[TheOtherHobbes]

This is manifestly not true in public journalism. In the UK the paywalled newspaper all produce opinion propped up by heavily editorialised reporting, which tries hard to appear fact based but is anything but.

As others have pointed out, what has happened is that the status of "fact-based journaiism" has been degraded - because most "fact-based journalism" was only ever opinionation written in a high-status social register.

The real change has been the obvious shift in the social register of public writing, from schoolmaster-ish formal and paternal authority, to inclusive, child-like, and trivial accessibility.

It's not quite true that neither was ever in the fact business, and the old model did a far better job of hiding it.

But it was much less fact-oriented than it appeared to be. And the old long-form journalistic style of writing used to describe factual experiences - e.g. travelogues - has been replaced by short-form subjective quick-hit social media posts, often supported by amateur photos or captioned memes. (I.e. fixed-format DIY cartoons.)