Swaying public opinion has always been the job of the news people long, long before there the USA was ever thought of.
Considering that there were no “News people” until a little before the U.S. was created, that is a bit of a stretch.
Literacy of more than 50% of adults only hit Europe by about 1700. There were not a lot of newspapers.
You can make a good argument that the United States was the first country formed with over half its population literate.
There are claims that Jews enjoyed widespread literacy as early as 600 BCE.
“Considering that there were no “News people” until a little before the U.S. was created, that is a bit of a stretch.”
What is a stretch is how you got that out of my quote. Let me rephrase it: News people (journalists), and other names they’ve gone by over the course of history, have been lying to the public not just long before the USA was ever thought of, but before North America was ever discovered by the Europeans.
I did not limit my statement to news papers.
Here’s a fairly good history of news:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News
Now I do not have any links proving news people have been lying all along, but if I dig deep enough, I could probably find a source telling of the ancient Romans or Egyptians putting out propaganda.