Jim, I suspect that the MSM has an extremely exaggerated sense of their influence on the American public, and on their(the MSM) importance in general.
I really wonder what % of the American public watches something like NBC Nightly news and takes it seriously. Whenever I'm at someone's house and they have the evening "news" on, when I watch it, it has a "surreal" quality to me. I find it affecting me psychologically in a negative way.