Before that media was written text and everyone knows anyone can make up anything they want in that domain. Before that most people were illiterate so it didn’t matter much. Media wasn’t even much of a thing.
We are headed for the post-media era when any arbitrary piece of media depicting anything can be created for little or no money by anyone with a computer. Nothing can be believed unless you were there or hear it from a known reliable source that was there.
There’s going to be an ugly transition period when we have tons of people who haven’t gotten this memo yet. These people are going to be manipulated en masse with tremendous effectiveness. The push to deplatform misinformation is largely an attempt to stop this, but I think it’s futile. People just have to learn that media is dead and they can’t trust anything anymore.
Hunter Thompson was ahead of his time. The only journalism worth doing in this future is individual gonzo journalism where you go and experience and tell the tale directly to your audience. That of course is vulnerable to spin by the teller, but so are all tales. It’s the best we have. Hopefully honest tellers of first hand tales will exist and get the reputation for honesty they deserve.
From what I gather, Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico was pretty much fanfiction (had somebody write?) about himself. This problem may be older than I thought.
(There is also the sad business of the 1932 Pulitzer https://www.pulitzer.org/news/statement-walter-duranty )
Bill Watterson had a series of strips about this in Calvin and Hobbes in 1992 [0].
> CALVIN: This is what I like about photography. People think cameras always tell the truth.
> CALVIN: They think the camera is a dispassionate machine that records only facts. But really, cameras lie all the time! Select the facts and you manipulate the truth!
> CALVIN: For example, I've cleared off this corner of my bed. Take a picture of me here, but crop out all the mess around me, so it looks like I keep my room tidy.
> HOBBES: Is this even legal?
> CALVIN: Wait, let me comb my hair and put on a tie.
[0] This is the one I quoted, but the one before and after it are related: https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1992/09/17
That is easy enough. What is difficult is to teach people they cannot just trust the people who tell them what they want to hear.
> Hopefully honest tellers of first hand tales will exist and get the reputation for honesty they deserve.
The odds of that are basically zero. There is no reliable way for people to know whether someone's tales are first hand or not, nor whether they are honest or not. If people stop consuming mainstream media and turn to gonzo journalism, powerful interests will manipulate information channels to direct eyeballs to the journalists they buy. The audience will not notice.
This is also about as long as we’ve had popular democracy. (Something like a fifth of Indians are functionally illiterate [1][2].)
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_India
[2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/363173220_LITERACY_....
We're likely going to see a few cases like this that take off while people are adapting, but this naivete won't last forever. There will always be a few gullible people, but, just like with Photoshop, we'll get to the point where most people understand what's possible and adapt their reactions accordingly.