In my country (Germany) I don't get the impression that the official news sources (state sponsored media and established newspapers) are impartial. At the same time massive efforts to censor social networks are underway, camouflaged as "fighting hate speech". Hate speech is conveniently vague and boils down to "disagreeing with the official party line". There are no courses to appeal against this censorship, in fact, no real accountability for the people doing the censoring.

To me therefore such articles are merely a smear campaign in support of impeding censorship.

I really don't see how the public is supposed to be better informed without social media. In some countries it is even worse, when the people who get elected for government also happen to be the owners of the major media outlets (like Berlusconi in Italy).

I think I also saw a paper debunking the filter bubble thesis (as in people still get so see other viewpoints), but I am too lazy to Google it.

Even without social media, people create their own filter bubbles by only consuming media that aligns with their views. I suspect in the US, Democrats rarely watch Fox News?