You are absolutely right. There was a time when the news was simply news and the media reported whatever was to be reported. Of course, a lot of the news was not worth bothering with, and there was a lot of sensationalism and gossip.
But at least the Leftist bias was absent. There was no planned, deliberate, Leftist slant to the news. There was no attempt to manipulate listeners towards what was evil and unlawful and Communistic. But all that changed once the billionaires who owned the media decided that America must become a Communist enclave. This could have been since the 1980s.
These billionaires profited from the freedom and free enterprise system that made America the leading country in the world. Rather than be thankful for their privileges and support freedom, justice, law and order, and democracy, they went in the exact opposite direction and promote evil. They gobbled up and destroyed all the independent voices in the media, and ensured that there would be only one direction -- Leftist propaganda. They learned no lessons from the failure of the Soviet Union, but wanted the same kind of totalitarian system.
Now all the Western media simply echo each other and produce either fake news or total bias against conservatives, Christians, and those who wish to uphold the truth. There is no in-depth reporting, analysis of the news, or investigative reporting. This is the Mainstream Media (MSM), which includes all the social media like Facebook, Twitter etc.
They will never ask the politicians the tough questions that need to be asked. They will shut down whatever does not fit their narrative. When a white person commits a crime, he is guilty until proven innocent. But when a black person commits a heinous crime, there are a hundred and one excuses made for him, or the media will simply hide the crime. When Laken Riley was brutally murdered by an illegal criminal who was already known to have a criminal history and was paroled because he was an illegal, none of the MSM were outraged at this. But when Biden called criminal illegals "newcomers" the media were more than happy to allow this deception to go unchallenged.
The media have been covering for Obama and Biden on a daily basis. But they attacked and denigrated Trump on a daily basis, and promoted every hoax imaginable as the truth. Then they covered up the Hunter Biden laptop from Hell, and promoted the hoax that this was "Russian disinformation". But since there is no accountability of any kind today, no one has been prosecuted for these crimes.