I've noticed the steady decline of the proper use of the English language the past 40 years in all forms of media. I wish the "old-school" editors hadn't retired, or at least had trained their replacements properly. Maybe the blame is on the school systems that don't stress the use of actual dictionaries or thesauruses to ensure the proper usage of words and phrases. Cases in point - AOL constantly uses "media" as a singular word (it's plural for medium), AOL pluralizes words that are singular ("The BAND are, the COUPLE are - regardless of units within the word, there is only 1 "band" or "couple". Using your logic, the verbs after TEAM, ARMY, NATION should be plural? "The Team are practicing" is proper grammar? And Spell Check is a wonderful thing - when the correct synonym is used, irrespective of its correct spelling. On AOL's home page, for the past few days - " Alyssa Milano regrets having 'dawned' blackface". So she put it on at daybreak (dawn) and it occurred to her (dawned), or did she in fact DON (put on) it?
I would expect every American grade school student to utilize the proper form of the language, and even more so every college graduate, reporter, contributor, section editor and chief editor of any news outlet. I would be ashamed to put my name on the byline of an article that becomes laughable when it's rife with these types of errors. How am I to "trust" - regardless of AOL's Liberal bias - any article posted here or anywhere else that has not even been double-checked for proper grammar, let along double-checked for the the veracity of the "news"? If it doesn't soon DAWN on AOL, the credibility of AOL's articles will steadily decline to a level worse than it is already. Typos are typos, but the steady disregard for the elementary use of the rules of the English language is now laughable to the point that I surmise a reporter knows nothing about which he reported - BECAUSE HE CAN'T EVEN SPELL. And I pay for this every month?