Just because the media has cooking articles doesn't mean it isn't propaganda.
At the time of the Iraq war everyone who cared to look into it knew the whole thing was absolutely fake news. If I knew it was fake, and all the people involved in the massive anti-war movement (in the UK at the time) knew it was fake then it wasn't much of a stretch for educated in the know journalists of the NY Times or other major media outlets to know. WMD, yellowcake, links to 9/11 etc. Completely fabricated propaganda was spread and promoted by the MSM.
Your issues with opinion columns from 15 to 20 years ago does not render the entire medium of 21st century journalism "fake news".
I'm certain if you read the entirety of the New York Times (and many other outlets) published articles on the subject you would find a range of perspectives, not just the ones that you're purporting sum up journalism of the past 20 years.
I was reading the same outlets you were at that time. Those large outlets based in the cities were where I (living in rural SW Ontario) gained my understanding of what was going on with the United States response to 9/11.
I'm not making this up. They maintain well-organized archives and it's easy to search, filter by date range, section, and sort. For example, "Bush WMD" search between January 1, 2001, and December 31, 2011 returns a wide variety of perspectives and types of journalism: some straight reporting of the news, some press releases, and some opinion columns from varying perspectives—some in line with what you're claiming is the entire stance of North American media, and some not. Those sections are not all equal in their "truthiness" (another fun term from those times, if you recall).
> Those sections are not all equal in their "truthiness"
So why are low-truthiness sections like 'opinion pieces' and 'commentaries' published? Well they're cheap, but also because someone's pushing a particular agenda, or agendas.
So how's that different from someone spouting outrage-wrapped half-truths on social media?
Opinion columns are a curated forum of ideas, including agendas, sure.
But the publishing of them does not represent them as being anything of any validity any more than publishing "letters to the editor" asserts the opinions therein are of any practical value other than the exposure to the fact that they are indeed held. It's an attempt to hold an even remotely civilized, and detached discussion at length.
No single opinion column is a conclusion, except maybe that of the writer's. That's why you'll see debates go on for extended periods of time-columns and papers written back and forth on singular ideas sometimes for years, decades even.
But I'm not here to defend opinion columns—I rarely read them myself outside of a few more local polemics. I was discussing the dishonest treatment of an "MSM" that is only "fake news" and "propaganda" because of a misreading and lack of media literacy in general. (If only many people who frequented forums like Parler treated those discussions with as much deference rather than planting bombs and bludgeoning a federal officer to death)
I haven't claimed that all content published by MSM is fake news or even the majority.
A war was initiated under false pretenses, published by these organizations. Everyone knew it was fake and a charade and they published it anyway.
This is a question of pot calling the kettle black. And in this case (against Facebook or in other cases Parler) the harm caused by MSM is far far greater than any conspiracy theory on social media.
If you want to discuss my comment in other terms, I'd be happy to. However, I only aimed to be as clear as possible—using the correct words is part of that. A great deal of the vitriol that tends to bubble up in discussions about sensitive subjects seems to come from misunderstandings—accurate language is one of the few ways we can try to prevent such misunderstandings.
At the time of the Iraq war everyone who cared to look into it knew the whole thing was absolutely fake news. If I knew it was fake, and all the people involved in the massive anti-war movement (in the UK at the time) knew it was fake then it wasn't much of a stretch for educated in the know journalists of the NY Times or other major media outlets to know. WMD, yellowcake, links to 9/11 etc. Completely fabricated propaganda was spread and promoted by the MSM.