Even as a liberal I did not trust the established media or I atleast did not think that I did. Much of it got through obviously considering I was a liberal but I atleast understood that I shouldn't take fucking "newscorp" at its word.
Even as a liberal I did not trust the established media or I atleast did not think that I did. Much of it got through obviously considering I was a liberal but I atleast understood that I shouldn't take fucking "newscorp" at its word.
Simple: there's no dissonance involved whatsoever.
Disbelieving a media narrative is a proactive action. You have to personally know more than the reporter to disbelieve what they write or say. If you don't, then you fall into a type of stupor wherein you believe everything they write except the things you personally know about. An engineer may know that a certain article about bridges is bullshit, but they'll switch to a politics link and believe everything as per print.
In such a scenario the conventional beliefs the world are self reinforcing. You either work your way towards a rabbit hole of disbelieving everything on media or you just don't. So there's no dissonance involved. You never make the mental effort for there to be one.