Not even close - look up COINTELPRO and how many of the letters that were sent by the discoverers of that information ACTUALLY made it, let alone how few that did make it actually got published. Hint : very few.

The media has always had to kowtow to some degree to local authority, and there is always the element of ‘the truth we choose to believe’ (or are being told to believe) being published over harder reality. The west tends to be more transparent than most, and more honest than most, but everyone is very far from, and has always been very far from, any sort of unbiased view.

COINTELPRO was a thing, yes, but now almost all news is manipulated. Then stuff related to those stories was, big difference.

>The media has always had to kowtow to some degree to local authority,

Yes, that's what I mean, to what degree? That degree is much greater now than it was in the past, except the one doing the manipulation isn't necessarily the government.

Do you have any first hand experience as a journalist in the 60’s to base that on?

Do you have any links to facts that might support those assertions?

If not, I rest my case?

The incentive to lie and manipulate is greater now than in the past. New information technology (nowadays social media....) increases the benefits of lying, and decreases the costs of doing so effectively. So I would expect there to be more today than 40 years ago.

> We are currently in a time of more bias and manipulation than the 60s/70s.

No, we are not.