It was a “market place of ideas,” some which you might disagree with.
Today, as with Covid, Ukraine (early on especially), the Russian hoax, the BS insurrection... You have a media and social media that on many of the significant issues is nearly monolithic.
In the 1800s ... sure.
By the 1970s, the idea of the "democrat paper" and the "republican paper" in town had nearly vanished. I saw its demise first hand. By the 1980s, it was gone entirely. TV was pure leftism from the beginning.
"Social media" introduced something that had never existed in my lifetime ... information channels that Big Media could not control.