I used to believe that media reporting was accurate, complete, and unbiased. Then I got involved "on the inside" of a major news story when I worked in the UK. During the course of the story I closely monitored the news and quickly learned that media stories may be a bizarre patchwork of information received directly from the source (e.g. a spokesman or press release) and other hard facts, supplemented with old (stale) data that often is no longer relevant. Then any gaps in the story are filled with information from other unofficial sources such as unappointed, self opinionated, busybodies, third party information of little relevance such as spurious comparisons to other situations that aren't actually comparable, and then any remaining holes are filled in with deductions, supposition, and guesswork by the journalist.

The result of this pigs breakfast is that the story, as reported, may have a kernel of truth, but it may be wrapped in layer upon layer of incorrect, inaccurate, or otherwise irrelevant information, sometimes rendering the story almost unrecognizable to someone "on the inside" who knows what the actual facts of the matter are.

In twenty years nothing has persuaded me that the above explanation is not true to some degree for the majority of media reporting.