That is where Journalism should come into play. But popular media have a business model of spreading fakes, being outright partisan and are mostly driven by clicks rage and engagement. That is what a Chaos Actor like Trump provides. To see what is happening it is more insightful to look what forces are behind Trump.
In the US media landscape, it is not possible to have a genuine debate. Every hour there is new nonsense that will kill of any "boring" news.
Not as a matter of nature. But as a betrayal of democracy by the Fourth Estate, opening the door for anti-democrats.
It is a deliberate choice, helped by self-delusion and exceptionalism. It is painful to watch a society marching to where we know where the end is.
Fox came on the scene, and it worked as a business. In the end that means it gets funding, and is the competitive business model.
Other media orgnizations had to deal with all sorts of other barriers such as editorial standards etc.
I will add though, that Fox probably survived competition because it had such a close link to the Republican party. I wonder what would have happend if it were a more active market.
Actually scratch that - I remembered the issue with this market. Once we started having conglomerates of a certain size, acquisitions and the consolidation of media assets and newspapers was inveitable.
So even if there were other conservative view points, it would eventually be absorbed by "Fox" or whatever dominant entity in the market.
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I would like to blame Rupert Murdoch, but I am beginning to see that the man just found a chink in the armor of how society organized its media systems, and exploited it.