I think it's dangerous to adopt Trump's terminology and lump all media as "lamestream" because it completely undermines the legit journalism of the non-partisan, non-biased outlets -- which is exactly what Trump is trying to do by coining such terms. Not everything is Fox News, MSNBC, or CNN. They're just prominent because as you stated, it's all about making headlines to capture an audience and get that advertisement coin.

Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the viewer to recognize which news sources have more credibility than others. It's like going to Costco and choosing a case of water over a case of soda, despite the soda coming in appetizing flavors and colorful packaging, the water is better for you and you have to conscientiously make that choice.

Again, I'm against your use of broad and inaccurate generalizations, in this case of pharmaceutical companies. I've worked in the pharmaceutical industry and I can tell you with 100% certainty that medicines are not poisons that are poorly tested. Medicines are EXTENSIVELY tested before they can even get FDA approval to be released to market, and once they are released, they are continuously monitored.

I want to make clear that getting a single medicine to market is an extremely costly endeavour. At the very onset, thousands of chemical compounds are screened through numerous in vitro and in vivo tests, and once a single compound is optimized it goes on to a much more rigorous stage of drug development under FDA guidelines to determine formulation, efficacy and safety before this compound can even be tested in humans during clinical trials. Most compounds don't even make it to clinical trials because they can't pass this testing. Out of the few compounds that do make it to clinical trials, even fewer make it through (either the compound just doesn't work as well in humans as it did in animal models or has serious side effects) to actually get FDA approval and become a medicine

From start to end, the process of trying to make a single medicine takes anywhere from 8-12 years on average, with the bulk of that being efficacy and safety testing, and with MILLIONS and MILLIONS of dollars poured in. And again I want to emphasize that the majority of the time these compounds fail and nothing comes out of them. A pharmaceutical company can start with 10 projects and 12 years later will be very lucky if it can get a medicinal product out of 1 or even 2 of those. So you can see why a medicine will be costly as soon as it hits the market and for as long as it is under patent. It is a balancing act between trying to make a profit to fund very costly drug development research and affordability so ill people can get the treatment they need. How much companies tip the balance which way is where the problems arise.

Obviously there will be some sketchy companies that will be more motivated by profit and price gouge the shit out of a medicine with disregard to the patients (see pharma douche Martin Shkreli and Turing Pharmaceuticals). Others will have a medicine that that is highly sought and thus crank the price up (see EpiPen, although for this one, epinephrine is not a novel medicine but the injector pen is a novel form of delivery). And then we have the opioid drug makers, particularly Purdue Pharma. As I said, once a medicine is approved for market by the FDA, a company has to continue monitoring it to see if any adverse effects arise that were not seen in clinical trials. This is where Purdue Pharma got greedy and dropped the ball. They continued to aggressively peddle opioid painkillers while failing to address the high addiction rates.

And lastly, I want to address your point about drugs hitting the water streams. Pharmaceutical companies operate under the rules they are given by the FDA and are only required to identify the method of metabolism and excretion of a medicine out of a person's body. Whatever happens after that is an environmental issue that does not fall under their responsibility. Should it? I dunno, that's a complex issue. Just bear in mind the long time frame and high cost already of developing a medicine; if environmental mitigation is added on there, you bet your pants that's going to make it even worse and ultimately the consumers will be paying the price.

And that concludes my lengthy essay. Hope you've enjoyed it.