It's not exactly a secret that in a post-Trump world, journalists have decreed that they also have a responsibility to protect democracy. If only the Iraq invasion caused within them a similar introspective episode, but for some reason it didn't? Perhaps it would've been different if there were more dead nyt journalists among the 1+ million victims.
I think the reason Trump caused so much talk about fake news and propaganda is that until him these were only generated and controlled by very powerful organizations (autocratic governments or in free societies the governement, big companies and their media). That an upstart could also start convincingly spreading falsehoods and fear, and move masses was alarming. No longer were the NYT&co or Fox the sole arbiters of how public discourse is framed. Fake news was democratized. We all lose, whether we are being lied to subtly by the NYT and big companies or blatantly by populist upstarts.
