The news anchor stares directly into the camera, his face etched with barely contained fury. Behind him, red graphics pulse with urgent headlines about "INVASION" and "BETRAYAL." His voice rises as he speaks not about events, but about his feelings regarding those events-his outrage, his contempt for those who disagree, his certainty that civilization itself hangs in the balance. This is not journalism. This is something else entirely.What you're witnessing is the culmination of one of the most profound and dangerous transformations in modern democratic society: the systematic replacement of objective journalism with what media scholars now call "opinions-about-the-news." This shift represents more than a change in format or style-it constitutes a fundamental rewiring of how information flows through society, with consequences that extend far beyond the screen and deep into the psychological and social fabric of our lives.To understand how we arrived at this crisis point, we must first grasp what we have lost. Traditional objective journalism, while never perfect, operated under a clear philosophical framework. Unlike objective journalism, which traditionally seeks to present facts in a neutral and nonpartisan manner to allow audiences to form their own conclusions, opinion-based media relies on a subjective viewpoint, often with a specific social or political purpose. The journalist's role was to serve as an intermediary between events and the public, providing context, verification, and multiple perspectives so that citizens could make informed decisions about their world.This model assumed that democracy required a shared foundation of factual understanding. Citizens might disagree about what policies to support or which candidates to elect, but they would at least be working from the same basic set of observable realities. The journalist's obligation was to that shared foundation, not to any particular political outcome.