"Impartial news"? Here is a fringe position of mine which I'll be happy for you to turn to shreds, or at least illuminate: rational consensus is being stabbed to death.<p>If we are to live in democracy, we need consensus to be able to do important things. Without those important things, "bad things" happen. Say, you don't get medical care. Or a pandemic of a preventable disease kills a lot of people who don't have access to a vaccine or who don't want to be vaccinated. Here, you may say, "hey, my definition of bad thing is different than yours. Who are you to decide?". And now you are starting to see the problem.<p>So, we need consensus. And a good way to reach consensus is for people to have access to facts and to be able to make sense of those facts. But in an increasingly complicated world, both things are very difficult. Making sense of facts requires advanced mental tools: previous knowledge, reading skills, mathematics and logic. Those skills are under siege by forces that <i>compete</i> to engage people with dopamine-inducing content: social media, cable-news, video-games, politicians in campaign trails, etc. You as an individual may perhaps have enough reason, but at a group level, the critical mass for rational consensus is not there.<p>The endgame of that train is lack of social trust and anarchy. But "fortunately", before getting there, people turn to strong figures and/or to violent ideologies that suppress the "other".<p>The worst part is that I don't think there is a democracy-preserving solution to this problem, at least not for societies which are already incapable of reaching rational consensus. USA should prepare for its age of stabby emperors[^1].<p>[^1]: Please don't take this last statement seriously, I'm just goading you with dopamine-inducing content.