No, it never did. Journalism has always included simply gathering and publishing fairly superficial news. It doesn't take any investigation to let people know about decisions made at a recent school board meeting, or that the local fair is coming up and Little Tommy will enter his pig in the 'best pet' competition, and it only takes a small amount of investigation to learn that the school board decision was heavily driven by the supervisor's experience in his previous district - but that doesn't make it unimportant, and the reliable recording of basic local facts is incredibly important to those 'deep investigative' journalists.

> Used to just be "journalism"

Bollocks. Look up the phrase "yellow journalism" and "muckraker". If anything there was more of an incentive to lie like a mofo because, outside of word-of-mouth, the only source of news was a newspaper.

Nowadays you're saturated with data, but you can turn it off, or dig for something that represents an alternative viewpoint. But in 1910 your only source of "truth" was what William Randolph Hearst said it was.

See also: the Spanish-American War, Fatty Arbuckle's trial, and "Rosebud"

Precisely why my brain immediately went to, "we need to get this far away from today's media industry..." after feeling the necessity of writing that

It's not in an investor's interest to be ignorant about problems with their investment.