[ProgressingAmerica]

Ping......... There is a fascinating story about how William Randolph Hearst learned everything he knew about manipulating people in the news from William Thomas Stead.

"Government by Journalism"

But neither Stead nor Hearst claimed "objectivity", not that I'm aware of.

[semantic]

The concept of manipulating 'facts' - in essence, creating alternatives to support designed narratives, is as old as government itself.

Today we call it propaganda, but the Roman term (at least for managing history) was damnatio memoriae. There are surviving Egyptian examples as well predating Rome by thousands of years.

The issue isn't one of objectivity, but rather competition. Opinion & ideas need to compete in the public square. That's what the net brought to the table, and which the Don has executed to his advantage.

[Reily]

Father of fake news - Phillip Freneau at the behest of Thomas Jefferson.