Here's why you can never trust the U.S. news media again?

Media no longer has any intention of presenting both sides of a story.

More than a century ago, way back in 1906, Mark Twain said, “There are only two forces that can carry light to all the corners of the globe — only two — the sun in the heavens and the Associated Press down here.”

For the rest of the 20th century, the AP was America’s — even the world’s — most unbiased news source. If the agency quoted a top House Democrat saying one thing, they’d quote a top Republican a few paragraphs down saying just the opposite. For every point, there was a counterpoint.

That’s how the world is. Of course there are “facts,” but many can be interpreted in myriad ways. The AP, like a lot of news agencies at the time, simply sought to lay out the two sides — or sometimes 12 sides — and let the reader decide.

All that changed in the 21st century. The Internet was beginning to bloom and afternoon newspapers across the U.S. — often a city’s conservative alternative to the liberal morning paper — began to wither and die. The AP, which provides content to news outlets, soon found that its clients wanted more liberal content (and were willing to pay handsomely for it).

I remember in the early ’00s, a top AP reporter covering the White House told me that the news service would no longer present the two sides as if they were equal. Citing climate change, the reporter said one side is “settled science,” which means that any other side doesn’t hold water.