Television in the 20th Century was a monolith that created something no one had ever seen before.

 

Truth is that newspapers were never unbiased and that only Watergate made people pretend that neutrality was important.

 

In 18th and 19th Century America, major cities had several newspapers, geared specifically toward every party and political movement. Louisville alone had more newspapers than could be named, including more than one owned by the Bingham family themselves. There was a German Catholic newspaper, a newspaper directed to news that affected the black community, and a popular paper dedicated to the temperance movement.

 

My own position has always been to consume as much as I can and discern what I might.

Great points and I agree with most of what you have said above. However, what I consider the "national media" included the major daily newspapers and wire services. Most of those outlets were left-leaning or beginning to move in that direction by the 1960s. The big newspapers, like the New York Times and Washington Post could afford to commit resources to long term investigative report projects that more diverse local daily newspapers could not.

Newspapers still think they are somehow superior to other media when in fact they have become all but obsolete. I believe that has pushed them further to ideological extreme in order to try to remain relevant.