In Semafor's One Big Idea - "Media's Return to the Past" Prof. Christopher McKnight Nichols states, "For most of US history journalists and the press were overtly, often sensationally partisan. Citizens expected as much. So did politicians. Historians of journalism have well documented that readers supported and trusted “their” media — Republican or Whig or Know Nothing or Jacksonian or Populist or Socialist publications — and turned a blind eye to much of the rest." 

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