I’ve long thought one of the things that led to the sorry state we’re in today was the advent of cable TV. In the days you’re talking about, three or four networks were competing for the same viewers, and none of them could afford to alienate a big hunk of people, so they all tried to at least appear objective. With cable, there were so many stations that one could go after some niche and do fine, so we got stations that barely even made a pretence of being news, rather than propaganda, and people tuned in to hear whatever confirmed their existing narratives.