> But there also seems to be something more fundamental happening. Before the covid pandemic, consumer sentiment was relatively predictable based on economic fundamentals. The hard data and the survey responses tended to move up and down in something like unison. But since 2020, they’ve become disconnected, with a wide and pessimistic gap opening up between them. It’s hard to look at that phenomenon and see the impact of a changed media environment.

I don't understand that last sentence. I suspect I'm reading it wrong, but am having trouble parsing it in a way that doesn't mean: this data cannot be explained by a changing media environment since 2020. It's very easy for me to look at the disconnect between survey responses and economic data and see that how people receive and process news is largely responsible for it. The disconnect between facts and opinions has been widely observed, and while the pandemic didn't start it, it seems to have been an accelerator for it.