There was this thing called "yellow journalism". It was very much not trying to be unbiased. Most US 20th century journalism tried to be better than that. An

There was this thing called "yellow journalism". It was very much not trying to be unbiased. Most US 20th century journalism tried to be better than that. And, by trying, they were better than yellow journalism. Yes, there was still bias. But the difference between, say, 20% bias and 80% bias made a real difference. So maybe today we're at 40% bias instead of 80% bias. It's still worse than it was, and the difference still matters. (And, by the way, one of the ways it matters is in peoples' trust of the media. We don't need people who are obviously trying to manipulate us; we already have enough of those.)