem, regardless of the veracity or trustworthiness of it.
Nothing mainstream media can do now, or could have done would have prevented this; there seems to have been an active agenda to discredit them and portray them as far more politically slanted than they actually are, even when the preponderance of evidence, etc… is against them.
I agree that the wealth of news sources - print, web, TV, radio, etc… and the 24-hour news cycle push even the mainstream news outlets to be more lurid and to treat news as a product to be sold, rather than a service. But that doesn’t excuse the right wing from mounting a campaign to actively discredit mainstream news sources.
Timely example of that just now on CNN. A transcript of a digital conversation between the leader of the Oath Keepers and a representative of the Proud Boys leading up to the Jan 6 insurrection, was handed to the hosts.
In a rush to “BREAK NEWS” the host read it cold and tried to make sense of who was saying what to whom, while Andrew McCabe was added for comment. As they read through the text handed to them, it started to become very unclear as to whether a Proud Boys rep was actually part of the conversation at all - just someone speculatively saying something about their role, etc. And then I turned off the TV because it started to look like the Ron Burgundy amateur hour.
Now, this isn’t to say that I doubt in any way the planned insurrection or the players as previously reported. I’m saying that NEWS is no longer the professional, vetted source of information it used to be, and it’s getting worse rather than better at delivering accurate information in a professional and trustworthy manner.
Here’s a current example of … something: Sidney Powell’s legal defense: ‘Reasonable people’ wouldn’t believe her election fraud claims. There are numerous articles in the reputable MSM making the same basic point - that Sydney Powell asserted in court that no reasonable people would believe the things she was saying.
But anyone who pays a bit of attention - and in many cases (as in the linked one) just reads the actual article - they would see that that’s not at all what she was saying. Rather, that under defamation law there’s a crucial distinction between stating opinion and stating fact, and that any reasonable person would understand that Powell was stating her opinion (which is protected) and was not stating facts (which are not). It was not at all any sort of admission about the validity of her election fraud claims.
Now, what causes this type of thing? Is it sloppiness? Bias? Probably a mixture of both. Someone who is widely disliked says something that seems superficially to reflect negatively about them and you rush to print, chortling along the way. If it was someone more respected (by the media source), then they’re much more carefull.
Were those statements still her “opinion” when she included them as part of the filings for her lawsuit in King vs Whitmer?
I’m not sure if you’ve misunderstood the discussion or are just making an irrelevant aside.
Here’s the point: Powell very clearly said “A”. This was widely reported in the mainstream media as “Powell said B”. This is relevant to the discussion we’re having here which is about “restoring public faith in the U.S. mainstream media again”.
Now you’re saying “A” is itself incorrect. That might be relevant to different thread discussing Powell. But that’s not what we’re discussing here. Again, this is about the media.
How was what Powell said (“A”) misrepresented by the media (“B”)?
I’ve read the article you liked and I see no indication of misrepresentation.
From the article (emphasis added):
Such characterizations of the allegedly defamatory statements further support defendant’s position that reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact but view them only as claims that await testing by the courts through the adversary process
While arguing that Powell’s public statements and filings were clearly opinion, the filing also claims that she still believes them to be true.
As above, she was not saying no reasonable person would “believe her election fraud claims” (“B”). Only that no reasonable person would understand them to be statements of fact, and that any reasonable person would understand them to be opinion (“A”).