Television seems to have been that way for a long time- reliance on 'human interest" stories, with a mix of pseudo-advertising spots where a reporter interviews a business person.

Here in Michigan, it started with newspapers. With the exception of some very small town local weeklies and the two Detroit papers (News and Free Press), all the other larger city papers are owned by Booth News which operates a website called MLive also. Back in the late 1990s Booth literally told their outdoors reporter to stop badmouthing the Republican governor's administration's environmental record or they would fire him. Booth then moved to terminate most of their reporters forcing all the reporters to become freelancers and sell their articles.

Interestingly, our local WXMI (Fox17) station, although they go by Fox because they broadcast Fox tv shows in prime time, are really owned by Scripps. The Scripps corporation has had the local stations they own run promo spots informing the viewer they are "Scripps news" - they are distancing themselves from the actual FoxNews in the wake of the election denial garbage.