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They do this consciously, absolutely. And they have for over 100 years.

I have a few feet away from me a newspaper from 1943 (the Wichita Kansas Sunday Beacon). I recognize that all stories have slant, but the older publications lack the breathless emotional manipulation that seems to pervade every news outlet nowadays.

This comes down to reputations largely. I'm sure that 1943 paper tried very hard to keep their reputation. But there is a whole term for thteh sensationalist style of newspapers called Yellow Journalism that's been around for a VERY long time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism

And that's just that one term. Before that, wealthy people literally made newspapers to try to push their own points of view onto the public. Heck, the USA was arguably founded on propaganda newspapers. They certainly weren't regularly fair and objective representations of truth, and rarely even tried to be.

It has existed for 100 years, but it was not as prevalent in high status papers. Just compare front page of NY Times today vs 30 years ago. Journalists actually used to use the inverted pyramid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_%28journalism...

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