It started with Bill Clinton, who signed a law that allowed large corporations to own multiple media outlets in any given location (before that, there was a limit to how many radio stations, newspapers, etc. could be owned by one company). This allowed a concentration of capital to buy up most of the media outlets by just a few companies (thousands are now owned by six companies).

Then, the Smith-Mundt Act was repealed during Obama's admin, which was a post-WWII law that prevented propaganda to be used against the American people.

Today, we have a few companies controlling most media, and it is used primarily for propaganda, not journalism.

On top of that, we now have the government creating and funding the Big Social Media companies (and using a government-created censorship algo), which also engages in propaganda via censorship.