You should consider the probability that in the past when newspapers deceived the public, the deception went largely unnoticed (at least at the time.) For instance, there is the time American newspapers almost single-handedly started a war with Spain.

Or, even worse, the infamous case of Pulitzer Prize winner and genocide denying communist sympathizer Walter Duranty using the New York Times to promote Soviet propaganda during the Holodomor. The damage there is still ongoing, despite the NYTs coming clean half a century later. When HBO's Chernobyl mentioned it by name, that was the first time many Americans ever heard the word.

FYI there is a memorial outside Union Station for visitors to Washington DC.

https://parkplanning.nps.gov/projectHome.cfm?projectID=39537

This is very, very incorrect. The term "yellow journalism" exists today because of really nasty work done in the late 1800s. Nobody at the Washington Post--or any other American newspaper today--is operating at nearly the same level of toxicity as William Randolph Hearst did then.

That is what the internet is for.

America loves its fake news, that's why Alex Jones was popular for years. He was able to lie freely about anything and anyone until finally libelling the Sandy Hook survivors was too much.