I think you’re really overestimating the integrity of historic media. The sober tendency of media to “fact check” has only been the case in the last few decades.

https://www.wired.com/story/journalism-isnt-dying-its-return...

The history of the printing press was fraught with exactly the kinds of concerns people appear to have with social media. In those days, you had politicians routinely troll political opponents, publish partisan screeds under pseudonyms, and openly advertise their own biases.

They were never regulated by law because the Constitution makes such regulation essentially impossible.