surprise AT ALL. People have lost trust in the MSM because… the MSM has become untrustworthy.
There are several factors in play, here. One obvious one is that the MSM went all in on the Russia collusion hoax and it is now very clear that it was all a bunch of lies. And a bunch of deliberate lies.
So either they knew it was a hoax and outright lied, or were too stupid to know that it was a lie. And they didn’t want to even entertain the proposition that it was a lie and were too lazy and/or hackish to track it down. Neither option looks at all good on them. Me, I believe it is heavily weighted on the first option, with a smattering of the second one. But in any case, it was a total violation of trust.
Second, it has become clear that the MSM lies about Donald Trump all the time. They are not trustworthy. When they are fact-checked they show themselves to be completely dishonest. They have gone on and on saying bad things about Donald Trump, and they’re not even giving lip service to being fair! And we all see that.
The bottom line is that people no longer trust them. They are no longer seen as an arbiter of truth. There were always bias issues going on, but now for the MSM there’s not even a nod to being professional and objective. This all did not independently cause the decline in trust completely on its own, but it is certainly added to the decline and greatly accelerated it. I think it was a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one.
But now it’s all propaganda all the time–and the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax is by far not the only salient issue. They might tell the truth on important issues sometimes, but it is purely by accident or irrelevant to anything but the most mundane of issues.