The lack of responsibility, integrity, restraint, and balance by too many in the U.S. mainstream media is doing significant damage to freedom of the press. The constant, childish behavior by the media is driving many millions of Americans away of trusting and listening to U.S. media as a source of any information.  This has led to social and alternative media as becoming a greater and greater source for information on world events.  While on the surface this may seem only as an evolution of information distriution, in the longer term, traditional aspects of ethics, fact-checking in journalism, editing, are increasingly being dismissed. This is not productive for informing a broad public on current events and information on government activities.  The roles we have had in protecting freedom of the press are jeopardized when "the press" is no longer "the press" by extremist political activists.  If we are losing freedom, it is the extremists in the media largely responsible for this.