[unethical_ban]

I think the idea is what you say, and what the parent said.

Before internet and telephone, we still took things on faith from people we met, be it travellers or politicians or newspapers. But newspapers and politicians were more local, and didn't buy into whatever they read like scripture the way many seem to do these days.

[fasterik]

Before the 20th century, newspapers were explicitly partisan and were basically free to publish whatever suited their agenda. It is only in the 20th century that we see a more objective journalism emerge with the ideas of journalistic ethics, reliable sources, fact-checking, etc.

I really don't think the situation today is as bad as people say it is. You can still go to the news pages (not the opinion pages) of the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and the Economist, and the vast majority of what they publish is reliable information. We can debate over the partisan nature of what stories they choose to emphasize and editorialized headlines, but it's not like they are regularly publishing lies and nonsense.