The problem IS disentangling them.

We can point to certain cases like Iraq where we would have appreciated not being fed outright lies that can't even be justified by end-justifies-the-means because the ends were horrible, with incredible amounts of infrastructure destroyed, hundreds of thousands to millions of innocent people killed and a hugely destabilized region now subject to increased regional proxy war - for merely the whims of an administration otherwise trusted to represent the prudent, careful and responsible use of American privilege and power.

Conceived, built and sold on outright lies, there was information throughout the entire process that called the official narrative into question. Yet major news sources specifically and carefully obscured those lines of skepticism and repeatedly magnified the outright lies on the basis of self interest.

I have a number of these we could talk about - everything from Kosovo to Snowden to Bahrain to Syria today - where major media knowingly participates in outright mass fabrication.

And when you tally the lives, the treasure and the resulting ignorance and jingoism of the resulting uninformed citizen the stakes seem oh so much higher than any collection of Facebook rumor - many of which, I suspect, are merely 'slanted' rather than malicious fabrications.

> We cannot allow legitimate complaints about the objectivity of media to impugn the entire idea of reporting, and admit tabloid drivel as a legitimate and equal alternative to more honest journalism.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. But you seem to assess the domestic media we have today as a more honest journalism. This is a completely unwarranted evaluation to my mind. They've lost an incredible amount of credibility, and that's the reason I read their rumor production carefully and suspiciously.

I recommend to people to take a large number of sources into account to try to understand what's going on in the world. I make recommendations. Those lists always include foreign media, always include military analysis, always include Thinktanks and always include history books.

Sometimes they include mainstream media. When they do, it's with caveats to explain that what you get from that media is a series of stories and impressions other people have paid those companies to get you to watch.

In total:

1) Yes, we need to distinguish between slanted journalism and outright lies.

2) No, major media outlets can't be equivocated with 'slanted journalism' with independent media and rumors equivocated with 'outright lies.'

The background behind all of this is that there's a crisis in faith in the US government and media organizations that promote outright lies to galvinize support for and obscure the issues around controversial policies. There is a 'national security danger' to a widespread collapse of credibility and at this moment a range of options for regaining that esteem and control is underway in Washington: some of these are truly more Orwellian than others, but I haven't yet found anyone talking about encouraging more honest and direct communication on frank terms - which is actually what is needed to heal the relationship between a voting base that (rightly) feels manipulated and emotionally abused.