For me it began with Dan Rather, and his persistance in trying to win an election, debunking George W.
I knew they had a “bias” from about 1980.
I understood they were blatantly partisan in 1995, after the Republican revolution in 1994.
I expected big changes; the Republicans started to deliver them; then the establishment media came down on them like dump truck full of garbage.
I’ll see your Dan Rather and raise you a Walter Cronkite.
In the 1930s we had Walter Duranty reporting breathlessly about the wonderfulness of life in the Soviet Union during the Ukrainian Famine that the Communists perpetrated on the peasants of the Breadbasket of Eurasia.Old Walt and the NYT just didn’t think knowing about all those deliberately starved and murdered people was appropriate given that the USSR was the glorious wave of the future of mankind. I suspect the reporting on the War Between the States was pretty one sided, too.
The 90s the wagons in the media circled around the Klintons after the 94' Republican Revolution. All downhill from there. (Gingrich that Stole Xmas, etc)
It was Dan Rather for me too.
it happened in 1988 When Dan Rather produced "The Wall Within" a CBS documentary written to slander Vietnam veterans. He wrote the fake stories, hired fake actors to pretend to be combat vets and even scripted their lies. A network of veterans tried to bring his lies to light but all we had was telephones and handwritten letters. Very few people even had fax machines in 1988. If there had been an internet then, we might have been able to end his rotten hearted career long ago.
It opened my eyes and started me wondering how much of the news we saw before that was altered. When I was a kid my dad told me "Don't believe anything you read and only half of what you see". I didn't understand him then, but I think his words ring true today.