No, you had something far more dangerous: plausible-sounding false claims that were repeated without any challenge and therefore ended up being believed without question by a far higher percentage of the population. At least with the Internet, you can find refutations of false claims if you care to look.

You're forgetting about the Yellow Journalism era of the late 19th century.

Or the role of newspapers like the Boston Gazette during the lead up to the American Revolution, that mostly served to turn the populace against English rule.

Or the mass publication of seditious libels during Restoration England. If you want to talk about whacked-out conspiracy theories, you should see what was published in the 1660s through the 1680s. Popish Plot anyone?

The idea that journalists should be unbiased is a very, very modern one.

What I'm really curious about is what changed between the era of yellow journalism and the mid-twentieth century. I absolutely agree that people hearkening back to print journalism as a time when everything was fact-checked and reliable are mistaken, but it really does seem that journalism now is more sensationalist than in the recent past, just not the distant past. That means that print isn't the answer; there's something else to a society that makes its reporting either good or bad. What is it? Corporate power? General partisanship?

I've read that some posit that the switch to a subscription model in part effected the decline of yellow journalism. The subscription customer's purchase decision is potentially less driven by in-the-moment attention-grabbing and more by characteristics like informativeness and accuracy.

I'm talking about 20th century journalism.

We've essentially returned to 18th century quality, except with pictures and video now.