I'm assuming this person is referring to journalistic standards. Newspapers didn't just let anyone write articles they had to be written by someone with a degree in journalism or something similar and then reviewed by an editor. In theory if the news organization posts something wrong their reputation was at risk, which hopefully would provide incentive to not post false information. This whole process sending actual people out to the scene conducting interviews collecting information is very expensive. Whereas someone just providing their own 2 cents on any given news event does not cost anything beyond the time it takes for the individual writer to write it. The high start up costs of starting a newspaper company even back in their heyday prevented just anyone from being able to run their own newspapers, Although there were definitely were some newspapers that were far less reputable, often refered to as a "rag".

No.

But what if we took a picture of the a suburban neighborhood from the 1960s, desaturated it, then implied that everyone is secretly a murderer or something? Maybe THEN people will stop living in the suburbs.

Lenin and Mao were both given this treatment.