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I have been upset about the Liberal bias in the MSM since I became politically aware in the early 1960s. I would love to believe that this Liberal bias is why the MSM is in decline. I'm sure this is a factor but the advent of alternatives is, I feel, more the reason.

A large number percentage of people are not interested in news at all. It used to be ABCCBSNBC news & nothing else. They now have cable & satellite TV.

For those interested in the news the MSM still dominates although there are now alternatives, Fox News & the internet. Fox News in particular drives Liberals nuts because they don't want anything conservative available to the masses.

I have been upset about the Liberal bias in the MSM since I became politically aware in the early 1960s. I would love to believe that this Liberal bias is why the MSM is in decline.

Then you go back far enough to have been aware of social critic Vance Packard's muckrakers. He wrote (iirc) The Opinionmakers about the media and gave examples of their influence. A classic, associated with the 1964 presidential campaign, was a poll of likely or certain Republican delegates to the upcoming convention at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, the convention that nominated the great conservative Barry Goldwater. The poll asked two questions:

Whom would you prefer to see nominated?

Whom do you think the GOP will eventually nominate?

The delegates reported overwhelmingly that they personally favored Barry Goldwater, but they also reported that they expected the convention to nominate Nelson Rockefeller of New York. This, Packard showed, was because of the strong campaign mounted by The New York Times for Rockefeller and the Times's ability to propagate its message throughout media.

Packard also gave us some numbers from the Columbia School of Journalism's annual poll of incoming students, going back into the 50's, that showed the beginning of the upward climb of liberal bias and the growth of the motive among new entrants of influencing politics through the media -- expressed as "helping to solve social problems" or some such liberal formulary. As we know, after he wrote the book (1966 or thereabouts) the liberal self-description among j-school entrants rose to 90% or better in the 70's and 80's, but it was already strong when he wrote the book, and he commented on it at length.