It's not the nature of the press' industry that requires them to report what they've learned. It's a free press' role as a key element of democracy that requires them to do so.
The fact that the nature of information the press communicates these days is very different from that of days long gone. Clearly the change is that vastly more news commentary and analysis comes from our press organizations.
IMO, the change is an outgrowth of media organizations' need to be profitable and the Internet. Quite simply, basic and esoteric facts are, via the Internet, readily available to all. Accordingly, there's little reason for radio and television news networks, news magazines and newspapers to focus on merely relaying dry facts. The abundance and ease of access to factual information presents a challenge, that of identifying and delivering information that isn't readily available, prior to a news organization publishing it, on the Internet.
By the same token, there is now so much available
very high quality factual information that some people feel so overwhelmed that they won't bother to "make heads or tails" of it, others aren't able to do so, some may not be aware of the abundance of unbiased (politically speaking) information available at their fingertips, and others simply acquiesce to abdicating to the press their responsibility for reviewing rigorously determined factual information. Anyone who's spent much time observing the content referenced on USMB can see those things manifested.
Quite simply, one can count on one hand the quantity of members who reference original researc,h or who reference presentations of proven principles/theories, and in turn offer their own conclusions that are soundly drawn from that content. In contrast, one can find countless instances of members citing editorial content, all of which is someone else's, a person who's already arrived at their conclusions, assemblage and analysis of original references the author chose to support their own point of view they've chosen to argue. Moreover, quite often editorialists and commentators present references and sources, or "cherry picked" excerpts from them, that fit the narrative they want to advance.
Now, I don't think it's problematic that people consume editorial content. I think it problematic that they do so and in turn allow themselves to fall victim to confirmation bias. Since the very early days of the printing press, leaders and the ld have depended upon the publishing industry to disseminate knowledge. When the House of Elsevier in 1638 published Galileo’s
Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche, intorno a due nuove scienze (
The Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences), it and the author challenged the widely held beliefs of that time about the origins of the universe. Religious institutions of the day held such thinking as heretical, but the availability of the written word that could be easily transported and made Galileo's discoveries available for others to study, and their doing so and building upon his findings propelled enlightenment and knowledge.
Today, there are hundreds, perhaps more, of information publishers who perform the same role Elsevier did -- publishing very high quality original research -- yet the content the content they produce is not what most people consume. The problem is not the press and what it publishes. Rather, the problem is that people patronize the press that offers middling to poorly developed information, information that is often most notable for its provocativeness.
