I feel like that last paragraph in honk's post was directed at me. If it was I feel like it should be pointed out that I never propped Trump up as a hero on this. And I never said that Trump's intentions were anything but self-serving.
That being said, after Trump was elected, several stories were published that were in bad faith, quoting unreliable sources, twisting the facts, what have you. I feel like before Trump's presidency, unless the offender was Fox News, such incidents were quietly retracted with no further mention.
But because Trump has amplified the idea that the media is out to get him, every time such an incident happened a big deal was made about it. It was always cited as evidence of fake news; never mind that these incidents tend to be few and far between, representing a fraction of a fraction of the media's total output, which anyone able to apply a little critical thinking to the situation can see.
But I do think the media is being more careful now as a result of the heightened scrutiny. They're still fucking up and being called out for it, and now, not even necessarily when Trump is the subject; witness the reaction after the NYT published what could only reasonably be described as a piece of smear propaganda painting Bernie Sanders as a communist sympathizer because he was participating in an outreach program in Russia that happened to have been started by Reagan and supported by several politicians on both sides of the aisle. It was a stunning piece of hypocrisy for an institution that seems to see itself as the last bastion of truth in Trumpworld, it was clearly calculated to give Biden an edge in the primaries... and it was nothing short of disgusting.
And four years ago I believe it would have been quietly swept under the rug and quickly forgotten about.
So yeah, the media is often biased. The media is often hypocritical. The media often publishes stories that it's irresponsible to publish. And thanks to Donald Trump, more people recognize that. Just because his motives were selfish and he was amplifying the situation to an utterly comical degree doesn't mean that the greater scrutiny of the media that's resulted isn't a good thing.