Our First Amendment to the Constitution tells us that "Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…", of which it is this law that allows the people and the press to report and to disseminate information that represents the truth so that the people are fairly informed of what all is occurring in their communities and in their country, at large. To the degree that the press reports the news, without thought as to conforming to the norms of the day, or to the prevailing viewpoint of those powers in charge, but rather holds itself responsible to be in accordance with the highest law, which is truth, than the people surely are well served.
Unfortunately, many governments and communities often don’t have a real desire to see the whole truth and nothing but the truth being printed and disseminated to their constituents, because their mission is often not one of being fully upfront and honest with the people, but rather has a lot more to do with creating a construct in which the news is mainly reported in a manner that supports the powers to be, while suppressing those that are the dissenting voices to that power.
One might think that in today's world, with the internet, blogs, and social media of all types, that never has it been easier for people to get a hold of information that is outside the orthodox mainstream. While this is true to a certain extent, it does not take into account, all of the distractions and the "noise" of the internet, blogs, and social media, and fails to recognize that alternative media voices are no match to how pervasive and how powerful mass media has become, so that, to a very large extent, the mass media has an iron grip upon what is and isn't reported, as well as what is and isn't talked about.
The most basic reason with why the public is not fully informed about the issues of the day has an awful lot to do with money and the influence that money has upon what the press so writes. That is, most media companies, be it radio, television, or print, have a need to take in revenue, and a significant portion of that revenue comes from advertisers, as opposed to individual subscribers, and those advertisers have thereby an outsized influence over what is or isn't going to be reported, so that the press is quite obviously compromised in what and how it subsequently reports news. So too, governments have an outsized influence upon the press because governments can exert pressure of all sorts upon those institutions that are not reporting the news in general conformance with that government's desires, as well as governmental institutions are also able to setup quid pro quo deals that further muddies the whole truth from coming forth, and finally governments can simply provide favors only to those that the government approves of.
A robust and independent free press that reports what is really going on, is that inconvenient truth, affecting all those that have their reasons as to why they do not want the whole truth being circulated throughout the public; primarily because those vested interests often maintain their status, position, and power, by manipulating what purports to be the truth in a manner that supports them, at the expense of the whole truth, and to the public's loss.