When Americans think of journalism, we think of a reporter doing the difficult but necessary job of presenting information objectively to the public.

This is, however, not what we have today.

Instead, we are left to depend on a biased and idealistic institution that consistently fails to provide America with the truth.

It’s clear that this institution is broken.

But how did we get here? According to the Pew Research Center, 86% of U.S. adults get their news from electronic media. With the migration to the internet, news publications were forced to compete in the domain of clicks.

This new revenue stream, to which publications had to adapt, put an emphasis on entertainment rather than truth, and it gave rise to clickbait content and fake news.

When it comes to fake news on social media, according to the Pew Research Center, 64% of Americans feel that it is causing a great deal of confusion on what is fact from fiction.

And it’s not exactly easy for Americans to identify this type of false information.

Research from Statista shows that only 26% of Americans are confident that they can identify fake news. To put it simply, Americans don’t have the truth, they have fictional stories purposely skewed to match their viewpoints.

But it’s not just the fake news articles that are to blame for the deterioration of journalism. A sizable portion of the blame lies in the hands of legacy mainstream media.

Once the internet gave way to new media outlets, the mainstream media began to lose its monopoly on information. With the introduction of competition, the news became a business. And to be competitive, they needed a market.

A notable example of this is Fox News’ Tucker Carlson and MSNBC’s Rachel Madow. Both mainstream broadcasts were among the most popular on their respective networks. Both shows also cater severely to opposite ends of the political spectrum. They were recently labeled by judges as entertainment and not credible news sources.

These problems cannot be fixed with legislation like the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine. Such a solution would endanger freedom of speech and of the press in the age of the internet. This change must be a cultural one; an active effort by the American people to value objective and unbiased information rather than supplemental biased journalism that adheres to their predetermined political beliefs.