I see this in our local newspaper. I suspect it has less to do with left-wing intent than with the current economics of the news. Local papers are losing readers, and aren’t able to get ad $, so cut back on staff, and fill up with wire service stuff (AP, etc.) This is invariably written by big-city liberals for liberal readers on topics that make liberals go squee. So the paper looses more readers... on and on.
A lot of small town papers are run by bigger newspaper companies