What is non-partisan, when one party is normal, and the other is fascist? The solution that our press has used for decades is to report the sides of partisan disputes as if each party is of equal credibility; to place the gross failings of the Republican Party and the minor failings of the Democratic Party as equal. The practical result of that sort of "non-partisanship" is not at all non-partisan; it ends up defending the indefensible and is a large part of how we have ended up here.
It also is only the appearance of non-partisanship; it is a vast instance of the false equivalence fallacy. In actual practice, with the concentration of media into a handful of large corporations, media owners are usually conservative (at this point I believe they are all far right, with the possible exception of Sulzberger at the New York Times) and when someone objects that this is a false equivalence, they are quickly silenced. 13 years ago Mann (Brookings, conservative) and Ornstein (AEI, libertarian) published an op-ed titled "Let’s Just Say It: The Republicans are the Problem." Suddenly these conservatives, who previously were routinely on the opinion shows, got no air time at all. So, then, the claim and appearance of neutrality wasn't even that; anyone who broke with the prevailing illusion of non-partisanship was quickly muted.
The only way I can see to have a truly non-partisan media is to have multiple media with different viewpoints. concentrated ownership and small numbers of outlets—a media oligopoly—invariably becomes—has become—a single partisan medium.
The converse of this is influencer media driven by engagement and, usually, software which attempts to maximize engagement. Unfortunately, influencers are seldom journalists. They have very poor standards of reporting and fact-checking and are easily sucked into partisan propaganda operations. We need journalism of multiple viewpoints, not simply an online tabloid press.
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