This isn't the first century in which the press has skewed its coverage of its own business to serve its business interests. For decades, the Associated Press

This isn't the first century in which the press has skewed its coverage of its own business to serve its business interests. For decades, the Associated Press and Western Union had a symbiotic relationship in which the AP got favorable rates in return for, among other things, forbidding its subscribing papers to criticize the Western Union telegraph monopoly. (Here's where I'd link to a reference if it was on line, but it's not: Paul Starr, "The Creation of the Media", ch. 5, p. 184.)