I'm hoping I'm just imagining it though (confirmation bias!), and it's really always been like this.
Political journalism (domestic US and international) has completely gone to shit. Tech journalism has slowly fizzled away into just clickbait and financial news has slowly drifted towards interpreting Ouija boards and magic 8-balls.
Journalism has always been deeply flawed and massively biased, yet still useful. The people of the past knew that. You're not smarter than your great grandparents on that front. Tech wasn't some cure-all that opened your eyes but not theirs.
People knew these things.
Writing things that leave a false impression, use any and all techniques to inflame, and so on, are becoming the norm due to a runaway optimization process which is massively reshaping society in my lifetime.
Disclosure: I lean more towards “free trade is evil”, at least if you are labor, rather than capital. Michael Bloomberg might see it differently.
Edit: and I didn’t go into the article looking for a fight - I wanted to see news affecting an industry I work in, and the trade line jumped out. It’s probably even true, but it’s not hard to to imagine ulterior motives for mentioning it.
If that was true, media wouldn't exist because nobody would consume it.
> Seems like now it's just "hate journalists" not "think critically".
The criticism was about a bloomberg article, not a journalist.
> (I even had classes on it in high school - one called "critical thinking"!).
Do you really believe you learned to think critically in a government funded indoctrination center called high school? It's not what high school were designed for. It's certainly not what high schools are equipped for.
> I'm hoping I'm just imagining it though (confirmation bias!), and it's really always been like this.
It's always been like this. The media has always lied. People have always criticized it. Nothing has changed.
"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day."
-- Thomas Jefferson ( one of the people who gave us free press )