100 years ago, most newspapers were party organs. Local political parties wanted "their guy" getting favorable coverage.

Later on, once ads became a major source of revenue, most newspapers realized that being completely one sided hurt ad revenue. After all, if you want to advertise your furniture store, don't you want to sell to everyone in your area regardless of their party?

Now with intelligent/micro-targeted ad systems and minimal geographic limitations, those previously "too small to matter" niches are suddenly worldwide and large enough to be a useful segment on their own.. so many organizations can say/do what they want up to the line of defamation/slander protections, if any.

In America? You do nothing. These are cases of government trying to control things and losing.

> I am curious how something like this would have been handled 50, 100, 200 years ago.

The idea that the press should be politically neutral is a pretty new one -- historically there were highly partisan newspapers, alongside "impartial" ones.

But I think the lies, etc., were more likely to be litigated on charges of slander, defamation, etc., at least when they were about individuals.

Now they're all about "socialism" or whatever, and unfortunately socialism doesn't have any lawyers.

It has always worked the same way: people ask publishers to change what they publish, and the publishers decide whether to make a change or not, based on their own opinions and sense of self-interest.

Except when they don't.