I do not like the phrase "the media". It is like saying there is a problem with compact disks or frequency modulated radio transmission.

Reading Marshal McLuhan would be a start for what human media is all about, and it turns out you yourself are a form of media. Or the "American Gods" attitude, that there is a single deity that somehow represents humans attempt to understand the external world, which we address like we might address Zeus?

Mediation - media - you mediate things - you are media

Example, your eyeballs sit between the outside world and your brain, and therefor your eyeballs are mediating between the world and your brain, thus parts of you are media. (on an etymlogical note, I prefer the use of the word mediation for solving conflicts between people as it is more specific and useful, and for what everyone refers to as "mainstream media", perhaps we should have no word at all, because any attempt to group any persons summary total received information about the world into a single entity is from the outset misguided at best, the signs of hopelessly deep manipulation at worst)(as in even getting you to think of cnn/fox/nyt/washpo/abc/nbc/cbs as a single entity is ALREADY screwing with your brain in a seriously bad way that you should try to escape from.)

Tada.

So "Dishonesty in the media" is opening the discussion to all dishonesty on planet earth, as well as all innacuracy that is unintentionla, as well as things that are simply misleading, such as how planets and galaxies look like stars, and distant stars are actually suns just like ours.

What you really want to ask about is, why do so many people who profess to be journalists or other content creators intentionally lie?

Or better yet, why can anyone just say they are a journalist even if all they do is lie?

Or better still, why are journalists who have lied for decades still accepted by huge masses of people?

Or better, why does propaganda exist?

Or better, why have we as a species not done away with propaganda even though it is the cause of so many problems?

Or better still, why do we have such difficulty as a species agreeing on an agenda to confront our problems as well as the factual basis for confronting them?

Or better still, how do so few people control such loud megaphones without any accountability?

Or better still, even though we created a network that connects literally every person to everyone else, directly, we still have the same problems as when there was only a single state owned media channel, or that the problem has gotten worse?

Thus, globaldebate.net, we would all be better off if we accepted that the internet is the primary media we need, and then use it to query each other and broadcast our discussions and debates, and those of experts, rather than seek Media(tm) from a single source like it is the eye of sauron on a tower.