Public funding is the instrument of authoritarian regimes- state sponsored media.
I think the root cause is lack of objective, critical thinking skills, and the glorification of "how it makes you feel" being more important than "is this reasonable".
I.e. emotion driving reason, rather than reason driving emotion.
By society. We don't want to fund people to separate fact from fiction, yet we lack the time and ability as a population to do it ourselves, so we latch onto outlets (especially celebrities) that seem to match our world view, and we treat what they say as gospel.
I think the vast majority of humans are simply disinterested in objective truth, except to the extent it's actionable in our day-to-day lives; otherwise, our sense-making is driven largely by the utility of social signaling: https://meltingasphalt.com/crony-beliefs/
Private funding is making the situation worse.
Public funding is the instrument of authoritarian regimes- state sponsored media.
I think the root cause is lack of objective, critical thinking skills, and the glorification of "how it makes you feel" being more important than "is this reasonable".
I.e. emotion driving reason, rather than reason driving emotion.