Eeehhhh... at a media business level, I agree with you. The media corporations are interlinked and do have an agenda, and do suck off one another.

However, I have worked in, and still have many friends who are journalists both in the US and abroad, who write for reputable organizations (The Independent, The Economist, Financial Times, Le Monde, etc), and the on-the-ground world of active journalism is not homogenous enough, nor organized enough, for such sweeping generalizations to be true.

I know how these guys and gals find their stories. I know how they write them. I know how they pitch the stories to their editors. And I know what their drafts look like before the editors and title-writers get ahold of them. We used to all sit in one room together and I'd listen to the gory details of how the industry works from the journalist/correspondent level.

There is no "plan" or "agenda" at that level. These guys, on the ground, in war zones, are simply walking around, sticking their noses in, and writing about what they see. Any "contact" or "expert" they are given to speak to by their editor is taken with an enormous block of salt, because they do not know that person's motivations, connections, agenda, etc.

As for leeching off each other, that can also be an indication of opportunity.

You see refugees coming down the road. You talk to them. They say they are coming from Port Blahblah because armed gangs in military garb are breaking into houses and causing mayhem. So you try to get transport to Port Blahblah. But you are stopped at a military roadblock. So you try to get around it via different routes. But you can't get there.

Finally, after a week, a fixer says he can get you in there. So you grab the opportunity and go. There are two other journalists with you. You get in to Port Blahblah, write a story about what you find there, and send it back to your editor.

The story breaks in two different news outlets at once. All the other outlets grab the basic details of your story, and write their own spin on it, because Port Blahblah is the story of the day, and they can't be behind the curve.

But... is any of this orchestrated? Or planned?

Simply, no.

Does Fox News refer to the people in Port Blahblah as "terrorists", and MSNBC refer to them as "insurgents", and others refer to them as "elements in opposition to Commander Dingleberry's regime"? Yes. Because they put their narrative spin on the story to make it fit the agenda of the people who sign their checks.

But the journalists? Shit. By then they are at a bar in Lower Buttholesville, drinking like fish, bitching about the sensationalist title the editor put on their story, and waiting for their taxi driver's cousin to get back to them about whether the road to Upper Buttholesville is open or not.

In short, find reliable writers. Follow them wherever they post from, no matter which media outlet is putting out their stories.

The Media is not a single coherent and predictable thing. It's an ecosystem.