Whats wrong with the Media?

Yet another story about sloppy work from the media. This one, with disastrous consequences. What happened to the media? We have award winning journalists faking stories and interviews; we have so-called reporters failing to ask even the most obvious question to a guest in order to avoid challenging them or rebutting their claims with facts; we have former internet escorts with White House press-passes at the White House when there is no press activity...and now this.
I think the problem is apathy. Apathy on the part of the everyday citizen. It is us who made the news 'entertainment' and celebrities out of news anchors. It is us who turn on the t.v. to watch grown men and women argue with each other for an hour and call that 'news'. At one time, the news was just a person, telling us the facts about what happened. Now we have channels and newspapers seen as liberal or conservative, when really--barring op/ed pages--we should only be reading news facts.
But see, Americans don't care to learn facts. They need to be dazzled. They need to hear the amazing and the awful and the horrendous so that they tune into our channel and not yours!
What a sad state of affairs. I guess this is reason number 1,001 why I get my news off the interenet.
I'll end by just including a quote from Andrew Sullivan which I think sums up the issue quite reasonably (emphasis mine):

But at some point, we will have to confront the severe damage this
administration has done to American prestige and credibility in a critical
global battle of ideas because of its interrogation policies. These are
self-inflicted wounds. Even if this incident turns out to be false, our previous
policies have made it perfectly plausible. That is the shame - and the terrible
gift from this administration to Osama bin Laden.