Really? Give me comparable episodes from the 1970s to 1996 of the following. Jason Blair? Rathergate? Newspaper manufactured Frauds about Abu Graibe and the Downing Street memo? AP stringers in Iraq arrested helping Insurgency build bombs? Faked photos used by Reuters and AP from Israel-Leabanon war? CBS and NBS "Journalists" meeting with senior Kerry staffers to coordinate how something would be covered? Fraudulent reporting about "the Military is bogged down and cut of in Iraq in 2003"? The utterly made up coverage about Fritzmu "23 indictments reaching into the highest levels of the White House"? etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc. This is not your era's new media. Anyone who cannot see it is simply refusing to look at the facts.
The change happened during Vietnam and was complete by the resignation of Nixon.
The televised media felt empowered to promote an agenda. As they were overwhelmingly liberal, the approach was to repeat a message until we poor dweebs caught on.
What we do not know, MNJohnnie, is how much was falsified back then.
In 1981, Washington Post reporter Janet Cooke won a Pulitzer for a story about Jimmy, an 8-year-old heroin addict. The boy didn't exist, and Cooke was forced to return the prize. She resigned from the Post and headed to France in 1985.
Rathergate?
Iran-Contra. Walter Cronkite and Vietnam.
Frauds about Abu Graibe and the Downing Street memo?
Most of the reporting coming out of Vietnam. Pentagon papers.
AP stringers in Iraq arrested helping Insurgency build bombs?
Jane Fonda and her ilk who helped publicize her trips to North Vietnam. John Kerry's testitmony before Congress in 1971 and two meetings with the Vietnamese communists in Paris while still a member of the US Naval Reserve. Most of the reporting coming out of Vietnam.
CBS and NBS "Journalists" meeting with senior Kerry staffers to coordinate how something would be covered?
Kennedy and Johnson relationship with the press. Many things were kept from the public by the media.
Fraudulent reporting about "the Military is bogged down and cut of in Iraq in 2003"?
Most of the reporting coming out of Vietnam, including portraying the Tet Offensive as a victory for the enemy. Walter Cronkite and his the war is lost pronouncement on the evening news when it was actually being watched by most of the American people.
The utterly made up coverage about Fritzmu "23 indictments reaching into the highest levels of the White House"? etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc.
Iran-Contra. Archibald Cox. Watergate. Lots of innocent people's lives were destroyed by zealous prosecutors.
This is not your era's new media. Anyone who cannot see it is simply refusing to look at the facts.
The fact is that we know much more today than we did then. The MSM really did control things because we had no alternatives. Many of the instances you cited were uncovered by the alternative media. The same kinds of stuff were going on before, but we had no way to find out except many years later. Deep Throat, the McCarthy hearings, Gulf of Tonkin, etc. are now better understood than was the case at the time.