For most of our history media was expressly partisan one way or the other. I think just dropping the pretense that they are objective would be sufficient.
True, but the difference is that up to the 1950s most major (and many smaller) cities had two or more newspapers. Each had their own bias but there was competition and when one tried to cover something up, the other would report it.
Today most newspapers and networks are controlled by a few powerful people. They have (dare I say it) a monopoly on the “news” and so for most only one voice is heard, the liberal voice.
Trump is showing that the old gatekeepers can no longer control the message. Trump can bypass the media and speak directly to the people. The MSM is now on the defensive.
This, I think, can be compared to what happened to castle once cannons became common. A shift in power.
Here in San Francisco, we had more than half a dozen large newspapers competing against each other. They began swallowing up each other in the late 1950s into the 1960s. Several became the "News-Call-Bulletin" during mergers, each used to be independent. By the 1970s SF only had three major papers left. By the 1990s only the Chronicle (Hearst empire paper) had any teeth left in it, with the others collapsing. I used to hawk several different papers from downtown corners in the 1960s, cars would pull over and the occupants would give me a good tip for handing over a paper through the window. Nowadays, you don't see newspapers being hawked to cars. Of course, I read most of the papers and even as a kid I noticed the bias and conflicting spin on news.