The big difference between the popular media and the internet/google, is that you only have a few channels, basically 2 polarities in the medias. Your choices are quite limited. Googling the net, you can go almost anywhere, informationaly. That means that when you are researching something, you can go as wide spectrum as you want. You can drill down to the bottoms of issues. When you run across a new (to you) idea, you can imediately google it's opposing/debunking idea, as well as the idea debunking the debukners, etc. You can cut through an awful lot of crap in no time at all. Try doing that in the popular media. Impossible.
Also, in cutting through so much crap, you get better at recognizing crap.
S