The New York Times (et al) set the official narratives. Faceboot and its ilk shape the many counter reactions to it. Despite being comprised of multiple journalists, everyone basically thinks of NYT as a singular entity with its own reputation. On Faceboot, memes carry the social proof of your own personal relationships. And the most worrisome is that people know NYT's narratives are not their own thoughts, whereas people think the narratives they got from Faceboot are.

That is your educated perspective. A larger share of Americans place greater trust in what they hear about public issues on social media from interesting personalities than in the NYT, sadly.