“Much of the media is fake,” Stewart said, referring not only to purposefully fabricated fake news, but hyperbolic headlines and second-hand reporting from questionable sources. This has contributed to a media landscape that is no longer trustworthy, and given space to alternative news sources that are even less safe to trust, Stewart argued.

Yeah. "No longer". Because news in the good ol' days was so much more trustworthy, what with non-hyperbolic headlines and first-hand reporting from sources that weren't questionable and whatnot. What revisionist BS is this?

Lest we forget that from the 1920s, William Randolph Hearst aka "Citizen Kane" ran a media monopoly (not virtual but effective) which makes Rupert Murdoch's look tame in comparison while leaning hard right, to the point that there are anecdotes linking him to financing fascist regimes in Europe a few years before WWII. Yet, even tough his media empire existed before, during and after, FDR got himself elected and legislated the New Deal. A whole heap of Hearst's papers, like New York Journal-American, (posthumously) promoted McCarthyism for years yet, when the US got tired of it, McCarthy simply disappeared from public discourse.

Media has very little impact on reality and policy. The fact is people make up their minds for or against whatever happens to be the status quo depending on their quality of life, which they correlate with the status quo. Journalists believe the press has impact on public opinion but, in truth, everyone, without exception, simply seeks out reinforcement of their own views, prejudice and preconceived conclusions. And media outlets simply (and deliberately) pander to those views to increase sales. Journalists take their own view and prejudice to that this is, in fact, a clear cut case of them "leading" or "convincing" the public, when in reality, it is has never been anything else but the public dog wagging the media tail. The media is a mirror, a reflection of public moods and views. Nothing more and it never was anything else.