. . . those lies went essentially unchecked, and they’d hand the interview off to a Democrat who was baited with a leading question about “what you think about the claim that Democrats are running a child prostitution ring in the basement of a pizza restaurant”, or something else equally ludicrous.

I wish that was a recent tendency, but they were doing that in the late eighties. Not . . with the pizzagate-level stuff, the right hadn’t melted to that level of grotesque obscenity yet. But they’d use a GOP talking point to frame the story. Still do, actually, but for a long time they were essentially the only slightly liberal media around.