The one comfort, possibly a delusional one, that I harbor is that while these outlets would have been far more able to get away with all this a decade ago, they also were not TRYING to get away with all of it a decade ago. Lying, misleading, sure, but not in the pathological, brazen way we see now.

The escalation and toxication of "public" discourse that started in '09 (Retweeting added to Twitter), more widely adopted in '12 (share button added to Facebook) and really got wild in '16 (you know what) — it really broke the brains of a lot of people. Legacy media saw it as their sacred duty to put a stop to it, which of course just broke things further.