Honesty/integrity/impartiality in journalism probably peaked right around the 1950's and then went downhill when the Vietnam war gave the MSM the idea of having a "unified cause", and Woodward and Bernstein put "change the world" stars into the eyes of every journalism student since. Add to that the usual "power corrupts" factor going on, and the explosion of electronic media.
We're probably back down to the lows of the Spanish American war/Hearst/"Remember the Maine" days. The problem is now, that unlike then, the bias of the media doesn't even really align with the nominal interests of America anymore.
The one bright spot is the slow death of the MSM in the face of the Internet and mobile computing. People whine that there's an echo-chamber effect as people can self-select what they like in a fragmented and more democratic mediascape, however, I think this is better than the constant and near monolithic leftist push.
The downside is that the last two or three election cycles indicates the MSM is not dying fast enough, and that the Left has made some serious strides in forming their "permanent majority" through dependency and illegal immigration etc.
